> Now, I know how to use amrecover to restore the files to their original
> location, but overwriting the active database would be Very Bad, so how
> do I restore them to a different location?  

Usually I do this by just making sure that, when starting amrecover, I'm NOT at 
the root of the filesystem where the original file(s) were backed up from. For 
example, if I want to restore /var/db/mysql/somedatabase/sometable.* to an 
alternate 
location, I just cd to /home/toomas, run amrecover from there and the files get 
restored as /home/toomas/var/db/mysql/somedatabase/sometable.*. Amrecover even 
warns
you that you're not at the root of correct filesystem, but in this case that's
exactly what you want.

> (I doubt that it matters, but, just in case, the database directory is 
> on a Windows machine which is backed up by a Linux client via samba.)

Uh oh. I've never had to use Amanda + Samba, so I'm not sure if any of above
is applicable to this situation. Maybe you can smbmount (does such a term 
exist?)
some other share on the Windows machine on the Linux client, cd to there and
then run amrecover.
--
Toomas Aas | toomas.aas AT raad.tartu DOT ee | http://www.raad.tartu.ee/~toomas/
* Everyone has a photographic memory. Some don't have film.