> Lately, with the advent of some network viruses, I've had 
> backups not occur
> when I run amcheck before running amdump. My script, which is run from
> crontab, checks to see if amcheck ran successfully before I 
> allow amdump to
> run. I'm using samba to back up Windows servers across the 
> network to my 
> Sun server. Is there any good reason to have this type of 
> procedure in 
> place where amcheck must be successful before running amdump?

Instead of making amdump run in lockstep to amcheck, you might want to just
have amcheck send you an e-mail if there is a problem. (See the -m option.)
Then amdump will at least try to run even if amcheck failed.

> 
> Also, I don't run amverify either because I lack the time 
> during the backup
> window for this. I'm not sure this is necessary either. What 
> is amverify 
> really checking? I don't think it checks what was dumped on 
> tape vs what is
> on the disk. Is it necessary to make sure  you really have a 
> valid backup?

I never really worried about amverify, because it only makes sure your
backup ran. Instead, I would recommend doing a test restore at least once a
month, which makes sure the backup worked, like amverify AND it makes sure
that you can restore. (In our case, I was backing up SQL Server databases,
and made sure that I could restore the database dump all the way from
tape->amanda->samba->SQL Server.)