Hi
I am trying to backup 5 clients currently of which 2 does not want to
work for some reason.

The error I get is:
ERROR: rian-dlin: [could not access /home/oscar3/SciFi
(/home/oscar3/SciFi): Permission denied]
ERROR: rukh: [could not access /u/oscar3/dev (/u/oscar3/dev): Permission
denied]

I can't see any reason why permission would be denied.

Originally I thought it might be a user problem because on the
server(debian) amanda is run under the backup user and on the
clients(various rh's) with the amanda user.

However on some clients it works. Just for in case I did create a backup
user on the client machines and assigned the user to the disk group the
one which amanda belongs to. However just configuring the .amandahosts
file on the client with the settings: servername.domain backup 
seems to be enough to allow amanda to work.

The xinetd is configured correctly so that is not a problem.

The only difference between working and non-working clients I could see
so far is that the home directory of amanda differs. On working clients
it's /u/amanda and non-working it's /var/lib/amanda. I did check and the
permissions are exactly the same for both home directories. drwxr-xr-x.

I am currenlty checking if changing the home directory will make a
difference but any other tips/advice/solution would be appreciated.

Groete

Gerhardus Geldenhuis