On Wed, May 18, 2005 at 05:02:53PM -0400, Jon LaBadie wrote:
> On Wed, May 18, 2005 at 03:58:35PM -0400, Eric Dantan Rzewnicki wrote:
> > On Wed, May 18, 2005 at 09:47:29PM +0200, Paul Bijnens wrote:
> > > Eric Dantan Rzewnicki wrote:
> > > >Is it normal for some dumps to go directly to tape, skipping the holding
> > > >disk?
> > > >I see that happening sometimes, but wonder if it means I have something
> > > >misconfigured.
> > > Those DLE's with an estimated size larger than the configured value
> > > for holdingdisk will bypass holdingdisk an dump directly to tape.
> > > I noticed that the example amanda.conf file has specified "use 290 m"
> > > for the holdingdisk section.
> > > Many people seem to forget to adapt that arbitrary number there.
> > I have holding disk defined like this:
> > holdingdisk holding {
> >     directory "/holding"
> >     use 0
> >     chunksize 0
> > }
> > #diskdir "/holding"     # where the holding disk is
> > #disksize 295 MB            # how much space can we use on it
> > the 2 commented out option were in the example config and I was using
> > those for awhile, but noticed that these, diskdir and disksize, are not
> > in man amanda, while the holdingdisk name {} is.
> > I didn't start a new thread on this because like the OP I'm using
> > filetapes and am on Debian Sarge: amanda 2.4.4p3-2, 3.0.14a-1. Clients
> > are a mix of Win NT, Win2k, Debian Sarge and Debian Woody (amanda
> > 2.4.2p2-4).
> > I'm beginning to wonder if I need to roll my own amanda debian packages
> > ...
> > gah ... nevermind ... I've been reading that disksize 295MB as 295GB
> > until now ... just noticed as I was about to hit send.
> > But, which of those 2 ways of specifying the holding disk is correct?
> The one you are using.  Here is one of my 3 HD definitions.

Are diskdir and disksize deprecated? if so I'll file a bug with the
debian maintainer to have the example config in the deb package changed.

>    reserve 20      # amount of holding disk to reserve for incrementals
>    autoflush yes
> 
>    holdingdisk hd1 {
>        comment "main holding disk"
>        directory "/w/dumps/amanda/DS1"
>        use -2 Gb
>        #    chunksize 512 Mb
>    }

Thanks. 

What are the implications of using larger vs. smaller chunksizes for the
holding disk? man amanda says the default is 1GB. Are many 1GB files
better for performance or for some other consideration than one big
<size_of_dump>GB file?

use -2 Gb means to use all but 2Gb of the holding disk. Do you do this
to avoid filesystem performance issues that may occur if it were allowed
to fill completely?


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Eric Dantan Rzewnicki  |  Systems Administrator
Technical Operations Division  |  Radio Free Asia
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