X-Git-Url: https://git.gag.com/?a=blobdiff_plain;f=docs%2Ffaq.txt;h=e69de29bb2d1d6434b8b29ae775ad8c2e48c5391;hb=d92f70685083588e2a7ce6bc312a735f6937b5a6;hp=9e4da7b5b1032960cd5b9c39792920e370c23159;hpb=6c1f39091444e58c33362f0cc086375d9d273e77;p=debian%2Famanda diff --git a/docs/faq.txt b/docs/faq.txt index 9e4da7b..e69de29 100644 --- a/docs/faq.txt +++ b/docs/faq.txt @@ -1,583 +0,0 @@ - - Chapter 19. Amanda FAQ -Prev Part IV. Various Information Next - -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- - -Chapter 19. Amanda FAQ - - -Amanda Core Team - -AMANDA Core Team - -Stefan G. Weichinger - -XML-conversion;Updates -AMANDA Core Team - -This file contains answers to some questions that are frequently asked in the -Amanda mailing lists, specially by new users. Please take a look at this file -before posting, this can save us time that could be spent improving Amanda and -its documentation. -New entries and modifications are welcome; send them to mailto://amanda- -users@amanda.org or mailto://amanda-hackers@amanda.org. -You may also want to take a look at the Amanda FAQ-O-Matic http:// -www.amanda.org/fom-serve/cache/1.html. - - - Why_does_Amanda_fail_to_build_on_my_system? - - Why_does_amdump_report_that_all_disks_failed? - - Why_does_amcheck_say_"port_NNN_is_not_secure"? - - Why_does_amcheck_claim_that_the_tape_is_"not_an_Amanda_tape"? - - Why_does_amcheck_report_"selfcheck_request_timed_out"? - - Why_does_amandad.debug_contain_"error_receiving_message"? - - Why_does_amcheck_say_"access_as__not_allowed..."? - - Why_does_amcheck_report_"ip_address_#.#.#.#"_is_not_in_the_ip_list_list_for - '? - - Why_does_amcheck_say_"cannot_overwrite_active_tape"? - - Why_does_amcheck_tell_me_"DUMP_program_not_available"? - - Which_tape_changer_configuration_should_I_use_in_amanda.conf? - - Where_do_I_get_my_tapetype-definition_from?_Do_I_have_to_run_amtapetype? - - Should_I_use_software_or_hardware_compression? - - How_can_I_configure_Amanda_so_that_it_performs_full_backups_on_the_week-end - and_incrementals_on_weekdays? - - What_if_my_tape_unit_uses_expensive_tapes,_and_I_don't_want_to_use_one_tape - per_day?_Can't_Amanda_append_to_tapes? - - How_can_I_configure_Amanda_for_long-term_archiving? - - Can_I_backup_separate_disks_of_the_same_host_in_different_configurations? - - Can_Amanda_span_large_filesystems_across_multiple_tapes? - - What's_the_difference_between_option_"skip-full"_and_"strategy_nofull"? - - Why_does_amdump_report_"results_missing"? - - Why_does_amdump_report_"disk_offline"? - - What_if_amdump_reports_"dumps_way_too_big,_must_skip_incremental_dumps"? - - amdump_reported_"infofile_update_failed"._What_should_I_do? - - Why_does_Amanda_sometimes_promote_full_dumps? - - Why_does_amrecover_report_"no_index_records"_or_"disk_not_found"? - - Ok,_I'm_done_with_testing_Amanda,_now_I_want_to_put_it_in_production._How_can - I_reset_its_databases_so_as_to_start_from_scratch? - - The_man-page_of_dump_says_that_active_filesystems_may_be_backed_up - inconsistently._What_does_Amanda_do_to_prevent_inconsistent_backups? - - Which_version_of_GNU-tar_should_I_use? - - What_does_"bumping"_mean? - - How_do_I_backup_a_Windows_server? - - How_do_I_tell_my_iptables-based_firewall_to_allow_Amanda_through? - - How_do_I_get_rid_of_pressing_"q"_to_get_rid_of_a_pager_prompt_when_using - amrecover? - - Is_there_a_way_to_tell_the_pager_that_my_terminal_has_"y"_lines? - - - Why does Amanda fail to build on my system? - One of the most common reasons for compile-time errors is stale information in - config.cache, after a build on a different platform using the same build tree. - In order to avoid this problem, make sure you don't ever reuse build trees - across platforms, or at least run make distclean before running configure on - another platform. - Another common reason for failure, that causes link-time errors, is a problem - in libtool that causes it to search for symbols in already-installed amanda - libraries, instead of in the just-built ones. This problem is known to affect - SunOS 4.1.3 and FreeBSD. You can usually work around it by specifying a - different prefix when you configure the new version of Amanda. However, it may - not work if the previous version of Amanda was installed in /usr/local and gcc - searches this directory by default; in this case, you must either remove the - old libraries (which you don't want to do, right? :-) or call configure with - the flag --disable-libtool. In this case, Amanda won't create shared - libraries, so binaries will be larger, but you may worry about that later. - You may also want to take a look at Amanda_2.5.0_-_System-Specific - Installation_Notes, as well as to the Amanda Patches Page (http:// - www.amanda.org/patches/) for other known problems. If everything fails, you - should read the manual, but since we don't have one yet, just post a help - request to the amanda-users mailing list (mailto://amanda-users@amanda.org), - showing the last few lines of the failed build. - Why does amdump report that all disks failed? - Probably because the Amanda clients are not properly configured. Before you - ever run amdump, make sure amcheck succeeds. When it does, so should amdump. - Make sure you run amcheck as the same user that is supposed to start amdump, - otherwise you may get incorrect results. - Why does amcheck say "port NNN is not secure"? - Because amcheck, as some other Amanda programs, must be installed as setuid- - root. Run make install as "root", or chown all Amanda setuid programs to - "root", then chown u+s them again, if chown drops the setuid bit. - Why does amcheck claim that the tape is "not an Amanda tape"? - Because Amanda requires you to label tapes before it uses them. Run amlabel in - order to label a tape. - If, even after labeling a tape, amcheck still complains about it, make sure - the regular expression specified in amanda.conf matches the label you have - specified, and check whether you have configured non-rewinding tape devices - for Amanda to use. For example, use /dev/nrst0 instead of /dev/rst0, /dev/rmt/ - 0bn instead of /dev/rmt/0b, or some other system-dependent device name that - contains an "n", instead of one that does not. The "n" stands for non- - rewinding. - If you have labeled any tapes using the rewiding device configuration, you'll - have to label them again. - Why does amcheck report "selfcheck request timed out"? - This can occur under several different situations. First, make sure this - problem is repeatable; if Amanda programs are NFS-auto-mounted, some clients - may fail to mount the Amanda binaries in time. - If the error is repeatable, log into the client, and check whether the - directory /tmp/amanda exists, and a file named amandad.debug exists in there: - amandad will create this file whenever it starts. If this file does not exist, - amandad is not starting properly, or it lacks permission to create /tmp/ - amanda/amandad.debug. - In the latter case, wipe out /tmp/amanda, and amandad should create it next - time it runs. In the former case, check your inetd configuration. Make sure - you have added the Amanda services to /etc/services (or the NIS services map), - that /etc/inetd.conf was properly configured, and that you have signalled - inetd to reread this file (some systems may need rebooting). Check section 2.2 - from in the Amanda_Installation_Notes for details. Check the inetd man-page - for possible differences between the standard format of /etc/inetd.conf and - the one in your system. - Pay special attention to typos in /etc/inetd.conf; error messages will - probably appear in /var/adm/messages or /var/log/messages if you have typed - the amandad program name incorrectly. Make sure the same user that you have - specified at configure-time (configure --with-user=) is listed in / - etc/inetd.conf. Check whether this user has permission to run amandad, as well - as any shared libraries amandad depends upon, by running the specified amandad - command by hand, as the Amanda user. It should just time-out after 30 seconds - waiting for a UDP packet. If you type anything, it will abort immediately, - because it can't read a UDP packet from the keyboard. - As soon as you have properly configured /etc/inetd.conf so as to run amandad, - you should no longer get the "selfcheck request timed out" message. A nice - tool to help make sure inetd is really listening on the amandad port is lsof, - available at ftp://vic.cc.purdue.edu/pub/tools/unix/lsof. - Why does amandad.debug contain "error receiving message"? - One possibility is that you have run amandad from the command line prompt and - typed anything instead of waiting for it to time-out: in this case, it will - try to read a UDP packet from the keyboard, and this was reported not to work - on most keyboards :-). However, if you have run amandad as any user other than - the one listed in /etc/inetd.conf, it may have created a /tmp/amanda directory - that the Amanda user cannot write to, so you should wipe it out. - Another possibility is that the Amanda service was not properly configured as - a UDP service; check /etc/services and /etc/inetd.conf. - Why does amcheck say "access as not allowed..."? - There must be something wrong with .amandahosts configuration (or .rhosts, if - you have configured --without-amandahosts). - First, if the is not what you expect (i.e., not what you have - specified in the --with-user flag, at configure time), check the inetd - configuration file: you must have specified the wrong username there. - Make sure you specify the names exactly as they appear in the error message - after the `@' sign in .amandahosts/.rhosts. You'll need a fully-qualified - domain name or not, depending on how your client resolves IP addresses to host - names. - Why does amcheck report "ip address #.#.#.#" is not in the ip list list for - '? - Check your DNS configuration tables. In order to avoid DNS-spoofing, Amanda - double-checks hostname<->IP address mapping. If the IP address the request - comes from maps to a hostname, but this hostname does not map back to the - incoming IP address, the request is denied. - Why does amcheck say "cannot overwrite active tape"? - Because, if you configure Amanda to use N tapes, by setting tapecycle to N in - amanda.conf, before Amanda overwrites a tape, it must write to at least other - N-1 tapes. Of course, Amanda will always refuse to overwrite a tape marked for - `noreuse' with amadmin. Furthermore, such tapes are not counted when Amanda - computes `N-1' tapes. - If, for some reason, you want to tell Amanda to overwrite a particular tape, - regardless of its position in the cycle, use amrmtape. This command will - remove this tape from the tapelist file, that is used to manage the tape - cycle, and will delete information about backups stored in that tape from the - Amanda database. - Why does amcheck tell me "DUMP program not available"? - Because configure could not find dump when it was first run. This is a common - problem on Linux hosts, because most Linux distributions do not install dump - by default. - If you don't have a DUMP program installed, install it, remove config.cache, - run configure again and rebuild Amanda. While configure is running, make sure - it can find the installed DUMP program. If it cannot, you may have to set the - environment variables DUMP and RESTORE by hand, before running configure. - If you can't or don't want to install DUMP, you may use GNU tar, but make sure - it as release 1.12 or newer; release 1.11.8 may work, but estimates will be - slow as hell. - Which tape changer configuration should I use in amanda.conf? - If you only have one tape unit, you have two choices: - - i. Don't use a tape changer at all, i.e., set runtapes to 1, set tapedev to - the non-rewinding device corresponding to the tape unit, and comment out - tpchanger, changerfile and changerdev - ii. Set up chg-manual, so that you can change tapes manually. If you select - chg-manual, you will not be able to start amdump as a cron job, and you - should always run amflush -f, because chg-manual will ask you to press - return in the terminal where you started the controlling program. - - If you have several tape units, which you want to use to emulate a tape - changer, you want chg-multi. Even if you do own a real tape changer, that - operates based on ejecting a tape or such, chg-multi may be useful. - Actual tape changers usually require specialized changer programs, such as - mtx, chio or specific system calls. The availability of these programs is much - more dependent on the operating system you're running than on the particular - tape changer hardware you have. - mtx, for example, is available for several platforms. However, even if you - find it for your platform, beware that there exist several different programs - named mtx, that require different command line arguments, and print different - output, and Amanda's chg-mtx does not support them all. You may have to edit - the script, which shouldn't be hard to do. - In section BUILT-IN TAPE CHANGERS of Amanda_Tape_Changer_Support you will find - details about the tape changer interfacing programs provided with Amanda, that - can interact with common tape changer programs and with tape changer-related - system calls provided by some operating system. If none of them matches your - needs, you may have to develop your own tape changer interface script. - Before posting a question to the Amanda mailing lists, *please* search the - archives, and try to obtain as much information about driving your tape - changer hardware from the vendor of the changer hardware and of the operating - system, rather than from the Amanda mailing lists. We usually don't have much - to say about tape changer units, and several questions about them remain - unanswered. :-( - Anyway, if you decide to post a question, make sure you specify both the tape - changer hardware *and* the OS/platform that is going to interface with it. - Good luck! :-) - Where do I get my tapetype-definition from? Do I have to run amtapetype? - It is not mandatory to run amtapetype at installation-time. It is very likely - that your tapedrive or -changer is one of the devices that are already covered - by one of the existing tapetype-definitions. - You may find tapetype-definitions in the example amanda.conf, in the - mailinglist-archives of the amanda-users-mailinglist at http:// - marc.theaimsgroup.com/?l=amanda-users or in the Amanda-FAQ-O-Matic at http:// - www.amanda.org/fom-serve/cache/1.html. - Reasons to run amtapetype for your device: - - * You want to generate your own tapetype-definition because you can't find any - suitable tapetype-definition for your device. - * You want to determine the performance of your device. - * You want to determine if your device has hardware-compression enabled. - - If you decide to run amtapetype, please refer to the chapter Tapetypes and the - manpage amtapetype(8). - Should I use software or hardware compression? - When you enable software compression, you drastically reduce the compression - that might be achieved by hardware. In fact, tape drives will usually use - *more* tape if you tell them to try to further compress already compressed - data. - Thus, you must choose whether you're going to use software or hardware - compression; don't ever enable both unless you want to waste tape space. - Since Amanda prefers to have complete information about tape sizes and - compression rates, it can do a better job if you use software compression. - However, if you can't afford the extra CPU usage, Amanda can live with the - unpredictability of hardware compression, but you'll have to be very - conservative about the specified tape size, specially if there are filesystems - that contain mostly uncompressible data. - You might want to run amtapetype to determine if you have hardware-compression - enabled for your tape-drive. - How can I configure Amanda so that it performs full backups on the week-end - and incrementals on weekdays? - You can't. Amanda doesn't work this way. You just have to tell Amanda how many - tapes you have (tapecycle), and how often you want it to perform full backups - of each filesystem (dumpcycle). If you don't run it once a daily (including - Saturdays and Sundays :-), you'll also want to tell Amanda how many times - you'll run it per dumpcycle (runspercycle). It will spread full backups along - the dumpcycle, so you won't have any full-only or incremental-only runs. - Please also refer to "the friday-tape-question" in Collection_of_the_top_ten - Amanda_questions._And_answers.. - What if my tape unit uses expensive tapes, and I don't want to use one tape - per day? Can't Amanda append to tapes? - It can't, and this is good. Tape drives and OS drivers are (in)famous for - rewinding tapes at unexpected times, without telling the program that's - writing to them. If you have a month's worth of backups in that tape, you - really don't want them to be overwritten, so Amanda has taken the safe - approach of requiring tapes to be written from the beginning on every run. - This can be wasteful, specially if you have a small amount of data to back up, - but expensive large-capacity tapes. One possible approach is to run amdump - with tapes only, say once a week, to perform full backups, and run it without - tape on the other days, so that it performs incremental backups and stores - them in the holding disk. Once or twice a week, you flush all backups in the - holding disk to a single tape. - If you don't trust your holding disk, and you'd rather have all your data on - tapes daily, you can create an alternate configuration, with two tapes, that - backs up the holding disk only, always as a full backup. You'd run this - configuration always after your regular backup, so you always have a complete - image of the holding disk on tape, just in case it fails. - How can I configure Amanda for long-term archiving? - The best approach is to create a separate configuration for your archive - backups. It should use a separate set of tapes, and have all dumptypes - configured with `record no', so it doesn't interfere with regular backups. - Can I backup separate disks of the same host in different configurations? - Yes, but you have to be careful. Amanda uses UDP to issue estimate and backup - requests and, although replies to backup requests are immediate (so that TCP - connections for the actual backup can be established), replies to estimate - requests are not and, while one request is being processed, any other request - is ignored. The effect is two-fold: - - i. If another configuration requests for estimates, the request will be - ignored, and the requester will end up timing out; - ii. If another configuration has already finished the estimates, and is now - requesting for backups, the backup requests will time-out. - - So, there are two easy ways out: - - i. Ensure that the configurations never run concurrently, or - ii. set up two different installations of the Amanda server, using different - services names to contact the clients, i.e., different port numbers. This - can be attained with the configure flag --with-testing=. - Yes, the flag name is not appropriate, but so what? - - If you don't want to set up two installations of Amanda (I agree, it's - overkill), but you still want to back up disks of the same host in separate - configurations, you can set up Amanda so that one configuration only starts - after the first one has already finished its One possible way to work-around - this limitation is to start one configuration only after you know the - estimates for the first one have already finished (modifying the crontab - entries, according to history data). You'll also have to delay the starttime - (a dumptype option) of the disks in the first configuration, so that they - don't start backing up before the estimates of the second configuration - finish. - Can Amanda span large filesystems across multiple tapes? - Not yet :-( - This is an open project, looking for developers. If you'd like to help, please - take a look at the Amanda Ongoing Projects Page (http://www.amanda.org/ - ongoing.php), where more up-to-date information is likely to be found about - this project. - Update September 2004: Refer to the archive of the amanda-hackers mailinglist - (http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?l=amanda-hackers). A patch by John Stange is - being discussed there, which allows splitting and spanning. - The current work-around is to use GNU tar to back up subdirectories of the - huge filesystem separately. But be aware of the problems listed in the - question about "results missing". - What's the difference between option "skip-full" and "strategy nofull"? - "strategy nofull" is supposed to handle the following situation: you run a - full dump off-line once a millenium :-), because that disk isn't supposed to - change at all and, if it does, changes are minimal. Amanda will run only level - 1 backups of that filesystem, to avoid the risk of overwriting a level 1 - backup needed to do a restore. Remember, you run full dumps once a millenium, - and your tape cycle probably won't last that long :-) - "skip-full", OTOH, is supposed to let the user run full dumps off-line - regularly (i.e., as often as specified in the dumpcycle), while Amanda takes - care of the incrementals. Currently, Amanda will tell you when you're supposed - to run the level 0 backups but, if you fail to do so, Amanda will not only - skip a full day's worth of valuable backups of the filesystem, on the day it - told you to the full backup manually, but it will also run a level 1 backup on - the next day, even if you have not performed the full backup yet. Worse yet: - it might perform a level 2 on the next day, just after you have run the level - 0, so, if the disk should crash, you'd have to restore a level 0 then a level - 2, but not the level 1! Not a real problem, but definitely strange, eh? - Why does amdump report "results missing"? - One of the possible reasons is that you have requested too many backups of the - host. In this case, the estimate request or the reply may not fit in a UDP - packet. This will cause Amanda not to perform some of the backups. Fixing this - problem involves modifying the way estimate requests are issued, so that no - packet exceeds the maximum packet size, and issuing additional requests that - did not fit in a UDP packet after a reply for the previous set is obtained. - The probability of getting this problem has been considerably reduced since we - increased the maximum UDP packet size from 1Kb to 64Kb, but some operating - systems may not support such large packets. - One possible work-around is to try to shorten the pathnames of the directories - and the exclude file names, so that more requests fit in the UDP packet. You - may create short-named links in some directory closer to the root (/) so as to - reduce the length of names. I.e., instead of backing up /usr/home/foo and / - usr/home/bar, create the following links: - - /.foo -> /usr/home/foo - /.bar -> /usr/home/bar - - then list /.foo and /.bar in the disklist. - Another approach is to group sub-directories in backup sets, instead of - backing up them all separately. For example, create /usr/home/.bkp1 and move - `foo' and `bar' into it, then create links so that the original pathnames - remain functional. Then, list /usr/home/.bkp1 in the disklist. You may create - as many `.bkp' directories as you need. - A simpler approach, that may work for you, is to backup only a subset of the - subdirectories of a filesystem separately. The others can be backed up - together with the root of the filesystem, using an exclude list that prevents - duplicate backups. - Why does amdump report "disk offline"? - Well, assuming the disk is not really off line :-), it may be a permission - problem, but then, amcheck would have reported it. - Another possible reason for this failure is a filesystem error, that causes - DUMP to crash before it estimates the backup size; a fsck may help. - Yet another possibility is that the filesystem is so large that the backup - program is incorrectly reporting the estimated size, for example, by printing - a negative value that Amanda will not accept as a valid estimate. If you are - using dump, contact your vendor and request a patch for dump that fixes this - bug. If you are using GNU-tar, make sure it is release 1.12 or newer; 1.11.8 - won't do! Even release 1.12 may require a patch to correctly report estimates - and dump sizes, as well as to handle sparse files correctly and quickly - instead of printing error messages like `Read error at byte 0, reading 512 - bytes, in file ./var/log/lastlog: Bad file number' in sendsize.debug and being - very slow. Check the patches directory of the Amanda distribution. - What if amdump reports "dumps way too big, must skip incremental dumps"? - It means Amanda couldn't back up some disk because it wouldn't fit in the tape - (s) you have configured Amanda to use. It considered performing some - incrementals instead of full dumps, so that all disks would fit, but this - wouldn't be enough, so the disk really had to be dropped in this run. - In general, you can just ignore this message if it happens only once in a - while. Low-priority disks are discarded first, so you'll hardly miss really - important data. - One real work-around is to configure Amanda to use more tapes: increase - `runtapes' in amanda.conf. Even if you don't have a real tape changer, you can - act yourself as a changer (`chg-manual'; more details in the question about - tape changer configuration), or use `chg-multi' with a single tape unit, and - lie to Amanda that it will have two tapes to use. If you have a holding disk - as large as a tape, and configure Amanda (2.4.1b1 or newer) not to reserve any - space for degraded dumps, dumps that would be stored in the second tape of a - run will be performed to the holding disk, so you can flush them to tape in - the morning. - amdump reported "infofile update failed". What should I do? - Make sure all directories and files are readable and writable by the Amanda - user, within the directory you specified as `infofile' in amanda.conf. From - then on, only run amanda server commands ( amadmin, amdump, amflush, - amcleanup) as the Amanda user, not as root. - Why does Amanda sometimes promote full dumps? - To spread the full dumps along the dumpcycle, so that daily runs take roughly - the same amount of tape and time. As soon as you start using Amanda, it will - run full dumps of all filesystems. Then, on the following runs, it will - promote some backups, so as to adjust the balance. After one or two - dumpcycles, it should stop promoting dumps. You can see how well it is doing - with amadmin balance. If you find the results surprising, you may want - to adjust dumpcycle or runspercycle. - Why does amrecover report "no index records" or "disk not found"? - The most common cause of this problem is not having enabled index generation - in amanda.conf. The `index yes' option must be present in every dumptype for - whose disks indexes should be generated. - Another possibility is that amrecover is not selecting the configuration name - that contains the backups for the selected disk. You may specify a - configuration name with the `-C' switch, when you invoke amrecover. The - default configuration name can only be specified at Amanda configure time - (configure --with-config=). - Indexes are currently generated at backup-time only, so, if a backup was - performed without creating an index, you won't be able to use amrecover to - restore it, you'll have to use amrestore. - Ok, I'm done with testing Amanda, now I want to put it in production. How can - I reset its databases so as to start from scratch? - First, remove the `curinfo' database. By default, it is a directory, but, if - you have selected any other database format (don't, they're deprecated), they - may be files with extensions such as .dir and .pag. - Then, remove any log files from the log directory: log.. and - amdump.. Finally, remove the tapelist file, stored in the directory - that contains amanda.conf, unless amanda.conf specifies otherwise. Depending - on the tape changer you have selected, you may also want to reset its state - file. - The man-page of dump says that active filesystems may be backed up - inconsistently. What does Amanda do to prevent inconsistent backups? - Nothing. When you back up an active filesystem, there are two possibilities: - dump may print strange error messages about invalid blocks, then fail; in this - case, Amanda will retry the backup on the next run. - Files that are modified while dump runs may be backed up inconsistently. But - then, they will be included in the next incremental backup, which should - usually be enough. - Large, critical files such as databases should be locked somehow, to avoid - inconsistent backups, but there's no direct support for that in Amanda. The - best bet is to configure Amanda to use a wrapper to dump, that locks and - unlocks the database when appropriate. - Which version of GNU-tar should I use? - (This answer was slightly adapted from a posting by Paul Bijnens - , Mon, 11 Apr 2005): - - * 1.13.19 is good. - However it still sets return code 2 for some infrequent conditions even with - --ignore-failed-read option. This results in Amanda thinking the total - archive is bad, and drops the complete archive. Those conditions are very - rare on a quiet filesystem. - * 1.13.25 is good: no problems found (yet). - * 1.13.9x is not good. - It has changed the format of "tar -t", resulting in amrecover not able to - use the indexes. - * 1.14.x is not good. - It writes good archives, but when restoring, it has trouble with sparse - files; the sparse file itself, and *all* files after it cannot be read - anymore. But you can read the archive with a good tar version (i.e. the tar - images produced are fine). - * 1.15.1 is good: no problems found (yet). - Paul Bijnens: "I'm using this version on most of my clients since january - this year (2005), and have already done successful restore too." - - What does "bumping" mean? - The term "bumping" is used to describe the change from one backup-level to the - next higher level. If Amanda changes from Level 0 to Level 1 for a specific - DLE, it "bumps". - The basic goal of "bumping" is to save precious space on the backup media as - higher level incremental backups are smaller in size than lower level - incremental backups. - The disadvantage of increasing backup levels is the fact that restoring from - higher level incremental backups needs more tapes. This increases the amount - of work time that are needed to fully restore a DLE as well as the possibility - of tape-errors and similar problems during the process of restore. So in - general it is recommended to keep the levels as low as possible with the given - hardware and data. - There are various amanda.conf parameters to control and fine-tune Amanda's - behavior when it comes to "bumping": - Please refer to the amanda-manpage and the example amanda.conf for details on - the parameters bumppercent, bumpsize, bumpdays and bumpmult. - How do I backup a Windows server? - Amanda is able to use smbclient to dump SMB/CIFS-shares. Refer to the Backup - PC_hosts_using_Samba for details. - How do I tell my iptables-based firewall to allow Amanda through? - posted by Matt Hyclak : - Use something like - - iptables -A INPUT -p udp -s $AMANDA_SERVER -d $AMANDA_CLIENT --dport - 10080 -j ACCEPT - - and load the ip_conntrack_amanda kernel module. I use the following in /etc/ - modprobe.conf: - - options ip_conntrack_amanda master_timeout=2400 - install ip_tables /sbin/modprobe --ignore-install ip_tables && /sbin/ - modprobe ip_conntrack_amanda - - This sets the UDP timeout for Amanda packets to 2400 seconds, up from the - default 300 (don't hold me to that, it might be 600). I was getting estimate - timeouts since they were taking longer than 300/600 seconds and the firewall - would close the port. - Makes things a little more secure than opening up everything > 1024 ;-) - How do I get rid of pressing "q" to get rid of a pager prompt when using - amrecover? - compiled from postings by Paul Bijnens and Jon - LaBadie - Paul Bijnens wrote: - If you have to press "q" all the time in amrecover this is related to the - pager-binary you use. If you use Linux this will be most likely less. To teach - less to quit when hitting EOF, you need to set something like LESS=--QUIT-AT- - EOF; export LESS, for example in your .profile. Refer to the manpage of less - for details. - Jon LaBadie wrote: - If you don't like the quit at EOF behavior "except" when in amrecover create - an alias or a wrapper; something like: - alias amrecov='LESS="$LESS -E" _pathto_your_amrecover' - Is there a way to tell the pager that my terminal has "y" lines? - Jon LaBadie wrote: - The pager normally does it's best to find out how many lines your terminal - has, given the right TERM-variable. Even terminals with elastic boundaries - (e.g. xterms) work. But I have to admit that on Solaris the settings are not - always correct. You can fix it quickly by setting an environment variable to - e.g. LINES=24 (and export it). - - -Note - -Refer to http://www.amanda.org/docs/faq.html for the current version of this -document. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- - -Prev Up Next -Chapter 18. Using Amanda Home Chapter 20. Collection of the top ten Amanda - questions. And answers. -