* Jon LaBadie <jon AT jgcomp DOT com> [2005-11-28 21:35]:
> 
> Is there a local user "amanda"?  Good chance you will need one.

Yes; portage created that as part of the emerge command.

> > and amreport seems to require an MTA.
> 
> You didn't read the man page closely enough.  It will generate a
> file containing a PostScript copy of the report for viewing.

That -p switch didn't work.  It was still looking for an MTA.
However, the -f switch did work, and I also found some other logs that
were not generated by amreport.  Here's what one of them looks like:

   DISK planner linuxbox /home/mindfuq/.emacs
   START planner date 20051130
   WARNING planner tapecycle (1) <= runspercycle (1)
   INFO planner Adding new disk linuxbox:/home/mindfuq/.emacs.
   START driver date 20051130
   STATS driver startup time 0.081
   START taper datestamp 20051130 label SandBox1 tape 0
   ERROR planner Request to linuxbox timed out.
   FINISH planner date 20051130 time 30.007
   WARNING driver WARNING: got empty schedule from planner
   INFO taper tape SandBox1 kb 0 fm 0 [OK]
   FINISH driver date 20051130 time 29.994

> > Is there a daemon process I need to kick off before doing an
> > amdump?
> 
> No daemon, just processes kicked of by inetd/xinetd.
> You did set that up, correct?

Thanks for the tip.  Portage created three xinetd records, but
disabled them.  I had to enable them.. though I did not change
anything else.  Hopefully the defaults are correct.

The planner request error in the log above was generated after fixing
the xinetd and restarting it, so I'm still stuck.