With Amanda 2.4.2 the exclude files didn't need to be readable by the
amanda user. The exclude files are only used by tar which runs as
root anyway.

In 2.4.3 the exclude files are read (in order to merge the other
exclude entries ?) and the written to
/tmp/amanda/sendbackup.*.exclude. This file is then used as argument
to tar.

I had only-root-readable index files, and the generated exlcude file
was empty.

IMHO amcheck should check that the exclude files on the client are
readable.

        Sven