$CWD '/usr/src' is on disk '/usr' mounted at '/usr'.
200 Disk set to /usr.            <<<=====
Invalid directory - /usr/src

...

amrecover> cd src
Invalid directory - src
amrecover>


Why are /usr/src, /usr/ports and /usr/local all missing from the above
list? How am I supposed to find and recover things under these

subdirectories? I see no signs of trouble in my backup status messages:

Note the line marked <<<=====, amrecover is using your DLE /usr.
In that DLE ./src is excluded.  But you do have another DLE for
/usr/src.  Tell amrecover to use that DLE, don't accept its choice.
(setdisk)

Thank you Jon, that solves my problem.  But I would have to say that is
one odd way for Amanda to behave, from a usability perspective.

Could I suggest that either this be clarified in the documentation or
better yet changed in how amrecover chooses its initial DLE on start-up?

From the amrecover man page:

setdisk diskname [ mountpoint ]
   Specifies which disk to consider (default: the disk
   holding  the  working  directory where amrecover is
   started).  It can only be set after the host is set
   with  sethost.   Diskname is the device name speci-
   fied in the amanda.conf or  disklist  configuration
   file.   The  disk  must  be  local to the host.  If
   mountpoint is not specified, all pathnames will  be
   relative  to  the  (unknown) mount point instead of
   full pathnames.

Using myself as a usability case study:

If that explanation started as 'Specifies which DLE to consider'
I might have twigged.  I guess my bad chain of logic went something
like,

1) I didn't call sethost and Amanda (correctly) picked the host.
2) I didn't call setdisk and Amanda picked the closest physical disk
   partition to the DLE I'm looking for.
3) There must be a reason for (2), as Amanda tends to do the right
   thing.
4) The setdisk command section above talks only of disks and
   devices, not DLE's, so I must be looking for something else.

Now, (4) is obviously a particularly bad assumption, as the man
page tells you how to interpret diskname, but someone could be
under some pressure to recover files when they are going through
this process.

Anyway, if I was Emperor of the universe, amrecover's default
DLE would be the one closest to the directory you are in regardless
of whether it was the root of an actual partition or not, and the man
page would explicitly mention DLE's as well as disks and devices when
explaining setdisk.

Thanks again Jon,
- Bruce