At my new job, they are short on disk space and they had been backing up the database to tape using Oracle Secure Backup. I have advised that they acquire more hard disk space so backups can be done directly to disk rather tape. Long story short, that has not happened and I have run into this problem where rman can't make any backups because OSB reports the backups on 25 tapes as active. My retention policy is 14 days, I do level 0 on sunday, level 1 on tuesday and friday, level 1 cumulative on friday and on saturday after a backup validate. Each tape is 1.6TB and the database is 1.2TB, based on that I think no more than 5 tapes should be active for any 2 weeks. I am not an expert with Oracle Secure Backup and I am not sure what exactly, I am doing wrong that OSB marks the backups as active. Obtool is unable to auto swap tapes because it says the tape has active pieces. I have tried loading all 25 tapes and same error. I have crosschecked all backups in rman and deleted all obsolete and all expired and still same problem. How do I get OSB to follow the retention policy?
admin/3363.1: End of tape has been reached. Please wait while I rewind and unload the tape.
admin/3363.1: The Volume ID of the next tape to be written is RMAN-DEFAULT-000813.
admin/3363.1: The tape has been unloaded.
admin/3363.1:
admin/3363.1: Error: couldn't perform auto-swap - can't find usable volume in library (OB device mgr)
admin/3363.1: Enter a command from the following list:
admin/3363.1: load <n> .. load the tape from element <n> into the drive
admin/3363.1: unload <n> .. unload the tape from the drive into element <n>
admin/3363.1: help .. display other commands to modify drive's database
admin/3363.1: go .. to use the tape you selected
admin/3363.1: quit .. to give up and abort this backup or restore
admin/3363.1: :
admin/3363.1: :
admin/3363.1: : load 60
admin/3363.1: : go
admin/3363.1: Error: loaded volume is not usable - volume unusable (it has active pieces) (OB device mgr)
admin/3363.1: Unloading the volume
admin/3363.1: Error: couldn't perform auto-swap - can't find usable volume in library (OB device mgr)
admin/3363.1: Enter a command from the following list:
admin/3363.1: load <n> .. load the tape from element <n> into the drive
admin/3363.1: unload <n> .. unload the tape from the drive into element <n>
admin/3363.1: help .. display other commands to modify drive's database
admin/3363.1: go .. to use the tape you selected
admin/3363.1: quit .. to give up and abort this backup or restore
admin/3363.1: : load 61
admin/3363.1: : go
admin/3363.1: Error: loaded volume is not usable - volume unusable (it has active pieces) (OB device mgr)
admin/3363.1: Unloading the volume
admin/3363.1: Error: couldn't perform auto-swap - can't find usable volume in library (OB device mgr)
admin/3363.1: Enter a command from the following list:
admin/3363.1: load <n> .. load the tape from element <n> into the drive
admin/3363.1: unload <n> .. unload the tape from the drive into element <n>
admin/3363.1: help .. display other commands to modify drive's database
admin/3363.1: go .. to use the tape you selected
admin/3363.1: quit .. to give up and abort this backup or restore
admin/3363.1: : load 1
admin/3363.1: : go