On Tue, 26 Nov 2002 at 3:43pm, Nitesh Kumar A. wrote

> I need some advice on this. I get confused with dumpcycles, etc.
> 
> I need one full backup on the 1st day of every month. And then from sunday
> to saturday through the entire month, I need to take incremental 
> backup. How do I take it? I mean incremental backup from the 1st day of
> every month to the last day of the month.
> 
> Or essentially, like the towers of hanoi:
> 
> sun mon tue wed thu fri sat sun
> 0   3   2   5   4   7   6   9/1
> 
> Is it feasible to take it this way?
> 
> Else, suggest some decent solution for my backups.

This is a common new user problem with amanda.  When you use amanda, it's 
best to let amanda set the schedule.  A dumpcycle is the maximum time 
between full backups for any particular filesystem.  runspercycle is how 
many amdumps you'll do in a dumpcycle, and tapecycle is how many tapes 
you'll let amanda use (should be *at least* 1.5x runspercycle, preferably 
2x).  With those values, amanda will spread the level 0s throughout the 
dumpcycle with the goal of equalizing each night's backups.

Forcing amanda into your schedule can be done, but gets very painful very 
quickly -- it wasn't designed that way.

-- 
Joshua Baker-LePain
Department of Biomedical Engineering
Duke University