-backup of a live filesystem under all circumstances. The tar utility is
-'essential' in Debian and so will always be around, is not tied to any specific
-filesystem type, and there are entries in the default amanda.conf file
-defining dump types using tar.
+backup of a live filesystem under all circumstances, and the maintainer of
+these packages uses dump with good results.
+
+The tar utility is 'essential' in Debian and so will always be around, is not
+tied to any specific filesystem type, and there are entries in the default
+amanda.conf file defining dump types using tar. This may therefore be a good
+option to consider.
+
+Note that if you are using tar with amanda, and getting errors about missing
+exclude files (particularly on upgrades from older versions), then you may
+need to update your dumptypes definition to explicitly indicate that the
+exclude file is optional, as shown in this example:
+
+ define dumptype userdata-lowvalue {
+ program "GNUTAR"
+ comment "Low value user data dumped with tar"
+ options compress-fast, index
+ exclude list optional ".amandaexclude"
+ priority low
+ }
+
+- - - - -
+
+If you see backups failing with an error like:
+
+ driver: FATAL flush line 1: syntax error (skipping != FLUSH)
+
+The problem may be that some versions of Amanda around 2.5.2 are not
+happy if there are unexpected contents in the holdingdisk you have
+defined on the server. This can occur, for example, if you are using
+the mount point of a separate filesystem that contains a lost+found
+directory. The quick fix is to create a subdirectory in that partition
+for Amanda to use that will have no such unexpected contents. For more
+info on this issue see:
+
+ http://forums.zmanda.com/archive/index.php/t-591.html