I noticed that in bconsole when doing a list volumes there are some tapes which have a volstatus=Recycle. However there is another column called Recycle and they can have a 1 or 0 status.If a volume has a volstatus=Recycle, what is the difference if it has a 1 or 0 for its recycle status?
What is the recycle bit in Bacula for?
backup;bacula
The Recycle volume status is a particular state in the lifecycle of a tape. The Recycle Status section of the manual has the details; basically a tape starts off empty, then its status becomes Append once data has been written to it, Used once it's full or no longer writeable, Purged once its contents are obsolete (according to the Bacula setup), and Recycle once it's been selected for recycling. The cycle then starts over: the recycled tape's status becomes Append once (new) data has been written to it, etc.The Recycle flag is a configuration option for each tape; it determines whether the tape can be recycled or not. A recyclable tape will follow the lifecycle described above; a non-recyclable tape will end its life in Purged status (i.e. its contents are obsolete, but preserved forever).So to actually answer your question, there's no difference when the volume has a Recycled status; the Recycle flag only determines what will happen to it when it's purged again.