--On Saturday, October 23, 2004 01:31:13 -0400 Charles Sprickman <spork AT 
fasttrackmonkey DOT com> wrote:

> Hi,
> 
> I just want to make sure I'm getting this correct...  We've already got a 
> standard amanda config running with a 2 month dumpcycle, and we're quite 
> happy with that.
> 
> Now we're looking to do some long-term archiving of our systems.  We want the 
> following:
> 
> -full level 0's every month
> -runs out of cron 6 times/month
> 
> Basically I'm looking at something like this:
> 
> org "archive"                   # name of this config
> mailto "spork AT spork DOT us"         # where reports go
> dumpcycle 30            # how often a 'full dump' happens (0=full every time)
> tapecycle 9999          # min tapes in a cycle (never want to overwrite)
> runspercycle 6          # 0=same as dumpcycle (how many times run per cycle)
> 
> Meaning in our case that cron will run this 6 times in 30 days.
> 
> Additionally, all dumptypes are set to "noincr".
> 
> Am I correct in assuming that when I fire this up Amanda will try to space 
> these dumps out over the 6 runs?

No.  Amanda does some level of backup of each disklist entry (DLE) on each
run, and tries to space out the level 0's across the dumpcycle in order to
level out the amount of tape needed for each run.  You told it not to do
incrementals, so it does a full of each DLE on every run.
> 
> I ask because I did a few test runs with two small tar backups on each host 
> and it grabbed a level 0 of all of them on the first run, then again on the 
> second run.
> 

That would be expected.

> What am I doing wrong?

You could just let it run the way it is and have a full backup every 5 days.
If that uses more tape than you want, then you need to make multiple configs,
each one with a subset of your DLEs, run monthly, staggering the days they
run.

By the way, be sure you set 'record no' in your archive config or you will
confuse your standard config as to when the last level 0's were done.

Frank

> 
> Thanks,
> 
> Charles

-- 
Frank Smith                                      fsmith AT hoovers DOT com
Sr. Systems Administrator                       Voice: 512-374-4673
Hoover's Online                                   Fax: 512-374-4501