Just to followup - it turns out that the package installed all the
setuid programs as user "bin" (solaris 2.6 package from sunfreeware.com -
one I recommended to someone on the list!).

 (thanks to Jon LaBadie for point out that /tmp/amanda can have errors in
there if you stare long enough).

 chowning them to root fixed the problem, and I can now backup remote
clients.

 However, I can't backup the backup server itself. It seems for some
reason it's never reading the ~amanda/.amandahosts file (ls -lu
~amanda/.amandahosts shows the datestamp not changing between running
amcheck or amdump, and the last time I used "cat" on the file. 

 Because amcheck and amdump are setuid root, I can't run truss on them to
see where it's trying to read it from.

 Is there some way I can find out which directories it's looking for
.amandahosts ? I've already su'd to the amanda user, and catted this file,
so amcheck *should* be able to view it.

John