Amanda-Users

Re: Backup plan needs advice.

2003-06-25 17:32:00
Subject: Re: Backup plan needs advice.
From: bao <bao AT gibbons DOT com>
To: "Amanda Users (E-mail)" <amanda-users AT amanda DOT org>
Date: Wed, 25 Jun 2003 14:21:09 -0700

Jon LaBadie wrote:

On Tue, Jun 24, 2003 at 02:25:20PM -0700, bao wrote:
Jon LaBadie wrote:

  strategy "string"

        ...
       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.



As pointed out. The two paragraphs above have "a bug". I prefer not to mess with those options. :)

Well, they say "probably".  Maybe someone was saying this program/feature
works this way.  Probably not only way it could have been designed
and maybe not the best choice for the design -- thus a "bug".
Example, according to the man page for standard unix sort command
has been the line "silently truncates lines longer than xxxx bytes".
It could be called a "bug".  But in design and implementation,
not a defect in coding.


Plus, the comments may be a holdover from early releases never updated.
There are comments a few years back suggesting the "bug" was fixed.


BTW you could also consider having your "full config" dump to real tape
or to a separate set of "file tapes".  Then you could run your daily
config as a normal amanda config doing a mixture of full and incrementals
each day.  If you run the full dump to real tape and the clerical person
forgets the tape, it can collect on the holding disk for later amflush.
Otherwise you will have to develop your own procedures for moving the
dumps and the indexes and the ... to tape and later, if needed, you own
procedures for recovering them and the indexes and ... from the tape
for am{recover|restore}.

I have some good news and think I should share it.
With my two configs and with "record yes" in the weekly, the daily incrementals are able to see and follow the most recent weekly full backup. That says that Jon's suggestion of using one config, inc-only, and forcing a level 0 for the day of the full backup would also work.

I just tested it with another machine, and will have to wait if anything unexpected will happen
to the production server.

So going on to investigating how to copy what Amanda needs to tape.

Thanks guys.