I wasn't using that extra space between = and 24.  Does the  "** 
(process:17472): CRITICAL **: parse error in configuration overwrites"  give us 
any clues.  Would it help if I cleaned out the installation and recompiled?
Two earlier rpm versions of amanda were installed previously.

>>> "Dustin J. Mitchell" <dustin AT zmanda DOT com> 7/23/2008 8:23 AM >>>
On Wed, Jul 23, 2008 at 1:30 AM, Doyle Collings <dcollings AT loganutah DOT 
org> wrote:
> amandabackup@fs2:/> /usr/local/sbin/amdump fullback -o 
> tapetype:LTO4:blocksize=2048
>
> results:
> argument "": an integer is expected
> argument "": Tape blocksize must be at least 32 KBytes
> ** (process:17472): CRITICAL **: parse error in configuration overwrites

The only way I can reproduce that error is to write (note the extra space):

dustin@euclid ~/devel/projects/amanda/t/amanda $ amdump Conf -o
tapetype:DISK:blocksize= 2048
argument "": an integer is expected
argument "": Tape blocksize must be at least 32 KBytes
errors processing config file at /A/p/sbin/amgetconf line 275.

-- 
Storage Software Engineer
http://www.zmanda.com