On Thu, Dec 05, 2002 at 12:22:13PM -0500, Mark Stosberg wrote:
> 
> Hello,
> 
> I'm curious how some you have dealt with the catch-22 of backing up
> Amanda's configuration files. Ideally during the restore process Amanda
> is available with all it's configuration files intact. However, if the
> Amanda server needs to be restored, you can't restore them in the usual
> Amanda way, because the config files to do so would be on a backup
> tape...
> 
> How of others of you worked around this?

Others may address the actual backing up of the config files elsewhere.

I just want to be sure you realize that a design goal of amanda was that
no amanda software is needed to extract files from an amanda backup tape.
Standard unix utilities are all that are used in creating the tapes.  So
you could:

   position the tape at the start of a tape file corresponding to
   the DLE you want to extract

   run the tape file through a pipeline containing:

     dd bs=32k skip=1 if=<tapedev>
     gzip -dc                   # if appropriate
     restore or tar or ??       # depending on which was used


Each tapefile contains a 32K "header" with information about which DLE
it contains, date, and an appropriate command line with which to extract.

-- 
Jon H. LaBadie                  jon AT jgcomp DOT com
 JG Computing
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