This used to be common with NW 7.3 until Jumbo 8 was released. You can do labelling and inventory using the nsrjb command line. If it gets labelled with nsrjb command line, log in a call with EMC Support.

It seems networker GUI just ignores the requests. (I'm not sure how to attempt this from command line.)

Using the GUI I told it to label tape in slot 10. It succeeded but didn't change the label. I then did an inventory on that slot, succeeded but no change.

I have even shutoff auto media mgmt and then restarted networker daemons. No change. The label operation just seems to succeed in seconds.

daemon.log:
10/02/06 13:28:43 nsrd: [Jukebox `ADICi2K', operation 10]. Initiated operation `operation: "Label"; operation device: "/dev/nst0"; operation response: "prompt"; operation slots: "10-10"; operation template: "Bar Code Label"; operation volume pool: "Default"; '.
10/02/06 13:28:47 nsrd: [Jukebox `ADICi2K', operation # 10]. Finished with status: succeeded
10/02/06 13:31:24 nsrd: [Jukebox `ADICi2K', operation 11]. Initiated operation `operation: "Inventory"; operation device: "/dev/nst0"; operation slots: "10-10"; operation task: "verify during inventory"; '.
10/02/06 13:31:39 nsrd: /dev/nst0 Verify label operation in progress
10/02/06 13:31:43 nsrd: /dev/nst0 Eject operation in progress
10/02/06 13:32:21 nsrd: [Jukebox `ADICi2K', operation # 11]. Finished with status: succeeded

If you want to label those tapes what happens if you try to force the label against them?

Just as I thought, networker will not label them. Anyway to force it?
I suppose one could use nsrjb to mount tape and then dd over the first MB of the tape. But that seems silly. Any suggestions?

# nsrjb -Lvvv -S 10
setting verbosity level to `3'
nsrjb: Info: Skipping slot 10. NetWorker will not overwrite EDM label `EDM~ced6a2a600000000'.

Well I tried using dd...

If I mount with nsrjb -l -n -S #, overwrite the tape, withdraw the tape from the library and then deposit the tape again... then the label will actually work. I had to withdraw the tape so that networker would forget about the EDM label.
What a pain
Anyone have any suggestions?

btw here is partial ouput from the nsrjb -Lvvv -S 10
nsrjb: Info: Operation `Verify label' in progress on device `/dev/nst0'
nsrjb: Info: Cannot read the current volume label `Tape label read for volume ? in pool ?, is not recognised by Networker: Cannot allocate memory'.
nsrjb: Info: nsrmmgd assumes the volume is unlabeled and will write a new label.

I'm assuming the "Cannot allocate memory" is a bogus error as it appeared to work
# nsrjb |grep 10:
10: 000084L2 Default 000084L2 2186026 no

What version of NW do you have?

I'm not sure what engineers did in respect to EDM labels except they did have it extra protected, but if there is no way to destroy them with EDM label on it that you will need to tar/dd/cpio over the label and then label them.

Before that, try following:
nsrjb -L -bPOOL -v -S SLOT

Difference here is that I'm listing some pool to wich I force tape to be relabeled. If that doesn't work then you will need to load those tapes, tar something small over them and relabel them then.

Yes, I'm afraid so.

# nsrjb|grep EDM|head -1
19: EDM~828c93b200000000* 000028L2 0
# nsrjb -L -bDefault -v -S 19
setting verbosity level to `1'
nsrjb: Info: Skipping slot 19. NetWorker will not overwrite EDM label `EDM~828c93b200000000'.

No such luck Also tried it with -N and -Y
I have hundreds of these tapes.
I guess I'll have to write a script to trash the header of each tape.