Hi folks. 

Yes, there is a way to backup to disk only. By using amanda-2.4.3b3 you can do 
your backups to a hard drive or some other file-oriented system.

The way to do this is to configure your tapedev to be something like 
file:/var/spool/backup and to make sure you have a subdirectory named data. You 
label this 'tape' just like you would label a normal tape, using the amlabel 
command and run your backups as usual.

Here are some practical hints for you:

1. Make sure you use 2.4.3b3, otherwise you won't get a file driver. compile 
and configure as usual (read the manual).

2. I find a good way of doing this is to create subdirectories in the backup 
directory organized by date, eg. 20020815 or something, and then symlink them 
to 'data' and label them. This way you can rotate  your directories just like 
tapes. Personally, i run a shell script that does this just before the backups 
run every night.

As the manual suggests, this is also useful if you want to use cd's or dvd's to 
accomplish the same thing.

If you have a SAN or a NAS like i do, its very handy to mount an nfs directory 
and do the dumps there. You can also use smb (samba), but NFS seems to be 
faster.

4. Don't forget to do periodic backups *anyway*, esp. of the index 
directories... never rely on a 'single point of failure'.

Good Luck!

cheers,
john.


Stelar wrote:
> On Friday 16 August 2002 15:41, Theewara Vorakosit wrote:
> > Dear All,
> >     I have 2 machines running Red Hat 7.3. I want to back up content of
> > these machines into an other machines periodically. I plan to use amanda
> > but I don't have tape drive. Can I use amanda to backup into a hard disk?
> > If you can't use amanda, would you please suggest me about backup software.
> > Thanks,
> > Theewara
> 
> >From the archived mailing-list, I think the answer is yes you can.  However, 
> I've been trying to do that and still can't.  Look in archive for the steps, 
> because I can't find any other docs on doing "tapeless" backup.
> 
> Good luck!