Stefan,
Gene,
Paul,

Unfortunately my amanda run didn't run any more quickly.

>From amanda.conf - I can send more if you want to see more.

org "NOTES_DLT"         # your organization name for reports
mailto "amanda-adm AT newton.wadsworth DOT org"        # the mailing list for 
operators
 at your site
dumpuser "bin"          # the user to run dumps under

# changed from 8 to 4... can't explain excessive time to backup 4 partitions -ck
inparallel 4            # maximum dumpers that will run in parallel
# maxdumps, added 21-jan-2004 BRC
maxdumps   2            # max (concurrent) to be run on any individual "client"

disklist
--------
# Notes server backup
wcnotes /             comp-root 
wcnotes /maildb       comp-user
wcnotes /maildb2      comp-user
wcnotes /export/home  comp-user

that is it, just the one client. Suppose I can set maxdumps to 4, anyway
no sense in having inparallel != maxdumps with only a single client.

How sensitive is amanda.conf (disklist or others) to white space ?
I've notices that its often 

keyword   value <tab># comment

Just to be paraniod I changed the space to a tab.

Am I missing some other parameter that controls parallelism ?

I was thinking of running amstatus from cron very 15 minutes
to watch it but that still isn't much of a diagnostic, more to
confirm lack of parallelism.

                                                thanks,

                                                Brian

---
   Brian R Cuttler                 brian.cuttler AT wadsworth DOT org
   Computer Systems Support        (v) 518 486-1697
   Wadsworth Center                (f) 518 473-6384
   NYS Department of Health        Help Desk 518 473-0773