Once upon a time I did run amdump on the server and canceled it (control-c) as 
I realized I need to make one last tweak before running it. I hadn't rebooted 
the client having this problem since then.. I'll try a reboot on the client and 
see if this happens again. If it does I'll check out the /tmp/amanda debug 
files etc.

Thanks for all the suggestions everyone! I have been assigned some other tasks 
at work for now but I'll definitely be looking into this issue more when I get 
a chance.

Jeremy