I'm using Amanda 2.4.4 and attempting to setup a backup routine that dumps the 
backups to a hard drive instead of a tape.  I'm using the chg-multi config with 
4 'file' devices.  When I attempt to check the status of the tape with a 
privileged account, Amanda can see that the tape drive is populated, but when I 
try this with the amanda user, chg-multi returns 'slot is empty'

suse-test:/etc/amanda/daily # /usr/local/libexec/chg-multi -slot 1 
1 file:/d1/backups/tape1

amanda@suse-test:/etc/amanda/daily > /usr/local/libexec/chg-multi -slot 1 
1 chg-multi: slot is empty

The amanda user has all the permissions it needs to read that director (and 
permissions to read/write changer-status) Any ideas as to why it still reports 
the slot is empty?

Here's some configs:

chg-multi.conf:

        multieject 0
        gravity 0
        needeject 0
        ejectdelay 0
        firstslot 1
        lastslot 4
        statefile /etc/amanda/daily/changer-status
        slot 1 file:/d1/backups/tape1
        slot 2 file:/d1/backups/tape2
        slot 3 file:/d1/backups/tape3
        slot 4 file:/d1/backups/tapes

semi-relevant lines from amanda.conf:

        org "DailySet1"         # your organization name for reports
        mailto "amanda"         # space separated list of operators at your site
        dumpuser "amanda"       # the user to run dumps under
        dumpcycle 4 weeks       # the number of days in the normal dump cycle
        runspercycle 20         # the number of amdump runs in dumpcycle days
        tpchanger "chg-multi"   # the tape-changer glue script
        tapedev "file:/d1/backup" 
        changerfile "/etc/amanda/daily/chg-multi.conf"
        changerdev "/dev/null"
        rawtapedev "/dev/null"  # the raw device to be used (ftape only)
        maxdumpsize -1          # Maximum number of bytes the planner will 
schedule
        tapetype HOLDING-TANK   # what kind of tape it is (see tapetypes below)
        labelstr "^DailySet1[0-9][0-9]*$"       # label constraint regex: all 
tapes must mat
        define tapetype HOLDING-TANK{
                        comment "storage tank"
                length 50000 mbytes
                    filemark 100 kbytes 
                   speed 10 mbytes 
        }

Granted, I do understand that I still have some left over single-device 
configuration here, but it doesn't look like that's the cause of the chg-multi 
errors.

Thanks,
Nathan Thaler