On Tue, Jun 24, 2003 at 11:05:00AM -0700, bao wrote:
> Jon LaBadie wrote:
> >On Tue, Jun 24, 2003 at 10:12:01AM -0700, bao wrote:
> >>
> >>I forgot to state that this is a tapeless setup to back up to disk.
> >>Then the full backup will be transferred to tape, and also is kept
> >> on disk for one week.
> >>
> >>I am _not_ letting Amanda schedule as to when to do a full backup,
> >>as is recommended. What I want (actually, my boss) is to force
> >>it to run a full every Monday, then a level 1 every other day for
> >>the rest of the week, according to the most recent Monday.
> >>
> >
> >I'm not familiar with the various "strategy" and other related
> >options, but can you set a strategy that always does a "no-full"
> >or "only-incremental" AND can also be forced with amadmin to do
> >full dumps on demand?
> > 
> Jon, I am reluctant to try that, although I agree that it is
> a good  candidate. This is because we had to do a recover
> yesterday, when I didn't think that the system was ready
> for it.  Such a relief that it worked, because a major part
> of the data was deleted accidentally :)

I don't get the reluctance.  You don't mean you plan to put this
into effect as the actual one and only live backup system without
some testing do you?  :)  Besides, my idea, if it works, doesn't
eliminate the ability to have a separate FULL ONLY config.  Though
in that case I'd probably us a different set of "file tapes" and
"record no".

> Back to my question, if I configure it as you suggested, would
> the incrementals have any idea of the previous forced full dump,
> and continue on from that point? Or would they go on after the
> ...very first full backup??

Well I wondered about the possibilities some more, and as I had
a file:driver setup for test purposes (good way to check out
exclude/include and other small changes) I did a little reading.

Yes Gene, there goes Jon again, reading the docs :)

Lo and Behold, on the amanda man page of all places:


     strategy "string"

        ...
          nofull
               Never do full backups, only level 1 incrementals.

        ...
          incronly
               Only do incremental dumps.  `amadmin force' should
               be  used  to tell Amanda that a full dump has been
               performed off-line, so that it resets to level  1.
               It is similar to skip-full, but with incronly full
               dumps may be scheduled  manually.   Unfortunately,
               it  appears  that Amanda will perform full backups
               with this configuration, which is probably a bug.


Also, another dumptype option entry was this paragraph:

     skip-full "boolean"
          Default:  no.  If true and planner has scheduled a full
          backup,  these  disks will be skipped, and full backups
          should be run off-line on these days.  It was  reported
          that Amanda only schedules level 1 incrementals in this
          configuration; this is probably a bug.


Not knowing which set of options had a good chance to work, I set
my dumpcycle and runspercycle to 1 day/1 and my strategy to "nofull".

I was very surprised when I ran my first amdump and got a full level 0.
As this was the first run for the disk, a level 0 should have been
scheduled, but I expected the "nofull" strategy to supercede and cause
an error.  Six subsequent amdumps were all incrementals.

I then set my dumpcycle to 0 days, normally something that would force
a level 0 each run.  Each of the next two amdumps each generated level 0's.

> 
> >If yes, perhaps you can use just a single configuration.
> >The incremental only strategy would only cause incrementals daily
> >except the one following your forced "amadmin full".
> >

To me, it seems a single config would work.  But you may have to experiment
with the dumptype options skip-full, strategy "nofull", and strategy "incronly"
to decide which is the proper approach.  Those options seem to be a real
muddy area in amanda.


> If the answer to the question above is yes, then it would also work with 
> two configurations

No, I don't think so, because in a config, you must do a full before you
can do ANY incrementals.  Perhaps you can get the ball rolling with one
forced level 0, I don't know.

> (and if the incrementals have an idea about the full). If so, the next 
> question arises is do I need to have "record yes" in the full config,
> in order for the incrementals to know??

The setting of record would definitely affect what files the incrementals
consider changed.  Without a record "yes", the incrementals would still
consider the last level 0, the last "recorded" one.

-- 
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)