I use a separate config for Archives. I find it easy to maintain and
easy to think about. The disklist looks the same for both. And the
amanda.conf looks the same for both (with the exception of the config
name). 

I do monthly archives. So I set up the amanda.conf for two years worth
of tapes (24 tapes). When it's time for me to make an archive, I do the
following:

- find a new tape and label it with amlabel
- force a full dump of all filesystems with "amadmin force" command
- run the amdump
- verify I can restore from the tape by grabbing random files and
directories off the archive and comparing them to what's on the
filesystem (for static files at least)

I've been doing this for a couple years, and it's worked out really
well.

Regards,
 
Michael Martinez
Linux System Administrator
ISTM/CSREES
United States Department of Agriculture


--> -----Original Message-----
--> From: JC Simonetti [mailto:simonetti AT echo DOT fr] 
--> Sent: Wednesday, October 22, 2003 11:57 AM
--> To: Toralf Lund
--> Cc: amanda-users AT amanda DOT org
--> Subject: Re: How to handle archival runs (again)?
--> 
--> 
--> For archival purposes, personnaly I use a combination of 
--> your two solutions.
--> I use a different config of Amanda with "dumpcycle 0", 
--> "strategy noinc", but the main goal of a different config 
--> for me is concerning the logs: it's easier to restore data 
--> if your archives are not in the middle of your incremental backups.
--> Moreover if you play with the "no-reuse" option in the 
--> middle of your daily backups, one day you will forget to 
--> no-use a tape and erase your precious data...
--> 
--> I like my solution because I run 2 different separated 
--> configs which have no relation between each other, one for 
--> my daily backups and one for my archives when I have to 
--> archive some data.
--> 
--> 
--> On Wed, 22 Oct 2003 17:35:38 +0200
--> Toralf Lund <toralf AT procaptura DOT com> wrote:
--> 
--> > Reviewing the amanda config again in conjunction with a 
--> tape format 
--> > update...
--> > I forget (and list search doesn't return anything 
--> conclusive): How do 
--> > you people recommend handling archival runs? There are 
--> two obvious ways:
--> > 
--> >    1. Via a special config.
--> >    2. Using the normal config, but special labels and 
--> "amadmin ... no-reuse"
--> > 
--> > What are the pros and cons of each of these?
--> > 
--> > Note: I know that one argument against 2) is that you 
--> normally want 
--> > different behaviour with regard to incrementals, but that 
--> doesn't really 
--> > apply in my case as there are no incrementals in any case 
--> (in the main 
--> > config; I have a separate one for incrementals as they 
--> are written to a 
--> > different medium.)
--> > 
--> > - Toralf
--> > 
-->