If I was troubleshooting this problem, I'd want to verify that all the right
network communications are able to occur.  I'd have 1 window for every
interface that my packets are going to be touching, and in every windows I'd
be running tcpdump with the appropriate options to show me the amanda
packets.  (If the machine times are in sync, it'll be a lot easier to
follow, too.)

I'd make the necessary changes to amanda so that _only_ the troubled amanda
client is attempted-- this would let me make the attempt again and again
during the day, w/o worrying about messing up (or starting) other real
backups.  (You could even have a very small partition on the client get
backed rather than the "real" ones.)

Of course, if the two machines always have "normal" communications going on
anyway (like if the web server is pulling data from a database on the amanda
server), then tcpdumps will need to be very selective.

====
Here's my understanding of your setup, please correct where wrong:
amanda client---(10.1.10.x net)---Firewall---(10.1.8.x net)---amanda server
Your amanda client and the firewall are both running solaris 6.
Your amanda server is running RH 8.

Are there any other things that could account for an increase in network
traffic during the nighttime hours?  I've noticed with our own CP firewall
that quiet connections get timed out much faster when there's lots of
connections occurring than when the network is not busy (eg. an ssh
connection to my home computer could be left all weekend with no I/O w/o any
problems, but monday morning if I left it for 1/2 hour, I'd have lost the
connection).  

Good luck,
-ron


-----Original Message-----
From: Rebecca Pakish Crum [mailto:rebecca AT unterlaw DOT com]
Sent: Monday, May 19, 2003 12:46 PM
To: gene.heskett AT verizon DOT net; amanda-users AT amanda DOT org
Subject: RE: Still getting timeout, is there ANYTHING else I should look
at?


> How about reconfguring it to put those files someplace a bit more 
> permanent long enough to troubleshoot this?

Yup...that seems like a great idea now!!! Too bad I didn't do that
awhile ago! (argh) Hindsight is of course 20/20...I'll do that now for
future reference.

> I was "Just checkin", girl.  One tries not to leave too many stones 
> unturned when looking for clues :)

Well call me Nancy friggin' Drew, then...because I am beating my head
against a wall here!!
 
> Yeah, 'tis kinda ancient, and I notice Jon's being quiet, too quiet, 
> he is letting me hang my self by my own petard here. :-)

'Kinda' ancient??? Don't be nice on my account. I've been trying to get
this baby upgraded for a year+ to no avail, complaining about outdated
SSL/SSH, apache, OS, etc. The company we sold this site to doesn't do
anything open source/unix. They are recoding the entire thing on some
windows platform.

But I digress - If it's a sol6 thing, I would love to hear it, at least
then I could solve it. We really don't do anything to this box except
for clearing the apache logs once a week and rebooting it every
Wednesday (per the request of the new owners. Hey - I just work here.) 
> 
> OTOH, conversation that might bring up the problem is always good.  
> Me, I know diddly about solaris other than what little has soaked 
> in thru osmosis from this group.  And thats not a lot...

I work more in solaris here than linux...we kept our backup servers in
linux because we already had the tape hardware for intel...