On Monday 17 November 2003 04:32, Paul Bijnens wrote:
>Danny Ybarra wrote:
>> I found this statement in the WHATS.NEW file.  Can you
>> explain what it means?  Sorry for being such a newbie
>> but I really want to start using Amanda.
>>
>> * MULTIPLE TAPES IN ONE RUN
>> [ ... ]
>
>Funny that I'm always pointing people to read the files in the docs/
>directory, while only now I notice the WHATS.NEW is rather old.
>It should have been nice if the items in the file were marked with
>a version number for which the item applies.
>
>Current status (2.4.4p1) is that multiple tapes are fully supported.
>Using more tapes is done by using a changer glue script.  There are
>different changer scripts. Some are for real changers (chg-scsi,
>chg-zd-mtx,...).
>You can also use a human changer if you only one tape device
>(chg-manual).  Or you can view multiple tape drives as a changer
>with the chg-multi script.
>There is even an feature called "RAIT", where you can stripe your
>backups simultaneously over multiple tapes, include a redundancy
>stripe, just like RAID for disks.
>
>If you have only one tapedrive and no "human" changer available at
> dump time, but you do have a large holdingdisk, you can dump to one
> tape at night, keeping the overflow on disk, and flushing it to
> tape in the morning.
>
>May I point you to some new feature to help fill the tapes to 100%:
>see "taperalgo" and some explanation to get it to work decently:
>
>http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?l=amanda-users&m=106277015010167&w=2
>
>(Gene: the above link explains how to avoid the behaviour you're
> seeing in your setup.)

Great, Paul.  I've now added this to my amanda.conf.  Many thanks for 
the pointer.  And since I now have reduced my disk count by one, I 
reduced the dumpers by one too, which should help serialize things.  
I do use spindle numbers too, so I doubt the dumper count reduction 
will slow it down any in actual fact.  And I hear it changing to the 
third tape right now. (slow DDS2 drive ):

>From a status report:
dumped          :  56  11384400k  11193857k (101.70%) ( 92.68%)
wait for writing:  38   3014138k   2816212k (107.03%) ( 24.54%)
wait to flush   :   0         0k         0k (100.00%) (  0.00%)
writing to tape :   1    624620k    624620k (100.00%) (  5.08%)
failed to tape  :   0         0k         0k (  0.00%) (  0.00%)
taped           :  17   7745642k   7753025k ( 99.90%) ( 63.05%)
  tape 1        :  12   3951602k   3958985k DailySet1-03
  tape 2        :   5   3794040k   3794040k DailySet1-04
  tape 3        :   0         0k         0k DailySet1-05
4 dumpers idle  : not-idle

So whats left should fit on tape 3.  And by tomorrow nights finish, I 
should be done playing catchup.

-- 
Cheers, Gene
AMD K6-III@500mhz 320M
Athlon1600XP@1400mhz  512M
99.27% setiathome rank, not too shabby for a WV hillbilly
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by Gene Heskett are:
Copyright 2003 by Maurice Eugene Heskett, all rights reserved.