On Tue, May 27, 2003 at 02:48:39PM -0500, Martin, Jeremy wrote:
> I have amanda working ok backing the server up as well as another client. 
> However I'm still not quite certain I understand how the restore process 
> works.
> 
> I want to have one full backup every 7 days, so I understand that each day 
> the "tape" (still just using a local folder to simulate tapes for now) would 
> get about 1/7th of the data written to it + any incremental data. But I'm not 
> sure how I can determine which tapes I need to restore in the event that a 
> restore is necessary.

You may have a wrong impression about the "1/7th".  It isn't that 1/7th of /usr 
gets
backed up every day.  Rather, in an installation with a lots of disklist 
entries (DLE's)
an average of 1/7th of the total data will get level 0 backups each day.  This 
is done
by selecting individual DLE's, not by doing 1/7th of any DLE.  /usr will get a 
full backup
at a maximum interval of every 7th day, sometimes more frequently for balancing.

> 
> Let's say I have been backing up the /usr folder and it has been slightly 
> change every day for the past week. So I'd have to restore the backup from 7 
> days ago, then from 6 days ago, then 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 days ago? Or does amanda 
> have some way to search for a given file name or folder name and it will then 
> spit out which tape(s) I'd need to restore to get those files or that folder 
> back?
> 

Your nightly report will show when the last full backup occured, or use 
amoverview <config>.

You can also use amrecover which will let you view the list of files backed up 
using
commands like 'ls', 'cd', ...  You can then mark which files you want and 
amrecover
will tell you what tapes you will need.  When amanda asks for the tapes, make 
sure
the tape is rewound.  "oh good, that's the one in the drive" is not sufficient.

-- 
Jon H. LaBadie                  jon AT jgcomp DOT com
 JG Computing
 4455 Province Line Road        (609) 252-0159
 Princeton, NJ  08540-4322      (609) 683-7220 (fax)