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16 XML-conversion;Updates
22 Refer to http://www.amanda.org/docs/faq.html for the current version of this
24 This file contains answers to some questions that are frequently asked in the
25 AMANDA mailing lists, specially by new users. Please take a look at this file
26 before posting, this can save us time that could be spent improving AMANDA and
28 New entries and modifications are welcome; send them to mailto://amanda-
29 users@amanda.org or mailto://amanda-hackers@amanda.org.
30 You may also want to take a look at the AMANDA FAQ-O-Matic http://
31 www.amanda.org/fom-serve/cache/1.html.
34 Why_does_AMANDA_fail_to_build_on_my_system?
36 Why_does_amdump_report_that_all_disks_failed?
38 Why_does_amcheck_say_"port_NNN_is_not_secure"?
40 Why_does_amcheck_claim_that_the_tape_is_"not_an_AMANDA_tape"?
42 Why_does_amcheck_report_"selfcheck_request_timed_out"?
44 Why_does_amandad.debug_contain_"error_receiving_message"?
46 Why_does_amcheck_say_"access_as_<username>_not_allowed..."?
48 Why_does_amcheck_report_"ip_address_#.#.#.#"_is_not_in_the_ip_list_list_for
51 Why_does_amcheck_say_"cannot_overwrite_active_tape"?
53 Why_does_amcheck_tell_me_"DUMP_program_not_available"?
55 Which_tape_changer_configuration_should_I_use_in_amanda.conf?
57 Should_I_use_software_or_hardware_compression?
59 How_can_I_configure_AMANDA_so_that_it_performs_full_backups_on_the_week-end
60 and_incrementals_on_weekdays?
62 What_if_my_tape_unit_uses_expensive_tapes,_and_I_don't_want_to_use_one_tape
63 per_day?_Can't_AMANDA_append_to_tapes?
65 How_can_I_configure_AMANDA_for_long-term_archiving?
67 Can_I_backup_separate_disks_of_the_same_host_in_different_configurations?
69 Can_AMANDA_span_large_filesystems_across_multiple_tapes?
71 What's_the_difference_between_option_"skip-full"_and_"strategy_nofull"?
73 Why_does_amdump_report_"results_missing"?
75 Why_does_amdump_report_"disk_offline"?
77 What_if_amdump_reports_"dumps_way_too_big,_must_skip_incremental_dumps"?
79 amdump_reported_"infofile_update_failed"._What_should_I_do?
81 Why_does_AMANDA_sometimes_promote_full_dumps?
83 Why_does_amrecover_report_"no_index_records"_or_"disk_not_found"?
85 Ok,_I'm_done_with_testing_AMANDA,_now_I_want_to_put_it_in_production._How_can
86 I_reset_its_databases_so_as_to_start_from_scratch?
88 The_man-page_of_dump_says_that_active_filesystems_may_be_backed_up
89 inconsistently._What_does_AMANDA_do_to_prevent_inconsistent_backups?
91 Which_version_of_GNU-tar_should_I_use?
93 What_does_"bumping"bumping_mean?
95 How_do_I_backup_a_Windows_server?
98 Why does AMANDA fail to build on my system?
99 One of the most common reasons for compile-time errors is stale information in
100 config.cache, after a build on a different platform using the same build tree.
101 In order to avoid this problem, make sure you don't ever reuse build trees
102 across platforms, or at least run make distclean before running configure on
104 Another common reason for failure, that causes link-time errors, is a problem
105 in libtool that causes it to search for symbols in already-installed amanda
106 libraries, instead of in the just-built ones. This problem is known to affect
107 SunOS 4.1.3 and FreeBSD. You can usually work around it by specifying a
108 different prefix when you configure the new version of AMANDA. However, it may
109 not work if the previous version of AMANDA was installed in /usr/local and gcc
110 searches this directory by default; in this case, you must either remove the
111 old libraries (which you don't want to do, right? :-) or call configure with
112 the flag --disable-libtool. In this case, AMANDA won't create shared
113 libraries, so binaries will be larger, but you may worry about that later.
114 You may also want to take a look at AMANDA_2.4.x_-_System-Specific
115 Installation_Notes, as well as to the AMANDA Patches Page (http://
116 www.amanda.org/patches/) for other known problems. If everything fails, you
117 should read the manual, but since we don't have one yet, just post a help
118 request to the amanda-users mailing list (mailto://amanda-users@amanda.org),
119 showing the last few lines of the failed build.
120 Why does amdump report that all disks failed?
121 Probably because the AMANDA clients are not properly configured. Before you
122 ever run amdump, make sure amcheck succeeds. When it does, so should amdump.
123 Make sure you run amcheck as the same user that is supposed to start amdump,
124 otherwise you may get incorrect results.
125 Why does amcheck say "port NNN is not secure"?
126 Because amcheck, as some other AMANDA programs, must be installed as setuid-
127 root. Run make install as "root", or chown all AMANDA setuid programs to
128 "root", then chown u+s them again, if chown drops the setuid bit.
129 Why does amcheck claim that the tape is "not an AMANDA tape"?
130 Because AMANDA requires you to label tapes before it uses them. Run amlabel in
131 order to label a tape.
132 If, even after labeling a tape, amcheck still complains about it, make sure
133 the regular expression specified in amanda.conf matches the label you have
134 specified, and check whether you have configured non-rewinding tape devices
135 for AMANDA to use. For example, use /dev/nrst0 instead of /dev/rst0, /dev/rmt/
136 0bn instead of /dev/rmt/0b, or some other system-dependent device name that
137 contains an "n", instead of one that does not. The "n" stands for non-
139 If you have labeled any tapes using the rewiding device configuration, you'll
140 have to label them again.
141 Why does amcheck report "selfcheck request timed out"?
142 This can occur under several different situations. First, make sure this
143 problem is repeatable; if AMANDA programs are NFS-auto-mounted, some clients
144 may fail to mount the AMANDA binaries in time.
145 If the error is repeatable, log into the client, and check whether the
146 directory /tmp/amanda exists, and a file named amandad.debug exists in there:
147 amandad will create this file whenever it starts. If this file does not exist,
148 amandad is not starting properly, or it lacks permission to create /tmp/
149 amanda/amandad.debug.
150 In the latter case, wipe out /tmp/amanda, and amandad should create it next
151 time it runs. In the former case, check your inetd configuration. Make sure
152 you have added the AMANDA services to /etc/services (or the NIS services map),
153 that /etc/inetd.conf was properly configured, and that you have signalled
154 inetd to reread this file (some systems may need rebooting). Check section 2.2
155 from in the Amanda_Installation_Notes for details. Check the inetd man-page
156 for possible differences between the standard format of /etc/inetd.conf and
157 the one in your system.
158 Pay special attention to typos in /etc/inetd.conf; error messages will
159 probably appear in /var/adm/messages or /var/log/messages if you have typed
160 the amandad program name incorrectly. Make sure the same user that you have
161 specified at configure-time (configure --with-user=<USERNAME>) is listed in /
162 etc/inetd.conf. Check whether this user has permission to run amandad, as well
163 as any shared libraries amandad depends upon, by running the specified amandad
164 command by hand, as the AMANDA user. It should just time-out after 30 seconds
165 waiting for a UDP packet. If you type anything, it will abort immediately,
166 because it can't read a UDP packet from the keyboard.
167 As soon as you have properly configured /etc/inetd.conf so as to run amandad,
168 you should no longer get the "selfcheck request timed out" message. A nice
169 tool to help make sure inetd is really listening on the amandad port is lsof,
170 available at ftp://vic.cc.purdue.edu/pub/tools/unix/lsof.
171 Why does amandad.debug contain "error receiving message"?
172 One possibility is that you have run amandad from the command line prompt and
173 typed anything instead of waiting for it to time-out: in this case, it will
174 try to read a UDP packet from the keyboard, and this was reported not to work
175 on most keyboards :-). However, if you have run amandad as any user other than
176 the one listed in /etc/inetd.conf, it may have created a /tmp/amanda directory
177 that the AMANDA user cannot write to, so you should wipe it out.
178 Another possibility is that the AMANDA service was not properly configured as
179 a UDP service; check /etc/services and /etc/inetd.conf.
180 Why does amcheck say "access as <username> not allowed..."?
181 There must be something wrong with .amandahosts configuration (or .rhosts, if
182 you have configured --without-amandahosts).
183 First, if the <username> is not what you expect (i.e., not what you have
184 specified in the --with-user flag, at configure time), check the inetd
185 configuration file: you must have specified the wrong username there.
186 Make sure you specify the names exactly as they appear in the error message
187 after the `@' sign in .amandahosts/.rhosts. You'll need a fully-qualified
188 domain name or not, depending on how your client resolves IP addresses to host
190 Why does amcheck report "ip address #.#.#.#" is not in the ip list list for
192 Check your DNS configuration tables. In order to avoid DNS-spoofing, AMANDA
193 double-checks hostname<->IP address mapping. If the IP address the request
194 comes from maps to a hostname, but this hostname does not map back to the
195 incoming IP address, the request is denied.
196 Why does amcheck say "cannot overwrite active tape"?
197 Because, if you configure AMANDA to use N tapes, by setting tapecycle to N in
198 amanda.conf, before AMANDA overwrites a tape, it must write to at least other
199 N-1 tapes. Of course, AMANDA will always refuse to overwrite a tape marked for
200 `noreuse' with amadmin. Furthermore, such tapes are not counted when AMANDA
201 computes `N-1' tapes.
202 If, for some reason, you want to tell AMANDA to overwrite a particular tape,
203 regardless of its position in the cycle, use amrmtape. This command will
204 remove this tape from the tapelist file, that is used to manage the tape
205 cycle, and will delete information about backups stored in that tape from the
207 Why does amcheck tell me "DUMP program not available"?
208 Because configure could not find dump when it was first run. This is a common
209 problem on Linux hosts, because most Linux distributions do not install dump
211 If you don't have a DUMP program installed, install it, remove config.cache,
212 run configure again and rebuild AMANDA. While configure is running, make sure
213 it can find the installed DUMP program. If it cannot, you may have to set the
214 environment variables DUMP and RESTORE by hand, before running configure.
215 If you can't or don't want to install DUMP, you may use GNU tar, but make sure
216 it as release 1.12 or newer; release 1.11.8 may work, but estimates will be
218 Which tape changer configuration should I use in amanda.conf?
219 If you only have one tape unit, you have two choices:
221 i. Don't use a tape changer at all, i.e., set runtapes to 1, set tapedev to
222 the non-rewinding device corresponding to the tape unit, and comment out
223 tpchanger, changerfile and changerdev
224 ii. Set up chg-manual, so that you can change tapes manually. If you select
225 chg-manual, you will not be able to start amdump as a cron job, and you
226 should always run amflush -f, because chg-manual will ask you to press
227 return in the terminal where you started the controlling program.
229 If you have several tape units, which you want to use to emulate a tape
230 changer, you want chg-multi. Even if you do own a real tape changer, that
231 operates based on ejecting a tape or such, chg-multi may be useful.
232 Actual tape changers usually require specialized changer programs, such as
233 mtx, chio or specific system calls. The availability of these programs is much
234 more dependent on the operating system you're running than on the particular
235 tape changer hardware you have.
236 mtx, for example, is available for several platforms. However, even if you
237 find it for your platform, beware that there exist several different programs
238 named mtx, that require different command line arguments, and print different
239 output, and AMANDA's chg-mtx does not support them all. You may have to edit
240 the script, which shouldn't be hard to do.
241 In section BUILT-IN TAPE CHANGERS of AMANDA_Tape_Changer_Support you will find
242 details about the tape changer interfacing programs provided with AMANDA, that
243 can interact with common tape changer programs and with tape changer-related
244 system calls provided by some operating system. If none of them matches your
245 needs, you may have to develop your own tape changer interface script.
246 Before posting a question to the AMANDA mailing lists, *please* search the
247 archives, and try to obtain as much information about driving your tape
248 changer hardware from the vendor of the changer hardware and of the operating
249 system, rather than from the AMANDA mailing lists. We usually don't have much
250 to say about tape changer units, and several questions about them remain
252 Anyway, if you decide to post a question, make sure you specify both the tape
253 changer hardware *and* the OS/platform that is going to interface with it.
255 Should I use software or hardware compression?
256 When you enable software compression, you drastically reduce the compression
257 that might be achieved by hardware. In fact, tape drives will usually use
258 *more* tape if you tell them to try to further compress already compressed
260 Thus, you must choose whether you're going to use software or hardware
261 compression; don't ever enable both unless you want to waste tape space.
262 Since AMANDA prefers to have complete information about tape sizes and
263 compression rates, it can do a better job if you use software compression.
264 However, if you can't afford the extra CPU usage, AMANDA can live with the
265 unpredictability of hardware compression, but you'll have to be very
266 conservative about the specified tape size, specially if there are filesystems
267 that contain mostly uncompressible data.
268 How can I configure AMANDA so that it performs full backups on the week-end
269 and incrementals on weekdays?
270 You can't. AMANDA doesn't work this way. You just have to tell AMANDA how many
271 tapes you have (tapecycle), and how often you want it to perform full backups
272 of each filesystem (dumpcycle). If you don't run it once a daily (including
273 Saturdays and Sundays :-), you'll also want to tell AMANDA how many times
274 you'll run it per dumpcycle (runspercycle). It will spread full backups along
275 the dumpcycle, so you won't have any full-only or incremental-only runs.
276 Please also refer to "the friday-tape-question" in Collection_of_the_top_ten
277 AMANDA_questions._And_answers..
278 What if my tape unit uses expensive tapes, and I don't want to use one tape
279 per day? Can't AMANDA append to tapes?
280 It can't, and this is good. Tape drives and OS drivers are (in)famous for
281 rewinding tapes at unexpected times, without telling the program that's
282 writing to them. If you have a month's worth of backups in that tape, you
283 really don't want them to be overwritten, so AMANDA has taken the safe
284 approach of requiring tapes to be written from the beginning on every run.
285 This can be wasteful, specially if you have a small amount of data to back up,
286 but expensive large-capacity tapes. One possible approach is to run amdump
287 with tapes only, say once a week, to perform full backups, and run it without
288 tape on the other days, so that it performs incremental backups and stores
289 them in the holding disk. Once or twice a week, you flush all backups in the
290 holding disk to a single tape.
291 If you don't trust your holding disk, and you'd rather have all your data on
292 tapes daily, you can create an alternate configuration, with two tapes, that
293 backs up the holding disk only, always as a full backup. You'd run this
294 configuration always after your regular backup, so you always have a complete
295 image of the holding disk on tape, just in case it fails.
296 How can I configure AMANDA for long-term archiving?
297 The best approach is to create a separate configuration for your archive
298 backups. It should use a separate set of tapes, and have all dumptypes
299 configured with `record no', so it doesn't interfere with regular backups.
300 Can I backup separate disks of the same host in different configurations?
301 Yes, but you have to be careful. AMANDA uses UDP to issue estimate and backup
302 requests and, although replies to backup requests are immediate (so that TCP
303 connections for the actual backup can be established), replies to estimate
304 requests are not and, while one request is being processed, any other request
305 is ignored. The effect is two-fold:
307 i. If another configuration requests for estimates, the request will be
308 ignored, and the requester will end up timing out;
309 ii. If another configuration has already finished the estimates, and is now
310 requesting for backups, the backup requests will time-out.
312 So, there are two easy ways out:
314 i. Ensure that the configurations never run concurrently, or
315 ii. set up two different installations of the AMANDA server, using different
316 services names to contact the clients, i.e., different port numbers. This
317 can be attained with the configure flag --with-testing=<service-suffix>i.
318 Yes, the flag name is not appropriate, but so what?
320 If you don't want to set up two installations of AMANDA (I agree, it's
321 overkill), but you still want to back up disks of the same host in separate
322 configurations, you can set up AMANDA so that one configuration only starts
323 after the first one has already finished its One possible way to work-around
324 this limitation is to start one configuration only after you know the
325 estimates for the first one have already finished (modifying the crontab
326 entries, according to history data). You'll also have to delay the starttime
327 (a dumptype option) of the disks in the first configuration, so that they
328 don't start backing up before the estimates of the second configuration
330 Can AMANDA span large filesystems across multiple tapes?
332 This is an open project, looking for developers. If you'd like to help, please
333 take a look at the AMANDA Ongoing Projects Page (http://www.amanda.org/
334 ongoing.php), where more up-to-date information is likely to be found about
336 Update September 2004: Refer to the archive of the amanda-hackers mailinglist
337 (http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?l=amanda-hackers). A patch by John Stange is
338 being discussed there, which allows splitting and spanning.
339 The current work-around is to use GNU tar to back up subdirectories of the
340 huge filesystem separately. But be aware of the problems listed in the
341 question about "results missing".
342 What's the difference between option "skip-full" and "strategy nofull"?
343 "strategy nofull" is supposed to handle the following situation: you run a
344 full dump off-line once a millenium :-), because that disk isn't supposed to
345 change at all and, if it does, changes are minimal. AMANDA will run only level
346 1 backups of that filesystem, to avoid the risk of overwriting a level 1
347 backup needed to do a restore. Remember, you run full dumps once a millenium,
348 and your tape cycle probably won't last that long :-)
349 "skip-full", OTOH, is supposed to let the user run full dumps off-line
350 regularly (i.e., as often as specified in the dumpcycle), while AMANDA takes
351 care of the incrementals. Currently, AMANDA will tell you when you're supposed
352 to run the level 0 backups but, if you fail to do so, AMANDA will not only
353 skip a full day's worth of valuable backups of the filesystem, on the day it
354 told you to the full backup manually, but it will also run a level 1 backup on
355 the next day, even if you have not performed the full backup yet. Worse yet:
356 it might perform a level 2 on the next day, just after you have run the level
357 0, so, if the disk should crash, you'd have to restore a level 0 then a level
358 2, but not the level 1! Not a real problem, but definitely strange, eh?
359 Why does amdump report "results missing"?
360 One of the possible reasons is that you have requested too many backups of the
361 host. In this case, the estimate request or the reply may not fit in a UDP
362 packet. This will cause AMANDA not to perform some of the backups. Fixing this
363 problem involves modifying the way estimate requests are issued, so that no
364 packet exceeds the maximum packet size, and issuing additional requests that
365 did not fit in a UDP packet after a reply for the previous set is obtained.
366 The probability of getting this problem has been considerably reduced since we
367 increased the maximum UDP packet size from 1Kb to 64Kb, but some operating
368 systems may not support such large packets.
369 One possible work-around is to try to shorten the pathnames of the directories
370 and the exclude file names, so that more requests fit in the UDP packet. You
371 may create short-named links in some directory closer to the root (/) so as to
372 reduce the length of names. I.e., instead of backing up /usr/home/foo and /
373 usr/home/bar, create the following links:
375 /.foo -> /usr/home/foo
376 /.bar -> /usr/home/bar
378 then list /.foo and /.bar in the disklist.
379 Another approach is to group sub-directories in backup sets, instead of
380 backing up them all separately. For example, create /usr/home/.bkp1 and move
381 `foo' and `bar' into it, then create links so that the original pathnames
382 remain functional. Then, list /usr/home/.bkp1 in the disklist. You may create
383 as many `.bkp<N>' directories as you need.
384 A simpler approach, that may work for you, is to backup only a subset of the
385 subdirectories of a filesystem separately. The others can be backed up
386 together with the root of the filesystem, using an exclude list that prevents
388 Why does amdump report "disk offline"?
389 Well, assuming the disk is not really off line :-), it may be a permission
390 problem, but then, amcheck would have reported it.
391 Another possible reason for this failure is a filesystem error, that causes
392 DUMP to crash before it estimates the backup size; a fsck may help.
393 Yet another possibility is that the filesystem is so large that the backup
394 program is incorrectly reporting the estimated size, for example, by printing
395 a negative value that AMANDA will not accept as a valid estimate. If you are
396 using dump, contact your vendor and request a patch for dump that fixes this
397 bug. If you are using GNU-tar, make sure it is release 1.12 or newer; 1.11.8
398 won't do! Even release 1.12 may require a patch to correctly report estimates
399 and dump sizes, as well as to handle sparse files correctly and quickly
400 instead of printing error messages like `Read error at byte 0, reading 512
401 bytes, in file ./var/log/lastlog: Bad file number' in sendsize.debug and being
402 very slow. Check the patches directory of the AMANDA distribution.
403 What if amdump reports "dumps way too big, must skip incremental dumps"?
404 It means AMANDA couldn't back up some disk because it wouldn't fit in the tape
405 (s) you have configured AMANDA to use. It considered performing some
406 incrementals instead of full dumps, so that all disks would fit, but this
407 wouldn't be enough, so the disk really had to be dropped in this run.
408 In general, you can just ignore this message if it happens only once in a
409 while. Low-priority disks are discarded first, so you'll hardly miss really
411 One real work-around is to configure AMANDA to use more tapes: increase
412 `runtapes' in amanda.conf. Even if you don't have a real tape changer, you can
413 act yourself as a changer (`chg-manual'; more details in the question about
414 tape changer configuration), or use `chg-multi' with a single tape unit, and
415 lie to AMANDA that it will have two tapes to use. If you have a holding disk
416 as large as a tape, and configure AMANDA (2.4.1b1 or newer) not to reserve any
417 space for degraded dumps, dumps that would be stored in the second tape of a
418 run will be performed to the holding disk, so you can flush them to tape in
420 amdump reported "infofile update failed". What should I do?
421 Make sure all directories and files are readable and writable by the AMANDA
422 user, within the directory you specified as `infofile' in amanda.conf. From
423 then on, only run amanda server commands ( amadmin, amdump, amflush,
424 amcleanup) as the AMANDA user, not as root.
425 Why does AMANDA sometimes promote full dumps?
426 To spread the full dumps along the dumpcycle, so that daily runs take roughly
427 the same amount of tape and time. As soon as you start using AMANDA, it will
428 run full dumps of all filesystems. Then, on the following runs, it will
429 promote some backups, so as to adjust the balance. After one or two
430 dumpcycles, it should stop promoting dumps. You can see how well it is doing
431 with amadmin <conf> balance. If you find the results surprising, you may want
432 to adjust dumpcycle or runspercycle.
433 Why does amrecover report "no index records" or "disk not found"?
434 The most common cause of this problem is not having enabled index generation
435 in amanda.conf. The `index yes' option must be present in every dumptype for
436 whose disks indexes should be generated.
437 Another possibility is that amrecover is not selecting the configuration name
438 that contains the backups for the selected disk. You may specify a
439 configuration name with the `-C' switch, when you invoke amrecover. The
440 default configuration name can only be specified at AMANDA configure time
441 (configure --with-config=<name>).
442 Indexes are currently generated at backup-time only, so, if a backup was
443 performed without creating an index, you won't be able to use amrecover to
444 restore it, you'll have to use amrestore.
445 Ok, I'm done with testing AMANDA, now I want to put it in production. How can
446 I reset its databases so as to start from scratch?
447 First, remove the `curinfo' database. By default, it is a directory, but, if
448 you have selected any other database format (don't, they're deprecated), they
449 may be files with extensions such as .dir and .pag.
450 Then, remove any log files from the log directory: log.<TIMESTAMP>.<count> and
451 amdump.<count>. Finally, remove the tapelist file, stored in the directory
452 that contains amanda.conf, unless amanda.conf specifies otherwise. Depending
453 on the tape changer you have selected, you may also want to reset its state
455 The man-page of dump says that active filesystems may be backed up
456 inconsistently. What does AMANDA do to prevent inconsistent backups?
457 Nothing. When you back up an active filesystem, there are two possibilities:
458 dump may print strange error messages about invalid blocks, then fail; in this
459 case, AMANDA will retry the backup on the next run.
460 Files that are modified while dump runs may be backed up inconsistently. But
461 then, they will be included in the next incremental backup, which should
463 Large, critical files such as databases should be locked somehow, to avoid
464 inconsistent backups, but there's no direct support for that in AMANDA. The
465 best bet is to configure AMANDA to use a wrapper to dump, that locks and
466 unlocks the database when appropriate.
467 Which version of GNU-tar should I use?
468 (This answer was slightly adapted from a posting by Paul Bijnens
469 <paul.bijnens@xplanation.com>, Mon, 11 Apr 2005):
472 However it still sets return code 2 for some infrequent conditions even with
473 --ignore-failed-read option. This results in AMANDA thinking the total
474 archive is bad, and drops the complete archive. Those conditions are very
475 rare on a quiet filesystem.
476 * 1.13.25 is good: no problems found (yet).
477 * 1.13.9x is not good.
478 It has changed the format of "tar -t", resulting in amrecover not able to
480 * 1.14.x is not good.
481 It writes good archives, but when restoring, it has trouble with sparse
482 files; the sparse file itself, and *all* files after it cannot be read
483 anymore. But you can read the archive with a good tar version (i.e. the tar
484 images produced are fine).
485 * 1.15.1 is good: no problems found (yet).
486 Paul Bijnens: "I'm using this version on most of my clients since january
487 this year (2005), and have already done successful restore too."
489 What does "bumping" mean?
490 The term "bumping" is used to describe the change from one backup-level to the
491 next higher level. If AMANDA changes from Level 0 to Level 1 for a specific
493 The basic goal of "bumping" is to save precious space on the backup media as
494 higher level incremental backups are smaller in size than lower level
496 The disadvantage of increasing backup levels is the fact that restoring from
497 higher level incremental backups needs more tapes. This increases the amount
498 of work time that are needed to fully restore a DLE as well as the possibility
499 of tape-errors and similar problems during the process of restore. So in
500 general it is recommended to keep the levels as low as possible with the given
502 There are various amanda.conf parameters to control and fine-tune AMANDA's
503 behavior when it comes to "bumping":
504 Please refer to the amanda-manpage and the example amanda.conf for details on
505 the parameters bumppercent, bumpsize, bumpdays and bumpmult.
506 How do I backup a Windows server?
507 AMANDA is able to use smbclient to dump SMB/CIFS-shares. Refer to the Backup
508 PC_hosts_using_Samba for details.
510 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
513 Chapter 16. Using AMANDA Home Chapter 18. Collection of the top ten AMANDA
514 questions. And answers.