In regard to: Re: [Networker] Need help in restoring files from old tapes...:

On Thu, Mar 20, 2008 at 11:59:29AM -0400, MIchael Leone wrote:

I have some old tapes (old = 2007-02-28, so well far beyond our
browse/retention time). And now I need to restore some files off them. Our
policy is not to save the index with every backup job (i.e., we run our
own bootstrap job manually via schedule every day, doing a savegrp -O).
Since this is the first time I've had to do a restore from old tapes, I'm
a little unclear on the procedure.

NW 7.4.1, on Win2003

From looking at the manual, I would need to do a:

scanner -m \\tape0 (since I have 4 tapes dated 2007-02-28, and 3 dated
from a later month)

Scanner -m only restores the media database.  But the media DB entries
are not destroyed at the end of the retention period.  They are only
removed if you ask for that explicitly (nsrim -d) or if the volume is
recycled.

Good point Darren, and that's something I should have been explicit about
in my previous reply.  I was assuming that there were no media database
entries for those tapes, but odds are good that there are, which means
that Michael can probably skip directly to the scanner -i -S ssid step,
or just do a directed recovery.

Once that finishes for the 1st (?) tape, I would need to do a
     mminfo -a -v
to find out the sequence of tapes that this backup job consists of.

So this command should work now unless you've done something to remove
the media entries in the past.

What tape do I do the "scanner -m" on, tho? I have 4 tapes, that pretty
much say "EOM 2007-02-28". Do I just put one in at random, and NW will
figure out the rest?
Then I do a

scanner -i \\tape0

You can run -m and -i at the same time.

-i is a superset of -m, so there's no point even specifying -m if you're
using -i.

I've also been told by NetWorker support that if you only need a few
ssids, it's faster to do 'scanner -m' on a tape to repopulate the media
database, and then go back and do 'scanner -i' for just the ssids that you
need, rather than running 'scanner -i' on the whole tape.

Tim
--
Tim Mooney                                        Tim.Mooney AT ndsu DOT edu
Information Technology Services                   (701) 231-1076 (Voice)
Room 242-J6, IACC Building                        (701) 231-8541 (Fax)
North Dakota State University, Fargo, ND 58105-5164

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