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                           amanda.conf
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Name

amanda.conf \14 Main configuration file for Amanda, the Advanced Maryland
Automatic Network Disk Archiver

DESCRIPTION

amanda.conf is the main configuration file for Amanda. This manpage lists the
relevant sections and parameters of this file for quick reference.
The file <CONFIG_DIR>/<config>/amanda.conf is loaded.

PARAMETERS

There are a number of configuration parameters that control the behavior of the
Amanda programs. All have default values, so you need not specify the parameter
in amanda.conf if the default is suitable.
Lines starting with # are ignored, as are blank lines. Comments may be placed
on a line with a directive by starting the comment with a #. The remainder of
the line is ignored.
Keywords are case insensitive, i.e. mailto and MailTo are treated the same.
Integer arguments may have one of the following (case insensitive) suffixes,
some of which have a multiplier effect:

POSSIBLE SUFFIXES



  b byte bytes
      Some number of bytes.

  bps
      Some number of bytes per second.

  k kb kbyte kbytes kilobyte kilobytes
      Some number of kilobytes (bytes*1024).

  kps kbps
      Some number of kilobytes per second (bytes*1024).

  m mb meg mbyte mbytes megabyte megabytes
      Some number of megabytes (bytes*1024*1024).

  mps mbps
      Some number of megabytes per second (bytes*1024*1024).

  g gb gbyte gbytes gigabyte gigabytes
      Some number of gigabytes (bytes*1024*1024*1024).

  tape tapes
      Some number of tapes.

  day days
      Some number of days.

  week weeks
      Some number of weeks (days*7).

      Note

      The value inf may be used in most places where an integer is expected to
      mean an infinite amount.
      Boolean arguments may have any of the values y, yes, t, true or on to
      indicate a true state, or n, no, f, false or off to indicate a false
      state. If no argument is given, true is assumed.


PARAMETERS



  includefile string
      Default: none. The name of an Amanda configuration file to include within
      the current file. Useful for sharing dumptypes, tapetypes and interface
      definitions among several configurations.


HOLDINGDISK SECTION

The amanda.conf file may define one or more holding disks used as buffers to
hold backup images before they are written to tape. The syntax is:

  holdingdisk name {
      holdingdisk-option holdingdisk-value
      ...
  }

Name is a logical name for this holding disk.
The options and values are:


  comment string
      Default: none. A comment string describing this holding disk.

  directory disk
      Default: /dumps/amanda. The path to this holding area.

  use int
      Default: 0 Gb. Amount of space that can be used in this holding disk
      area. If the value is zero, all available space on the file system is
      used. If the value is negative, Amanda will use all available space minus
      that value.

  chunksize int
      Default: 1 Gb. Holding disk chunk size. Dumps larger than the specified
      size will be stored in multiple holding disk files. The size of each
      chunk will not exceed the specified value. However, even though dump
      images are split in the holding disk, they are concatenated as they are
      written to tape, so each dump image still corresponds to a single
      continuous tape section. If 0 is specified, Amanda will create holding
      disk chunks as large as ((INT_MAX/1024)-64) Kbytes. Each holding disk
      chunk includes a 32 Kbyte header, so the minimum chunk size is 64 Kbytes
      (but that would be really silly). Operating systems that are limited to a
      maximum file size of 2 Gbytes actually cannot handle files that large.
      They must be at least one byte less than 2 Gbytes. Since Amanda works
      with 32 Kbyte blocks, and to handle the final read at the end of the
      chunk, the chunk size should be at least 64 Kbytes (2 * 32 Kbytes)
      smaller than the maximum file size, e.g. 2047 Mbytes.


DUMPTYPE SECTION

The amanda.conf file may define multiple sets of backup options and refer to
them by name from the disklist file. For instance, one set of options might be
defined for file systems that can benefit from high compression, another set
that does not compress well, another set for file systems that should always
get a full backup and so on.
A set of backup options are entered in a dumptype section, which looks like
this:

  define dumptype name {
      dumptype-option dumptype-value
      ...
  }

Name is the name of this set of backup options. It is referenced from the
disklist file.
Some of the options in a dumptype section are the same as those in the main
part of amanda.conf. The main option value is used to set the default for all
dumptype sections. For instance, setting dumpcycle to 50 in the main part of
the config file causes all following dumptype sections to start with that
value, but the value may be changed on a section by section basis. Changes to
variables in the main part of the config file must be done before (earlier in
the file) any dumptypes are defined.
The dumptype options and values are:


  auth string
      Default: bsd. Type of authorization to perform between tape server and
      backup client hosts.
      bsd, bsd authorization with udp initial connection and one tcp connection
      by data stream.
      bsdtcp, bsd authorization but use only one tcp connection.
      bsdudp, like bsd, but will use only one tcp connection for all data
      stream.
      krb4 to use Kerberos-IV authorization.
      krb5 to use Kerberos-V authorization.
      rsh to use rsh authorization.
      ssh to use OpenSSH authorization.

  amandad_path string
      Default: $libexec/amandad. Specify the amandad path of the client, only
      use with rsh/ssh authentification.

  client_username string
      Default: CLIENT_LOGIN. Specify the username to connect on the client,
      only use with rsh/ssh authentification.

  bumpsize int
      Default: 10 Mbytes. The minimum savings required to trigger an automatic
      bump from one incremental level to the next, expressed as size. If Amanda
      determines that the next higher backup level will be this much smaller
      than the current level, it will do the next level. The value of this
      parameter is used only if the parameter bumppercent is set to 0.
      See also the options bumppercent, bumpmult and bumpdays.

  bumppercent int
      Default: 0 percent. The minimum savings required to trigger an automatic
      bump from one incremental level to the next, expressed as percentage of
      the current size of the DLE (size of current level 0). If Amanda
      determines that the next higher backup level will be this much smaller
      than the current level, it will do the next level.
      If this parameter is set to 0, the value of the parameter bumpsize is
      used to trigger bumping.
      See also the options bumpsize, bumpmult and bumpdays.

  bumpmult float
      Default: 1.5. The bump size multiplier. Amanda multiplies bumpsize by
      this factor for each level. This prevents active filesystems from bumping
      too much by making it harder to bump to the next level. For example, with
      the default bumpsize and bumpmult set to 2.0, the bump threshold will be
      10 Mbytes for level one, 20 Mbytes for level two, 40 Mbytes for level
      three, and so on.

  bumpdays int
      Default: 2 days. To insure redundancy in the dumps, Amanda keeps
      filesystems at the same incremental level for at least bumpdays days,
      even if the other bump threshold criteria are met.

  comment string
      Default: none. A comment string describing this set of backup options.

  comprate float [, float ]
      Default: 0.50, 0.50. The expected full and incremental compression factor
      for dumps. It is only used if Amanda does not have any history
      information on compression rates for a filesystem, so should not usually
      need to be set. However, it may be useful for the first time a very large
      filesystem that compresses very little is backed up.

  compress [client|server] string
      Default: client fast. If Amanda does compression of the backup images, it
      can do so either on the backup client host before it crosses the network
      or on the tape server host as it goes from the network into the holding
      disk or to tape. Which place to do compression (if at all) depends on how
      well the dump image usually compresses, the speed and load on the client
      or server, network capacity, holding disk capacity, availability of tape
      hardware compression, etc.
      For either type of compression, Amanda also allows the selection of three
      styles of compression. Best is the best compression available, often at
      the expense of CPU overhead. Fast is often not as good a compression as
      best, but usually less CPU overhead. Or to specify Custom to use your own
      compression method. (See dumptype custom-compress in example/amanda.conf
      for reference)
      So the compress options line may be one of:

      * compress none
      * compress [client] fast
      * compress [client] best
      * compress client custom
        Specify client_custom_compress "PROG"
        PROG must not contain white space and it must accept -d for uncompress.
      * compress server fast
      * compress server best
      * compress server custom
        Specify server_custom_compress "PROG"
        PROG must not contain white space and it must accept -d for uncompress.

      Note that some tape devices do compression and this option has nothing to
      do with whether that is used. If hardware compression is used (usually
      via a particular tape device name or mt option), Amanda (software)
      compression should be disabled.

  dumpcycle int
      Default: 10 days. The number of days in the backup cycle. Each disk using
      this set of options will get a full backup at least this of ten. Setting
      this to zero tries to do a full backup each run.

  encrypt [none|client|server]
      Default: none. To encrypt backup images, it can do so either on the
      backup client host before it crosses the network or on the tape server
      host as it goes from the network into the holding disk or to tape.
      So the encrypt options line may be one of:

      * encrypt none
      * encrypt client
        Specify client_encrypt "PROG"
        PROG must not contain white space.
        Specify client_decrypt_option "decryption-parameter" Default: "-d"
        decryption-parameter must not contain white space.
        (See dumptype server-encrypt-fast in example/amanda.conf for reference)
      * encrypt server
        Specify server_encrypt "PROG"
        PROG must not contain white space.
        Specify server_decrypt_option "decryption-parameter" Default: "-d"
        decryption-parameter must not contain white space.
        (See dumptype client-encrypt-nocomp in example/amanda.conf for
        reference)


  estimate client|calcsize|server
      Default: client. Determine the way Amanda does it's estimate.

      * client:
        Use the same program as the dumping program, this is the most accurate
        way to do estimates, but it can take a long time.
      * calcsize:
        Use a faster program to do estimates, but the result is less accurate.
      * server:
        Use only statistics from the previous run to give an estimate, it takes
        only a few seconds but the result is not accurate if your disk usage
        changes from day to day.


  exclude [ list|file ][[optional][ append ][ string ]+]
      Default: file. There are two exclude lists, exclude file and exclude
      list. With exclude file , the string is a GNU-tar exclude expression.
      With exclude list , the string is a file name on the client containing
      GNU-tar exclude expressions. The path to the specified exclude list file,
      if present (see description of 'optional' below), must be readable by the
      Amanda user.
      All exclude expressions are concatenated in one file and passed to GNU-
      tar as an --exclude-from argument.
      Exclude expressions must always be specified as relative to the head
      directory of the DLE.
      With the append keyword, the string is appended to the current list,
      without it, the string overwrites the list.
      If optional is specified for exclude list, then amcheck will not complain
      if the file doesn't exist or is not readable.
      For exclude list, if the file name is relative, the disk name being
      backed up is prepended. So if this is entered:

            exclude list ".amanda.excludes"

      the actual file used would be /var/.amanda.excludes for a backup of /var,
      /usr/local/.amanda.excludes for a backup of /usr/local, and so on.

  holdingdisk [ never|auto|required] ]
      Default: auto. Whether a holding disk should be used for these backups or
      whether they should go directly to tape. If the holding disk is a portion
      of another file system that Amanda is backing up, that file system should
      refer to a dumptype with holdingdisk set to never to avoid backing up the
      holding disk into itself.


        never|no|false|off
            Never use a holdingdisk, the dump will always go directly to tape.
            There will be no dump if you have a tape error.

        auto|yes|true|on
            Use the holding disk, unless there is a problem with the holding
            disk, the dump won't fit there or the medium doesn't require
            spooling (e.g., VFS device)

        required
            Always dump to holdingdisk, never directly to tape. There will be
            no dump if it doesn't fit on holdingdisk


  ignore boolean
      Default: no. Whether disks associated with this backup type should be
      backed up or not. This option is useful when the disklist file is shared
      among several configurations, some of which should not back up all the
      listed file systems.

  include [ list|file ][[optional][ append ][ string ]+]
      Default: file ".". There are two include lists, include file and include
      list. With include file , the string is a glob expression. With include
      list , the string is a file name on the client containing glob
      expressions.
      All include expressions are expanded by Amanda, concatenated in one file
      and passed to GNU-tar as a --files-from argument. They must start with
      "./" and contain no other "/".
      Include expressions must always be specified as relative to the head
      directory of the DLE.

      Note

      For globbing to work at all, even the limited single level, the top level
      directory of the DLE must be readable by the Amanda user.
      With the append keyword, the string is appended to the current list,
      without it, the string overwrites the list.
      If optional is specified for include list, then amcheck will not complain
      if the file doesn't exist or is not readable.
      For include list, If the file name is relative, the disk name being
      backed up is prepended.

  index boolean
      Default: no. Whether an index (catalogue) of the backup should be
      generated and saved in indexdir. These catalogues are used by the
      amrecover utility.

  kencrypt boolean
      Default: no. Whether the backup image should be encrypted by Kerberos as
      it is sent across the network from the backup client host to the tape
      server host.

  maxdumps int
      Default: 1. The maximum number of backups from a single host that Amanda
      will attempt to run in parallel. See also the main section parameter
      inparallel.

  maxpromoteday int
      Default: 10000. The maximum number of day for a promotion, set it 0 if
      you don't want promotion, set it to 1 or 2 if your disks get
      overpromoted.

  priority string
      Default: medium. When there is no tape to write to, Amanda will do
      incremental backups in priority order to the holding disk. The priority
      may be high (2), medium (1), low (0) or a number of your choice.

  program string
      Default: DUMP. The type of backup to perform. Valid values are DUMP for
      the native operating system backup program, and GNUTAR to use GNU-tar or
      to do PC backups using Samba.

  record boolean
      Default: yes. Whether to ask the backup program to update its database
      (e.g. /etc/dumpdates for DUMP or /usr/local/var/amanda/gnutar-lists for
      GNUTAR) of time stamps. This is normally enabled for daily backups and
      turned off for periodic archival runs.

  skip-full boolean
      Default: no. If true and planner has scheduled a full backup, these disks
      will be skipped, and full backups should be run off-line on these days.
      It was reported that Amanda only schedules level 1 incrementals in this
      configuration; this is probably a bug.

  skip-incr boolean
      Default: no. If true and planner has scheduled an incremental backup,
      these disks will be skipped.

  starttime int
      Default: none. Backups will not start until after this time of day. The
      value should be hh*100+mm, e.g. 6:30PM (18:30) would be entered as 1830.

  strategy string
      Default: standard. Strategy to use when planning what level of backup to
      run next. Values are:


        standard
            The standard Amanda schedule.

        nofull
            Never do full backups, only level 1 incrementals.

        noinc
            Never do incremental backups, only full dumps.

        skip
            Never do backups (useful when sharing the disklist file).

        incronly
            Only do incremental dumps. amadmin force should be used to tell
            Amanda that a full dump has been performed off-line, so that it
            resets to level 1. It is similar to skip-full, but with incronly
            full dumps may be scheduled manually. Unfortunately, it appears
            that Amanda will perform full backups with this configuration,
            which is probably a bug.


  tape_splitsize int
      Default: none. Split dump file on tape into pieces of a specified size.
      This allows dumps to be spread across multiple tapes, and can potentially
      make more efficient use of tape space. Note that if this value is too
      large (more than half the size of the average dump being split),
      substantial tape space can be wasted. If too small, large dumps will be
      split into innumerable tiny dumpfiles, adding to restoration complexity.
      A good rule of thumb, usually, is 1/10 of the size of your tape.

  split_diskbuffer string
      Default: none. When dumping a split dump in PORT-WRITE mode (usually
      meaning "no holding disk"), buffer the split chunks to a file in the
      directory specified by this option.

  fallback_splitsize int
      Default: 10M. When dumping a split dump in PORT-WRITE mode, if no
      split_diskbuffer is specified (or if we somehow fail to use our
      split_diskbuffer), we must buffer split chunks in memory. This specifies
      the maximum size split chunks can be in this scenario, and thus the
      maximum amount of memory consumed for in-memory splitting. The size of
      this buffer can be changed from its (very conservative) default to a
      value reflecting the amount of memory that each taper process on the dump
      server may reasonably consume.

The following dumptype entries are predefined by Amanda:

  define dumptype no-compress {
      compress none
  }
  define dumptype compress-fast {
      compress client fast
  }
  define dumptype compress-best {
      compress client best
  }
  define dumptype srvcompress {
      compress server fast
  }
  define dumptype bsd-auth {
      auth bsd
  }
  define dumptype krb4-auth {
      auth krb4
  }
  define dumptype no-record {
      record no
  }
  define dumptype no-hold {
      holdingdisk no
  }
  define dumptype no-full {
      skip-full yes
  }

In addition to options in a dumptype section, one or more other dumptype names
may be entered, which make this dumptype inherit options from other previously
defined dumptypes. For instance, two sections might be the same except for the
record option:

  define dumptype normal {
      comment "Normal backup, no compression, do indexing"
      no-compress
      index yes
      maxdumps 2
  }
  define dumptype testing {
      comment "Test backup, no compression, do indexing, no recording"
      normal
      record no
  }

Amanda provides a dumptype named global in the sample amanda.conf file that all
dumptypes should reference. This provides an easy place to make changes that
will affect every dumptype.

TAPETYPE SECTION

The amanda.conf file may define multiple types of tape media and devices. The
information is entered in a tapetype section, which looks like this in the
config file:

  define tapetype name {
      tapetype-option tapetype-value
      ...
  }

Name is the name of this type of tape medium/device. It is referenced from the
tapetype option in the main part of the config file.
The tapetype options and values are:


  comment string
      Default: none. A comment string describing this set of tape information.

  filemark int
      Default: 1000 bytes. How large a file mark (tape mark) is, measured in
      bytes. If the size is only known in some linear measurement (e.g.
      inches), convert it to bytes using the device density.

  length int
      Default: 2000 kbytes. How much data will fit on a tape.
      Note that this value is only used by Amanda to schedule which backups
      will be run. Once the backups start, Amanda will continue to write to a
      tape until it gets an error, regardless of what value is entered for
      length (but see the section OUTPUT DRIVERS in the amanda(8) manpage for
      exceptions).

  blocksize int
      Default: 32. How much data will be written in each tape record expressed
      in KiloBytes. The tape record size (= blocksize) can not be reduced below
      the default 32 KBytes. The parameter blocksize can only be raised if
      Amanda was compiled with the configure option --with-maxtapeblocksize=N
      set with "N" greater than 32 during configure.

  file-pad boolean
      Default: true. If true, every record, including the last one in the file,
      will have the same length. This matches the way Amanda wrote tapes prior
      to the availability of this parameter. It may also be useful on devices
      that only support a fixed blocksize.
      Note that the last record on the tape probably includes trailing null
      byte padding, which will be passed back to gzip, compress or the restore
      program. Most programs just ignore this (although possibly with a
      warning).
      If this parameter is false, the last record in a file may be shorter than
      the block size. The file will contain the same amount of data the dump
      program generated, without trailing null byte padding. When read, the
      same amount of data that was written will be returned.

  speed int
      Default: 200 bps. How fast the drive will accept data, in bytes per
      second. This parameter is NOT currently used by Amanda.

  lbl-templ string
      A PostScript template file used by amreport to generate labels. Several
      sample files are provided with the Amanda sources in the example
      directory. See the amreport(8) man page for more information.

In addition to options, another tapetype name may be entered, which makes this
tapetype inherit options from another tapetype. For instance, the only
difference between a DLT4000 tape drive using Compact-III tapes and one using
Compact-IV tapes is the length of the tape. So they could be entered as:

  define tapetype DLT4000-III {
      comment "DLT4000 tape drives with Compact-III tapes"
      length 12500 mbytes         # 10 Gig tapes with some compression
      filemark 2000 kbytes
      speed 1536 kps
  }
  define tapetype DLT4000-IV {
      DLT4000-III
      comment "DLT4000 tape drives with Compact-IV tapes"
      length 25000 mbytes         # 20 Gig tapes with some compression
  }


INTERFACE SECTION

The amanda.conf file may define multiple types of network interfaces. The
information is entered in an interface section, which looks like this:

  define interface name {
      interface-option interface-value
      ...
  }

name is the name of this type of network interface. It is referenced from the
disklist file.
Note that these sections define network interface characteristics, not the
actual interface that will be used. Nor do they impose limits on the bandwidth
that will actually be taken up by Amanda. Amanda computes the estimated
bandwidth each file system backup will take based on the estimated size and
time, then compares that plus any other running backups with the limit as
another of the criteria when deciding whether to start the backup. Once a
backup starts, Amanda will use as much of the network as it can leaving
throttling up to the operating system and network hardware.
The interface options and values are:


  comment string
      Default: none. A comment string describing this set of network
      information.

  use int
      Default: 300 Kbps. The speed of the interface in Kbytes per second.

In addition to options, another interface name may be entered, which makes this
interface inherit options from another interface. At the moment, this is of
little use.

AUTHOR

James da Silva, <jds@amanda.org>: Original text
Stefan G. Weichinger, <sgw@amanda.org>, maintainer of the Amanda-documentation:
XML-conversion, major update, splitting

SEE ALSO

amanda(8), amanda-client.conf(5), amcrypt(8), aespipe(1),
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