I use amanda successfully to back up a number of systems remotely, one
via VPN across the Internet.  I'm having trouble, however, with my
local system (also the amanda server host) where it seems to be
difficult to get any backups to work.  The box is running Gentoo
Linux, xinetd, Amanda version 2.4.4p2, Linux kernel 2.4.20.  A typical
report shows:
  
FAILURE AND STRANGE DUMP SUMMARY:
  vishnu     hdb2 lev 0 FAILED [disk hdb2, all estimate failed]
  vishnu     hdb1 lev 0 FAILED [disk hdb1, all estimate failed]

... and the backup fails.
  
This particular notice is from a test backup on a drive with 2
partitions, one ext2 and the other reiserfs.  The dumptype on both is
comp-user or comp-user-tar.  All files and directories on both
partitions are mode ugo+r.  The amanda xinetd config contains
'only-from' entries for both the private IP address of the box and
'localhost'.  /etc/amandahosts likewise contains entries for both the
hostname of the box and 'localhost:

$ cat /etc/amandahosts
localhost amanda
localhost root
[snip snap!]
vishnu.fmp.com amanda
vishnu.fmp.com root

Does anyone have any ideas what I might try to solve this problem?

-- 
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