2 Chapter 21. Amanda WISHLIST
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7 Chapter 21. Amanda WISHLIST
19 <martinea@iro.umontreal.ca>
23 XML-conversion; Additions and Updates
26 This is a major update.
27 These are items that we are planning to address, OR which we would like to see
28 happen sometime in the future.
29 They appear in random order.
30 Of course, we aren't promising to deliver anything.
31 This document can be found at http://www.amanda.org/docs/wishlist.html.
32 You may find more up-to-date information at http://www.amanda.org/ongoing.php.
33 If you have any ideas about any of the following, please send an e-mail note to
34 mailto://amanda-users@amanda.org or mailto://amanda-hackers@amanda.org.
35 Jean-Louis Martineau, Stefan G. Weichinger,
39 * Samba: Ports to non-Unix platforms, specifically Macs and PCs. The hooks are
40 in the Amanda protocol to support non-dump backup programs, but no-one has
41 volunteered to implement the client side. sgw: Mac OS X is able to run the
42 client, so only the PC is left, and I suggest that we should go the SAMBA-
43 way, I think. Samba is working well, is documented and developed further, so
44 I think this will be a stable path to go and support. And people don't need
45 to compile/install anything on their Win-boxes, just add a user and shares
49 * Samba: Samba should be treated as a different backup program, not as GNUTAR,
50 because it cannot handle dump-style incrementals.
53 * Samba: multiple exclusion-patterns. Since Samba 3.0.3 smbclient supports the
54 usage of multiple exclude-patterns. This would enable Amanda to exclude more
55 than one pattern per SMB-share, allowing to exclude pagefile.sys AND the
56 registry-files, for example.
59 * Instead of hard-coding the interface with tape devices in Amanda, there
60 should be a higher level interface that allowed different storage devices to
61 be used. Amanda should also be able to retain backups in disk, even after
62 they are taped, for faster restore of recently backed up data. It should also
63 be possible to store a single backup in multiple tapes, for redundancy.
66 * We need a better protocol between the driver and dumpers. setup terminated
67 (to not start to dump on the same host at the same time). driver should ask
68 periodicaly if the dumper is still alive (in case the dumper hang).
71 * retry failed backups in a single run. If backup fails because of active
72 filesystems or lack of memory, Amanda could throw the failed backup away and
73 run it again, instead of trying it again in the next run only.
76 * Support for client-initiated backups might be interesting, but the server
77 would have to keep listening for clients backup requests for a configurable
78 period of time. This could be used to back up secure hosts, for instance.
81 * Backups to remote tape devices (i.e., not in the main Amanda server), as well
82 as to remote filesystems should be supported.
85 * multi-tape : Amanda should be able to write to many tape at the same time.
86 Need some criteria to select which dump should go on which tape? By level,
90 * A way to tell if some dump must be done before/after some other. (eg. DLE X
91 must be started after DLE Y is started/dumped/taped).
94 * Write to tape and holding disk in parallel (For dump to tape), the dump to
95 tape could be started first, while doing some dump to holding disk.
98 * Keep files on holding disk after taped, that will permit faster recovery
99 because they will be from holding disk, these dump will be erase when the
100 same is needed for newer dump.
107 This script writes to disks which can be accessed in a parallel way (contrary
108 to the serial access to tapes). This could enable Amanda to do writes and
109 reads to several vtapes in parallel (e.g. doing an amrestore while the
110 regular amdump is running).
111 It would be helpful to have a script which generates the needed directory-
112 structure for a given chg-disk configuration. This script should test for
113 valid settings (using amgetconf to get the values out of amanda.conf), create
114 the necessary slot-directories and label the new vtapes by using amlabel.
115 (there are drafts available already)
118 * amrecover should be able to set and "rewind" the correct vtape. Currently it
119 is necessary to do this manually in another tty.
122 * It should be possible to re-generate databases and indexes from tapes.
125 * Amanda could append meta-data like databases and indexes to tape, so that
126 each tape contains its own current indexes and everything to rebuild the
130 * Amanda should install man-pages for installed programs only.
133 * It should be possible to configure whether amidxtaped should decompress the
134 dump stream or not (so amrecover could decompress it locally).
138 It should read degraded schedule and write which are delayed.
139 It should print number of byte written to tape for the current flush.
140 The taper should write a file with a byte count for the current files (every
141 GB) and amstatus could read it.
142 It could report the expected time before the dump finishes.
145 * amverify/ amverifyrun:
146 It should look at the log file and compare the result.
150 should cd, add, remove, ... with a path with glob or regex (cd o*/linux)
151 find [file] # where is that file in the current DLE? (I don't know the path)
152 when [file] # when was this file dumped?
153 parsing accept '\': cd HP890\ Color
158 A new script to kill all process on client and server
161 * Enhance the protocol between client-server to allow white-space and any
162 character in DLE/exclude/include.
165 * More tools in amadmin. The administrator should be able to look at the
166 database in various ways. Adding / deleting / moving disks and hosts should
167 be done through amadmin instead of editing the disklist directly. This will
168 allow Amanda to do some sanity checks for the operators, to make sure
169 permissions are set up right, etc.
170 Suggested by Chris Jones <cjones@honors.montana.edu>.
173 * You should be able to force full dumps for nights other than tonight. Rather
174 than one command at a time on the command line, amadmin could be a little
175 shell with a help facility (ala ckermit or gnuplot, if you've seen those).
178 * A tape-verify pass after the Amanda run (we already have one, but it doesn't
179 work with dump as well as it does with GNU tar). Perhaps taper could
180 calculate a CRC for each file and store that in the database, to be checked
184 * More sophisticated tape management. Should Amanda track tapes globally,
185 counting the number of times tapes were used, and recommending retirement for
186 tapes at the appropriate time?
189 * Automatically notice that external dumps have been done. Sendsize could also
190 notice if a filesystem was dumped externally from Amanda. Right now the
191 planner assumes that the incrementals it is doing are relative to the full
192 dumps it is doing. If someone does a full dump of one of its filesystems (and
193 writes /etc/dumpdates) outside of Amanda, data could be lost. Sun's Backup-
194 Copilot handles this well. We should too.
197 * What if we made the "length" in a tapetype definition always be the "no
198 compression" value? Then change the dumptype "compress" option to accept
199 "hardware" as another type (ala "client" and "server") and let planner do its
200 normal thing with that information (including "comprate", which at the
201 current default of 50% is the usual first guess for hardware compression).
202 This would make setting the tape length value less confusing, and make the
203 amtapetype program easier to run. You could even get more accurate planning
204 than what is currently available by setting the comprate to what you know the
205 data is like on a dumptype by dumptype basis. Suggested by John R. Jackson
206 <jrj@gandalf.cc.purdue.edu>.
209 * The way to specify the schedule should be redesigned, all those strategy
210 (standard, nofull, noinc, incronly, force-full) and options (skip-full, skip-
212 We should have two options, one for full dump and one for incrementals.
213 full [AUTOMATIC | SKIP | NOTIFY | FORCE | FIXED]
214 incr [NONE | BUMP | NOBUMP]
215 with the following values:
216 AUTOMATIC: follow Amanda scheduling (allow promoted and delayed)
217 SKIP : full dump are done externally on an fixed schedule, dump nothing when
218 a full is due (like skip-full).
219 NOTIFY : full dumps are done externally, but are notified with the NOTIFY
220 command ( amadmin <conf> notify <host> <disk>).
221 FORCE : full dumps are done only with the FORCE_FULL command.
222 FIXED : do full dumps on a fixed schedule (like skip-incr).
223 NONE : don't do incremental dumps.
224 BUMP : allow incremental dumps to bump.
225 NOBUMP : do not allow incremental dumps to bump.
228 * Remove all compiled options that can be moved to a (the?) configuration file.
229 (eg. GNU tar path, if configure can't find it, Amanda should be able to use
230 GNU tar if the path is specified on a client config file) Many people would
231 like this, it would maybe also bring us closer to the possibility of working
236 There is pretty much going on with the Amanda-docs. The docs have been
237 converted to Docbook/XML and form the new module xml-docs in the Amanda-CVS-
239 The FAQ-O-Matic could be replaced by a Wiki. Suggested by Harlan Stenn
240 <Harlan.Stenn@pfcs.com>.
241 The xml-docs need more formatting and reviewing.
242 The tapetypes from the FOM should go into the XML-docs.
243 The docs would benefit from adding some illustrations.
245 The WISHLIST should get shortened.
249 Refer to http://www.amanda.org/docs/wishlist.html for the current version of
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254 Chapter 20. Collection of the top ten Amanda Home Part V. Technical Background
255 questions. And answers.
projects / debian / amanda / blob