Howdy,

Here's the problem:
I mounted a remote file system on a GNU/Linux system using autofs, and
amdump fails to back up some files on this file system due to
"Permission denied." I verified that the files which give this error
are those that have the 'read' permission bit turned off for 'others'.

I thought about it and thought that it made sense that 'amdump'
wouldn't be able to read it since it runs as 'amanda', and not root.

But how is it that amdump is able to read all files in all other file
systems (as if it were root), including local file systems and
NFS-mounted (non-autofs) file systems? Though 'Amanda' user is in the
'disk' group, but when amanda runs using 'gtar', it does not read the
raw device ("/dev/???"), so having group access to the raw devices
shouldn't help, right?

Besides, it has no problem reading the NFS-mounted (non-autofs) file
systems either, and NFS-mounted volumes are not owned by group 'disk'.

So my questions are:
1. How exactly does Amanda's client get read access to all files that
it dumps when it uses 'gtar'?
2. Does any one know why it couldn't read all files on an auto-mounted
file system?

Thanks in advance!

Ivan