Re: tapelist and tape order
2003-01-25 13:30:27
>What (if anything) should I do to correct the order?
As others have mentioned, the labels don't really matter except to keep
us humans sane (not that that's not important :-). Amanda isn't paying
any attention to the actual "text".
If you want to improve your sanity :-), the first thing to understand is
how Amanda processes the tapelist file. Assuming you have enough "reuse"
tapes in the file to fulfill tapecycle, Amanda looks for the oldest tape
(lowest datestamp). If there are multiple tapes with the same datestamp,
it will pick the one that appears last in the file.
There isn't any (easy) way to manipulate this file with Amanda tools.
But it's text, so your favorite editor will do fine.
Here's what I've done in the past (not that I've ever gotten things
scrambled, of course :-):
* Wait until your Amanda report says an "out of order" tape is going
to be skipped. In your case:
These dumps were to tape DailySet1-03.
...
The next tape Amanda expects to use is: DailySet1-05.
So DailySet1-04 is being bypassed here.
Note that another way to see the tape order is:
# amadmin DailySet1 tape
The next Amanda run should go onto tape DailySet1-05 or a new tape.
* Make a copy of the tapelist file just in case your editor (or fingers
:-) go wacky.
* Bring up the editor. The first line of the file should reference
the tape just written (DailySet1-03). The last line of the file
should be the next tape to write (DailySet1-05). For instance:
20030116 DailySet1-03 reuse
...
20021230 DailySet1-05 reuse
* Find the line for the "missing" tape (DailySet1-04) and move it to
the end of the file. Change the datestamp field of the new last
line (DailySet1-04) to match the value of the previous last line
(DailySet1-05). For instance:
20030116 DailySet1-03 reuse
...
20021230 DailySet1-05 reuse
20021230 DailySet1-04 reuse
* Write the file. Make sure it is still owned by your Amanda user
and writable by it. "amcheck -l <CONFIG>" can help here.
* See if Amanda agrees with you about the next tape:
# amadmin DailySet1 tape
The next Amanda run should go onto tape DailySet1-04 or a new tape.
One thing you need to be **very** careful of. When you shift a tape like
this, it creates a "hole" in your backups until you get through a full
cycle again. For instance, if your dumpcycle is 7 days and DailySet1-04
is within 7 days of the top of the tapelist file, putting it at the end
(and overwriting it on the next run) may make it impossible to do a full
restore if it contained the latest level.
>dk
John R. Jackson, Technical Software Specialist, jrj AT purdue DOT edu
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