--On Tuesday, July 05, 2005 10:47:59 -0600 Graeme Humphries <graeme.humphries 
AT vcom DOT com> wrote:

> On Tue, 2005-07-05 at 11:41 -0500, Frank Smith wrote:
>> amcheck runs as your Amanda user and may not have permissions to the
>> directory where your exclude file lives.
> 
> I *thought* I had amanda running as root on the client, but I may be
> wrong. It doesn't complain that it can't access any of those shares,
> which only root should be able to have full access to.

You really shouldn't be running Amanda as root, but as a separate
user.  When you run 'make install' as root it installs the executables
that need root access suid root.  Then when your backups run it can
access everything necessary.
 
>>   'optional' just means it's ok to not be there, but 'permission denied'
>> is an error and Amanda reports it as such.
> 
> That's not what the online man page seems to say:
> 
> "If optional is specified for exclude list, then amcheck will not
> complain if the file doesn't exist or is not readable."
> 
> The file is not readable (permission denied entering the directory that
> contains is). Maybe it only checks for permission problems on the exact
> file, and not on containing directories?

In my experience the error occurs if Amanda can't access the directory
to see if the file is there.  Perhaps the docs need to be rephrased.
The error is harmless, runtar can access the exclude file (as root)
and will do what you want (assuming your file is correct).

Frank

> 
> Graeme



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