>Is there a reason indexing isn't on by default?  They don't really take up
>that much space ...

I beg to differ:

  $ du -sk /var/amanda/index/champion
  4641743 /var/amanda/index/champion
  
Yup.  Four and a half *GBytes*.

Now, granted, this is on a very large Amanda configuration.  But it's
not peanuts even in my "small" configs.

>... and recovery is an all or nothing deal without them.  ...

Not at all, although it depends on how things are set up.  Using dump
(instead of GNU tar) provides a fairly easy to manage shell to pick
and choose what to restore.  Knowing which tapes are needed might be an
issue -- it depends on the restore scenerio.

>Just curious as why some of the defaults are the way they are.

Ah, now that's a completely different question :-).  The answer, as is
often the case, is "because it's always been that way".  Changing the
default could be a *big* surprise to folks who upgrade.

>Frank

John R. Jackson, Technical Software Specialist, jrj AT purdue DOT edu