--- Jon LaBadie <jon AT jgcomp DOT com> wrote:
> On Mon, Feb 10, 2003 at 02:06:53PM +0100, Paul
> Bijnens wrote:
> >
> > Pro-Fit wrote:
> > >Hey folks - thanks for all your help - another
> newbie
> > >question...
> > >
> > >Is it possible to put the amlabel process in the
> CRON
> > >as opposed to running it manually everyday? How
> would
> > >one do this?
> >
> > I wouldn't do it... :-)
> >
> > The label on the tape serves some useful purposes.
> First it verifies
> > that the tape in the device is indeed an Amanda
> tape, and not some
> > other tape containing the data for your nobel
> prize project.
> > With the tapelabel, Amanda can verify that she has
> the expected tape
> > and not one that should not yet be overwritten
> (i.e. not yesterdays
> > backup that you forgot to take out, because you
> had a day off for example).
> >
> > That's why you first label your tapes, when you
> awake, and not half
> > sleeping, and after three times verifing that you
> put in the correct
> > tape in the drive. And you also put a sticker on
> the tape with the
> > Amanda's label on it, e.g. DailySet1-001.
> Stickers cannot be put on a
> > tape by cron afaik.
> >
> > Once labelled, you normally never ever have to
> relabel a tape.
> >
> > Taking this in consideration, you don't need to
> amlabel a tape by a cron
> > command at night, wiping out whatever tape was
> someone put by accident
> > in the tape drive. There is nobody around to
> verify that the tape that
> > you put in around 5 PM is still the same...
> >
> > If you do feel the need to relabel a tape each
> time it is used by
> > Amanda, you are probably trying to force Amanda
> into something for which
> > she is not designed, like labeling your tapes
> "monday", "tuesday", etc.
> > Look in the archives of this list to find the
> arguments against this scheme.
> >
> > ps. If you really are smarter than Amanda, try
> this command in your
> > crontab: "amlabel -f <config> <label>", about 5
> minutes before the
> > amdump entry.
> >
> > pps. if you really are smarter than Amanda, you
> would already know the
> > above command too :-)
> >
>
> And if all that smart they probably would also know
> to amrmtape the old label
> should a previously indexed tape be used.
>
> --
> Jon H. LaBadie jon AT jgcomp DOT com
> JG Computing
> 4455 Province Line Road (609) 252-0159
> Princeton, NJ 08540-4322 (609) 683-7220 (fax)
Just a quick summary of how Amanda treats tapes and
backups, which by the question, seems in order:
Think of Amanda as having a pool of tapes devoted to a
specific backup set, rather than having a Monday,
Tuesday, etc. Let's say you have 15 tapes. You can
label each tape 'DailySet1_001' through
'DailySet1_015' (or however you have your label string
set up in your amanda.conf file for the set).
Now these tapes are owned by the DailySet1 backup set.
Amanda keeps track of which tapes have been dumped
to and when they were last used. The configuration
file specifies the number of tapes you have, and how
often full backups are to be run (dumpcycle).
When amdump is run, you'll notice in the report e-mail
not only the tape that the backups were dumped to, but
also what tape Amanda expects to use next. In this
way, Amanda lets you know what tape it wants to use
for the next dump, or it'll manage the tapes by itself
in a changer. BTW, the line 'a new tape' does not
mean an unlabeld tape, just one that hasn't been
dumped to yet. Once you reach the end of your tapes
(in this case after 15 dumps), you'll notice Amanda
will prompt for the first tape to be used again for
the 16th dump.
Amanda is built to manage your tape use, and re-use,
for you, and it's usually a good idea to let it do
that as others have already said.
__________________________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Mail Plus - Powerful. Affordable. Sign up now.
http://mailplus.yahoo.com
|
