On Thursday 23 October 2003 09:32, Dan Willis wrote:
>Hello. I am still experimenting with my Amanda setup. I have
> dedicated essentially all of the available disk space on an HP LH3
> for my Amanda holding disk (approx 50 gig).  However, I still have
> some partitions to be backed up which exceed the size of the
> holding disk.  I know that an NFS mount would not be the ideal
> holding disk (I have googled on the subject before posting), but it
> is not practical for me to add disk space to the LH3 at this time. 
> I can live with a performance hit as long as the backup was
> reliable.
>
>Has anyone successfully used an NFS mount as a secondary holding
> disk?  Can backups still be run through dump or should they all be
> tar going this route?  Or is this just not advisable at all?
>
>Thanks,
>Dan Willis

Generally speaking, dump is not the prefered utility for use with 
amanda.  We seem to have gradually come to prefer tar, in any version 
1.13-19 or higher.

Are these partitions that exceed the size of the holding disk 
compressible?

If so, that may serve as a starting point to arrive at a sequence that 
allows the holding disk to be used.  I ask because I have several 
partitions that while not larger than the holding disk, do regularly 
compress to 20% or less of the original size.  The downside is that 
the compression takes time and serious horsepower, and the lags its 
use will create will allow the holding disk's files to be written to 
tape in a more timely manner possibly preventing it from becomeing 
100% full.

Keep in mind that if the disk gets full, the next dump will go direct 
to the tape, and this may result in shoe-shining the drive if the 
machine can't compress and move the data fast enough to stream 100% 
of the time.  The dump that fills it up may be lost, but IIRC amanda 
will know that and retry it again on the next run.

-- 
Cheers, Gene
AMD K6-III@500mhz 320M
Athlon1600XP@1400mhz  512M
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Copyright 2003 by Maurice Eugene Heskett, all rights reserved.