That makes perfect sense, thanks. Basically, whatever version of dump lives on 
the target host is what defines capabilities in this regard. So still, I'd be 
limited to, say, ext2/3 filesystems if I tried to use linux dump. 
Unfortunately this works against solving my problem!

I'm trying to use amanda to back up mostly linux and bsd, which works 
great...but also have some winXP boxes (which I know I can backup using 
amanda/samba) and some OS X units. 

New question, same error:

I've got xtar running on osx boxes, and it works well with amanda AFAICT. The 
only problem is that I get the "disk ... offline" error when trying to backup 
any files on mounted volumes (non-root drives).

osx1 /Users standard

Works fine 

osx1 /Volumes/hfs-mounted-part standard

Gives the "disk offline" error (the hfs-mounted-part is a mounted/functioning 
hfs or hfs+ partition from an attached drive).

The mounted external volume contains a mac OS9 partition, so I'm hoping to 
sweep all the backups using just amanda (lofty goal, that!! But so nice if it 
would work...) 

Thanks!


On Tuesday 01 June 2004 07:26 am, Jon LaBadie wrote:
> > Seems like this would be the way to back up a partition regardless of
> > formatting (like an HFS+ or NT part, which is really what I'm after).
>
> If the program you tell amanda to use for the backup is a version
> of tar, then it can only backup files and directories.  That is a
> property of tar, not amanda.  And of course, for there to be files
> and directories, the partition must be mounted.
>
> If instead you tell amanda to use a version of dump, those programs
> generally work at the device level (even when told to work on a
> mount point) and should be able to backup umounted partitions.