Hello.

I have configured a tape changer with a tapedev "file:/foo/bar" and use a
script to flush the collected "slots" from disk to DVD.  This worked fine
for quite a while now.

Now I decided to change my backup-strategy: I modified the changer to
print "0 Drive was not loaded" and exit with status 1 when called from
amdump.  When called from amflush the changer behaves as usual.  The
idea here is to have full backups once in a week (I know I need _not_ to
error out once in a week, but this is a different story) and let degraded
mode collect incrementals.

The problem now is that when the changer reports an error, planner seems to
be confused:

  [ ... ]
  WARNING planner Last full dump of raven:/var on tape  overwritten in 1 run.
  [ ... ]
  ERROR taper no-tape [label VOL06 or new tape not found in rack]
  [ ... ]

Since planner assumes the last full dump is overwritten (on which tape?) it
forces full dumps and fills up the holding disk.

One more curiosity is that the log files of such amdump runs are moved into
the oldlog directory.  Citing from the manpage:

  At the end of each amdump run, log files for runs whose tapes have been
  reused are renamed into a subdirectory of the main log directory (see the
  logdir parameter below) named oldlog.

This looks like amdump thinks it is about to reuse a tape with an empty
name, but such a tape don't even exist.

So what am I doing wrong?  Is degraded mode in conjunction with a changer
meant to work at all?

-- 
-- Josef Wolf -- jw AT raven.inka DOT de --