> > I think you will have to set up multiple disklist / configs 
> to try and
> > force Amanda to do this.
> 
> Hmm this seems abit complicated to me as im still trying to grasp the
> basic concepts of amanda? If you could point me towards some reading
> or howto i would be very grateful!

If your limiting factor is bandwidth, you might be better off fiddling with
the tape size until AMANDA is only tying up the DSL line for the amount of
time you have the DSL line to yourself. AMANDA automatically balances the
full backups across all of the tapes in a tapecycle so that backups are
predictable in terms of time and tape used.

You should also look at client-side compression, which could save a lot of
time depending on how compressible your data is. 

> 
> > Amanda herself determines the level and when that level will be done
> > within the dumpcycle.  She tries to balance the amount of 
> data backed up
> > each run so as to maximize tape usage.
> 
> So what you are telling me is that i can't control wich days 
> to do the full
> backup and which days to do incremental

Yes, and most people don't want to, once they get the hang of it. Spreading
the level 0 backups across tapes provides you with some protection in case a
tape fails, better use of tape capacity, predictable backup durations, and
warnings, rather than failures, when your backups get larger. (If you see a
lot of backups being bumped, it's might be because your level 0's are
getting bigger.)

> 
> > Each fs backed up MUST be able to fit on a tape.  You need 
> to specify
> > multiple tapes / use of a tape changer would be desireable.
> 
> Ok let me get this straight fs here means filesystem ok? a filesystem
> is per/machine? or is it per time amanda is running? So when amanda is
> running and doing a full backup all the filesystems listed in disklist
> should be able to fit on one tape? Im using the newest beta which will
> backup to our NAS box with 400GB available so i guess its just a
> question to fool amanda to think that im running some big DLT that can
> have +80GB on one tape or so? Is that right?

Each partition on each machine has to be less than the size of one tape.
Since you're using a file system for a tape drive, you can set the tape size
arbitrarily. Tape size/speed is usually the bottleneck in a backup system,
but it sounds like the network is the limit in your case. Use the tape size
to control how much is backed up each night. You might also need to set the
netusage parameter to some fraction of your DSL speed to keep AMANDA from
flooding the line and timing out. 

Here's how I'd calculate it, your numbers will probably be different: 

SDSL @ 768 kilobits per second is about 76 kilobytes per second

I'd set netusage to 60 KB, or about 80%. (I have confidence in my DSL
provider, can you tell?)

Assuming you can run your backups for 12 hours per night: 

12 * 60 * 60 = 43200 seconds of run time per night

43200 * 60 = 2592000 kilobytes per night, or about 2.5 Gb. 

> 
> Cosmic ray particles crashed through the hard disk platter
> 

I prefer alpha particles. They can't get through aluminium foil, but lusers
don't know that.