If I read your crontab comments correctly, you run amanda every night
but only have a tape in the drive on Friday nights? If so, and if
the Friday night/Sat. AM run is the only time you have crashes, then
I would lean towards either a power supply problem or a scsi driver
problem, although Edwin Hakkennes' comments about bad RAM are a
possibility.
Since bad power can manifest itself as all kinds of strange problems,
you might want to check your voltages under load before you get too
deep into hardware swapping.
Frank
--On Monday, August 19, 2002 15:07:54 -0500 Jonathan Johnson <Jonathan.Johnson AT
minnetonkasoftware DOT com> wrote:
Dear Frank (et al.),
On Mon, 19 Aug 2002 14:16:22 -0500, Frank Smith <fsmith AT hoovers DOT com>
wrote:
> I doubt it is an Amanda problem (you might want to also try the
> linux-managers mailing list <http://www.linuxmanagers.org/> ), but
> I'll toss out some suggestions of things to look at anyway:
Thanks for the mail list tip -- I've subscribed and will try that venue
as well.
> If this really is going to be an 'omni-server', 128M seems a little
> small. Probably not your crash problem unless you're filling up
> swap, which you seem to have enough of.
Some day I hope to upgrade the ram, which is why I partitioned an
amount of swap space (> 512 Mb) that is pretty ridiculous for a system
with only 128 Mb.
> The 300W power supply may also be too small, especially if your tape
> drives are internal.
I'm trying to figure out what the potential aggregate power consumption
of the system's components might be -- there are surprisingly few
technical specifications that state this, though! :(
> It could be the kernel. We have had serious issues with the virtual
> memory manger in a few of the mid 2.4 series, although the earlier
> and later versions worked fine.
Perhaps I'll go with the latest RH 7.2 updated version then and try
patching it myself. Is 2.4.9-34 an improvement on 2.4.9-31, though?
I've tried to remain RPM-based as much as possible to make life simpler
for everyone; I even used the amanda RPMs that came with RH 7.2 (and
I'd do it again, bub!). Sometimes, though, one has to live on the
cutting edge...
> To make it relevant to Amanda-users, what's special about Saturday?
> Are you only running backups once a week, or do you run a different
> config then?
Glad you asked. Here's our Crontab, with e-mail addresses removed:
# $Id: Crontab,v 1.5 2002/08/16 21:04:55 amanda Exp $
#
# Crontab entries for automated backup with amanda.
#
# The backup schedule expects no tape Sa-Th, but degraded dumps are
# performed.
20 12,16 * * 0-4,6 /usr/sbin/amcheck -clm DailySet1
30 22 * * 0-4,6 /usr/sbin/amdump DailySet1
# The degraded dumps are flushed Fr a.m. There is no mt offline
# because the amcheck.[N] file does not get generated with amflush -f
# (and then the output goes to stdout). So the first subsequent
# amcheck will be responsible for seeing if we finished the flush,
# ejected the tape, and inserted the requisite tape.
20 9 * * 5 /usr/sbin/amcheck -m DailySet1
50 9 * * 5 /usr/sbin/amcheck -M... DailySet1
30 10 * * 5 echo -e "\ny\n" | /usr/sbin/amflush DailySet1
# Expect to label a new tape on the afternoon of the last Friday of
# each month
I was rather proud of this little snippet of shell programming... :)
10 12 * * 5 [ `date -d "1 week" +\%m` != `date +\%m` ] && \
/usr/sbin/amlabel DailySet1 `date +DailySet1o\%Y\%m`
# The full dump is run Fr late p.m. Part of our current setup is to
# make sure that the Perforce depot is properly set up for backup.
20 12 * * 5 /usr/sbin/amcheck -m DailySet1
30 12 * * 5 ls DailySet1/index | \
xargs -l /usr/sbin/amadmin DailySet1 force > \
/dev/null
20 13-16 * * 5 /usr/sbin/amcheck -M... DailySet1
20 22 * * 5 ./p4backup
30 22 * * 5 /usr/sbin/amdump DailySet1; \
/bin/mt -f /dev/st0 offline
# The new tape labeled on the last Friday of the previous month
# should be marked as not reusable.
10 6 1 * * /usr/sbin/amadmin DailySet1 no-reuse \
`date -d yesterday +DailySet1o\%Y\%m`
This should answer your question as well as display some ideas about
Amanda automation. It works very well so far.
I thought about multiple configs, but then the coordination of indexes,
dump dates, etc. just gets needlessly complex. So I just bully around
a single config.
> Good luck,
> Frank
>
> --On Monday, August 19, 2002 13:15:39 -0500 Jonathan Johnson <Jonathan.Johnson
AT MinnetonkaSoftware DOT com> wrote:
>
> > <snip>
--
/ Jonathan R. Johnson | "Every word of God is flawless." \
| Minnetonka Software, Inc. | -- Proverbs 30:5 |
\ johnsonj AT MinnetonkaSoftware DOT com | My own words only speak for me. /
--
Frank Smith fsmith AT hoovers
DOT com
Systems Administrator Voice: 512-374-4673
Hoover's Online Fax: 512-374-4501
|
