Mark_Conty AT cargill DOT com said:
> Hi --
>
> I did a search through the FAQ-O-Matic and through the Yahoo egroup
> for
> 'share holding' and didn't find anything specific in response to
> this
> question, so I think it's safe to ask:
>
>       Is it a bad idea to have a central /holdingdisk/ area in use by
>       multiple concurrent dump sets?

If you're worried about collision of holding disk directories, you
can set a different subdirectory for each configuration. So config1
uses /holdingdisk/config1/. config2 uses /holdingdisk/config2/, etc.
All configs may use any holding disk space that is available, and
you won't get any collisions.

> But before you answer that, maybe I should ask this:
>
>       Is it a bad idea to run multiple concurrent dump sets in the first
> place?
>
> (While searching the egroup archive for an answer to this, I came
> across
> comments from some of the Amanda veterans that led me to believe
> that I
> should be using a _single_ backup set, instead of running multiple
> concurrent ones.  Am I reading that correctly?  If so, then the
> original
> question is moot...)

It depends on what you want to do; what do you mean by concurrent? I
use multiple dump sets: a daily set that runs every day except
Wednesday. On Wednesdays, I write to a separate weekly set unless
it's the first Wednesday of the month. If 1st Wed of month, I write
to a separate monthly set unless it's first Wed of year. If 1st Wed
of year, I write to a separate yearly set. This setup lets me keep
archival offsite backups.

So I use multiple sets, but only for archival purposes.

BTW, to do what I do requires more than the standard "call
amcheck/amdump from cron" method, since there's no way I know of in
cron to specify "day before 1st Wednesday of month unless 1st
Wednesday of year", etc. I wrote a script to pick which set to
check/dump; this script is called from cron every day. It in turn
calls amdump or amcheck with the correct backup set. If you don't
mind looking at hacked-together perl code, you can go look at it.
It's at

http://sourceforge.net/projects/ampick/

<snipped>

-- 
Kurt Yoder
Sport & Health network administrator