On Mon, 27 Oct 2003 at 1:00am, Matthias Andree wrote

> 3. runspercycle. The exact technical function is unclear, I presume it's
>    needed to map dumpcycle to a tape count.

I think the reason for runspercycle (and why it's necessary) is quite 
obvious.  Amanda needs to know how much tape it has (total, in a 
dumpcycle) with which to make all the required backups.  The *only* way to 
know that is to know how many times it will be run in a cycle 
(runspercycle) and multiply that by the tape length.

> 4. Amanda defaults runspercycle to dumpcycle, assuming daily backups are
>    made, rather than looking at the tapeinfo. Why that?

By tapeinfo, do you mean tapecycle?  If so, then I see part of the problem 
-- you're putting too much importance on tapecycle.  Tapecycle can mean 
any number of things.  On my archival setup (run once every 6 weeks, level 
0s of everything), tapecycle is set to an absurdly high number (10000).  
That way amanda always wants a new tape.  Even on my daily setup, it's set 
to 12*runspercycle, so that I have a long daily history.  In short, amanda 
can make no conclusions about anything based on tapecycle.

-- 
Joshua Baker-LePain
Department of Biomedical Engineering
Duke University