Incremental backups are at the file level, like Gnutar (exactly like Gnutar,
if that's the program you're using for backups.) 

AFAIK, Oracle, PostgreSQL, Informix, MSSQL, et al cannot restore from a
straight backup of the live database files, and this is never the
recommended method of backup. You should use the utilities provided by the
database vendor to dump a copy of the database to a static file on disk,
then backup that file. I was assuming you were already doing that, and that
this was a database that was only dumped weekly, with incremental logs
appearing daily. 

My understanding of Oracle (search the amanda-users archives for details) is
that if you're not dumping the database to a file for your backups, you
essentially don't have backups. (The exception is backup programs that use
the Oracle API rather than the file system.)

The no-reuse option can be used for permanent offsites, but you should add
new tapes to the rotation to keep the number available at the right level. 

(Just curious: Does "offsite permanently" mean that they're in the same bin
with the 9-track tapes? Magnetic media doesn't last "permanently" anywhere,
especially on the big magnet we call planet Earth. Might want to plan other
storage systems if you really need "permanent". 

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Derek Suzuki [mailto:DSuzuki AT ZipRealty DOT com]
> Sent: Monday, June 09, 2003 5:59 PM
> To: amanda-users AT amanda DOT org
> Subject: RE: Multiple backup groups
> 
> 
>       Hm.  Are you saying that Amanda can do a block-level incremental
> backup?  I had assumed that the main database files would 
> have to be backed
> up on every run, since they get written to thousands of times a day.
>       If it is feasible to incorporate everything into a 
> daily rotation,
> then I'd still have to force the archival backups (which are 
> meant to be
> taken offsite permanently) to include a level 0 dump of every target.
> 
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: Bort, Paul [mailto:pbort AT tmwsystems DOT com]
> > Sent: Monday, June 09, 2003 2:36 PM
> > To: amanda-users AT amanda DOT org
> > Subject: RE: Multiple backup groups
> > 
> > 
> > > 
> > > 
> > >   The problem with the offsite is that I want it to 
> > > include everything
> > > from both the daily and the weekly database backups.  So the 
> > 
> > Right, so if you put both disklist entries in the same AMANDA 
> > configuration,
> > and rotate a week's worth of tapes off-site, you're covered. 
> > You do have at
> > least two week's worth of tapes, I hope.
> > 
> > > disklist is a
> > > composite of the other two jobs.  If we tried to include the 
> > > Oracle data
> > > files under the regular daily rotation, they would get backed 
> > > up every day.
> > > 
> > 
> > Not necessarily. When the backup starts, the planner gets 
> estimates on
> > different levels of backup for each disk list entry, then 
> > picks which level
> > is appropriate for each entry based on a whole raft of 
> > factors like which
> > ones haven't had full backups the longest, how much tape 
> > space is available,
> > and what the configuration files specify for priority. If one 
> > of those disk
> > list entries is the main database dump, a level 0 (full) 
> > backup might be
> > 4Gb, but if that was backed up yesterday, then today's level 
> > 1 (incremental)
> > backup for that DLE might only be 10K. OTOH, the DLE with the 
> > log files
> > would have changed much more since yesterday, and even a 
> > level 1 of that
> > directory would catch the files that have changed since the 
> > last tape. So it
> > would be okay.
> > 
>