Hi Gene,
on Monday, 2003-07-28 at 16:25:00, you wrote:
> >Hmm...I was a bit surprised about this value already, but according
> > to both the DIP switch and mt, compression is off.
> 
> First, mt doesn't know or report on its setting, it can only issue the 
> commands.  Amtapetype has an option to check it, by doing some sort 
> of a destructive write, see man amtapetype for details.

"man mt" tells me it could ("Inquire or set the compression status
(on/off)"), and here it correctly reports the hardware setting on the
drive.

> >Can amanda be told to use bzip2? This P3 is far from fully loaded
> > with its job as a WLAN router and fileserver, and as it cannot be
> > clocked down to save some energy, it might as well do something
> > useful for the calories it burns :)
> 
> Not that I know of Mathias.  When bzip2 settles down to the no 
> mistakes in a year category, it might, but that hasn't happened just 
> yet, it still makes mistakes in decoding from time to time, mistakes 
> you can't get it to repeat willingly either.

OK, that's a point. Seems I've just ben lucky so far.

> Its also a heck of a lot (like maybe 5x?) slower than gzip when both
> are running at maximum compression.  And even gzip 'best' is only of
> use on 1 gigahertz and up machines.

Oh, I've been using it since the A4000/68040/40 days -- but then there
were also much smaller amounts of data to crunch :) For incrementals I'd
still consider using it.

regards
        Matthias