On Thu, 15 Aug 2002, Gene Heskett wrote:

> On Thursday 15 August 2002 14:49, John Koenig wrote:

> >So does the chunksize parameter affect performance in any way?
>
> Only in that it prevents troubles with a filesystem that can't
> handle large files.  There was, at the time amanda was first
> deployed, a 2gig limit to the filesize in many of its various
> platforms filesystems.  Many of those limits are now historical,
> but you'd hate to find it out by doing a recovery and having it
> blow up because a tape of 20gigs was all one big file.

A 20 GB dump _is_ all one big file.  Chunking is only implemented
on the holding disk during dumping.  The chunks are merged back
into a single file when spooled from holding disk to tape.  When
you do a recovery what comes back is a single large file.  If you
want to recover the whole dump from tape to your holding disk
before pulling out the files that need to be restored, then you'll
have to split it up by hand in the process.

-Mitch