On Thursday 05 December 2002 18:31, Niall O Broin wrote:
>On Thursday 05 December 2002 20:48, Gene Heskett wrote:
>> On Thursday 05 December 2002 12:22, Mark Stosberg wrote:
>> >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...
>>
>> I haven't managed to do that yet myself, as I, like you, found
>> there were none-nada-zip-zero of amanda's configs and indexes
>> actually on the last dumpcycle tapes.
>
>Mark didn't say that - he wondered how others worked around the
> issue of needing amanda to read the tapes to get the index files
> to see what was where on the tapes. My answer to him was the same
> as it was to others before - good backup practice dictates that
> you put these index files elsewhere although they are also on the
> tapes, unless you choose not to back them up.
>
>> That seems to be a local puzzle because I was immediately told
>> that this absolutely can't happen, but it did.  And yes, I
>> consider that to be a huge bug, to be investigated when the new
>> install is running stably.
>
>I don't believe there is a bug, except in your configuration,
> perhaps. There's no reason for amanda not to backup its
> configuration files, although sometimes I get 'strange' messages
> when there's been a race condition with the backing up of an
> index file - that's why I save them elsewhere also.
>
>> bummer.  Amanda is essentially just a drive abuser when the
>> indices and such aren't on the tape.
>
>The only reason for the indices not to be on the tape is if the
> configuration causes them not to be put there. Some sample data
> from my backup server:
>
>amanda@backup:~> amfind TIZ backup /etc/amanda/TIZ/amanda.conf
>Date     Disk     Path
>20021202 /        /etc/amanda/TIZ/amanda.conf
>20021129 /        /etc/amanda/TIZ/amanda.conf
>20021128 /        /etc/amanda/TIZ/amanda.conf
>20021127 /        /etc/amanda/TIZ/amanda.conf
>
>and lots more - so that's the config file taken care of.
>
>amanda@backup:~> amfind TIZ backup /var/lib/amanda/TIZ/index|wc -l
>  15556
>
>So my index files tell me that I have a goodly number of index
> files on backup volumes.
>
>But . . don't trust the index files. The TIZ configuration backs
> up a BOD so it was the work of a minute to examine last night's
> backup of /var on the backup server and sure enough - there were
> the backup files.
>
>So there are three possiblities Gene:
>
>1) This isn't a problem with amanda at all
>2) Your config is borked so that you're not saving it or your
> indices (but you should be saving them elsewhere also anyway)

as of today, I'm tarring them up seperately about 10 minutes before 
the backup starts, and the tarballs are kept in  
/home/amanda/amanda/config-bak/*

Also, I'm using the don't put it in the disklist method of 
exclusion, so theres no wild card exclude file extant that I know 
of.

I also took a lesson from a post from Tobias, and added to my 
disklist just now:

[...]
coyote  /bin                            root-tar        1
coyote  /boot                           root-tar        1
coyote  /dev                            root-tar        1
coyote  /dos                    comp-root-tar   1
coyote  /etc                    comp-root-tar   1
coyote  /home           comp-root-tar   2
coyote  /lib                    comp-root-tar   1
coyote  /opt                    comp-root-tar   2
coyote  /rh8.0disks/disk1       root-tar        1
coyote  /rh8.0disks/disk2       root-tar        1
coyote  /rh8.0disks/disk3       root-tar        1
coyote  /rh8.0disks/disk4       root-tar        1
coyote  /root                   comp-root-tar   2
coyote  /sbin                           root-tar        1
coyote  /tftpboot                       root-tar        1
coyote  /tmp                    comp-root-tar   1
coyote  /var                    comp-root-tar   1
coyote  /usr/bin                        root-tar        2
coyote  /usr/dlds                       root-tar        2
coyote  /usr/games              root-tar        2
coyote  /usr/gene               comp-root-tar   2
coyote  /usr/i386-glibc21-linux root-tar        2
coyote  /usr/include    comp-root-tar   2
coyote  /usr/kerberos           root-tar        2
coyote  /usr/lib                comp-root-tar   2
coyote  /usr/libexec    comp-root-tar   2
# This next SHOULD have been recording the amanda data and configs
# in its previous incarnation but didn't.  In fact, it appears that 
# there were several directories where the recursion failed. :(
# But of course the missing amanda stuff was magnitudes
# more important.
coyote  /usr/local              comp-root-tar   2
coyote  /usr/man                        root-tar        2
coyote  /usr/music                      root-tar        2
coyote  /usr/pix                        root-tar        2
coyote  /usr/sbin                       root-tar        2
coyote  /usr/share              comp-root-tar   2
coyote  /usr/src                comp-root-tar   2
coyote  /usr/X11R6      comp-root-tar   2
# added today
coyote  /usr/local/etc/amanda {
# get the configs
program "GNUTAR"
record no
index no
dumpcycle 0
starttime 0230
}
coyote /usr/local/var/amanda {
# get the indices
program "GNUTAR"
record no
index no
dumpcycle 0
starttime 0235
}

>3) Amanda hates you :-)

Actually, once I got to know the girl on a first name basis, I've 
not tried to give her a reason to hate me.  I bring her flowers 
regularly in the form of what help I can offer here on this list. 
:-)

-- 
Cheers, Gene
AMD K6-III@500mhz 320M
Athlon1600XP@1400mhz  512M
99.20% setiathome rank, not too shabby for a WV hillbilly