Anwar Ruff wrote:

What I want to do is use one tape a week/dumpcycle. Yet, If I were to
use one tape per dumpcycle would AMANDA overwrite the tape from one

day to the next. (i.e., If AMANDA backed up 3 servers on Monday to one tape,

 would it rewind and overwrite that tape during Tuesdays dump?)

Only if you have tapecycle set to 1.  Amanda will (sometimes with
complaints) overwrite any tape that is less than tapecycle old.
You may always feed more tapes to amanda, but she insists to have
at least tapecycle tapes before overwriting it.

What is the syntax used when adding maxdumps # to the AMANDA.conf
file? Is there a specific location where this variable is placed? Sorry,

You have a global directive "maxdumps", but you can also put one
local in a dumptype, that overrides the global value.

I am

[not]  -- inserted by PB.

familiar with spindles, could you explain please?

When starting two backup programs on the same disk, you loose a lot
of time by moving the read heads of your disk (seek time).  If your
your CPU is powerful enough, you could start two or more dumps on
one machine in parallel (using the maxdumps directive), on different
disks,  but to avoid disk trashing, you can indicate which
DiskListEntries are on the same disk. For this you give a number
to each disk, the "spindle" number. Amanda will not start two dumps
with the same splindle number. If you only have one disk, then
that number is always the same of course. (Unless your disk is very
fast too.)

> I assume 'high' in the disklist means high priority. If everything

 > is 'high priority', then there is no priority at all.  I would give

> the userdata high priority and the system data less.

I have appended the disklist file which has been modified revealing their
directory naming conventions and purpose. I would appreciate it if you
suggest what levels you think would be best.

 > I see no dumptype "holdingdisk". Does that mean that your holding
 > disk is not backed up (FINE!), or that one of your entries is your
 > holdingdisk, and you're making a recursive backup of that too (WRONG!).
 > Just checking.

holdingdisk hd1 {
    comment "main holding disk"

directory "/var/tmp" use -117 Mb }

The /var/tmp directory is backed up by AMANDA as shown below.

I would create a dedicated directory as holdingdisk.
Amanda will complain about "junk" files in the holdingdisk, if
other programs put files in there too.
And exclude that directory from backup, if you are using gnutar,
or give it a dumptype containing the "holdingdisk" directive;
then this DLE will dump directly to tape, at the end of the backup.

+----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+

+ New and improved Disklist +

+----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+
V = Very Critical, N= Not So Critical

# fooserver1, or 192.168.1.2 (Backup Server). WWW Server
# as well as an application server.
fooserver1      hda3    nocomp-high -1 local   <--  /         | N
fooserver1      hda1    nocomp-high -1 local   <--  /boot   | N
fooserver1      hda7    nocomp-high -1 local   <--  /home | V
fooserver1      hda8    nocomp-high -1 local   <--  /opt    | V
fooserver1      hda9    nocomp-high -1 local   <--  /tmp   | N
fooserver1      hda2    nocomp-high -1 local   <--  /usr    | V??
fooserver1      hda5    nocomp-high -1 local   <--  /usr/local | V
fooserver1      hda6    nocomp-high -1 local   <--  /var | V

I'm a fan of using the mountpoint names instead of the disknames.
I'm using gnutar, for which this is a more natural way.
Other people, using dump instead of gnutar, prefer the disknames.
Use what you feel comfortable with.

fooserver1      /          nocomp      1 local
fooserver1      /boot      nocomp      1 local
fooserver1      /home      nocomp-high 1 local
fooserver1      /opt       nocomp-high 1 local
fooserver1      /tmp       nocomp      1 local
fooserver1      /usr       nocomp-high 1 local
fooserver1      /usr/local nocomp-high 1 local
fooserver1      /var    {
                        nocomp-high
                        holdingdisk yes
                        } 1 local

Actually, I don't see any point in backing up /tmp.  People should
not put critical files in /tmp anyway.  It's probably the first
DLE to eliminate if you have space problems in amanda.

# fooserver2, or 192.168.1.3 (Backup Client) Application
# server as well as a Web Server.
fooserver2      /dev/sda5       comp-high        <--  /          | N
fooserver2      /dev/sda1       comp-high        <--  /boot    | N

fooserver2 /dev/sda3 comp-high <-- /home | V fooserver2 /dev/sda2 comp-high <-- /usr | V

fooserver2      /dev/sda6       comp-high        <--  /var      | V

fooserver2      /         comp      1
fooserver2      /boot     comp      1
fooserver2      /home     comp-high 1
fooserver2      /usr      comp-high 1
fooserver2      /var      comp-high 1

Yes, you only have one disk on both machines, so maxdumps will
not help a lot.
Setting the spindle to -1, will not restrict the dumps.
Testing the setup with both and measuring the total time
of your backup will help you decide what to do.

--
Paul Bijnens, Xplanation                            Tel  +32 16 397.511
Technologielaan 21 bus 2, B-3001 Leuven, BELGIUM    Fax  +32 16 397.512
http://www.xplanation.com/          email:  Paul.Bijnens AT xplanation DOT com
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