Hi, Bret ,

on Dienstag, 18. Mai 2004 at 21:59 you wrote to amanda-users:

BM> My real goal here is to set something up that minimizes the amount of
BM> attention it takes for me to make it work.  I'd just stick with what I
BM> have, except that there are new a few PCs that I need to start backing
BM> up as well.

Set up two configs, both using the file-driver.

One for the server, with loong dumpcycle, maybe with a special
"strategy" in the dumptype.

Look up the dumptype-parameter "strategy" in the example amanda.conf.
Maybe "incronly" works for you.

Maybe the second config for the Samba-shares, if you would like to
separate things.

>> If you really want to fill your tapes, you could set up 
>> vtapes (look into the HOWTO-FILE-DRIVER in the docs) that are 
>> nearly as big as your DLTs, and save the vtape-dirs with a 
>> second config to your DLTs.

BM> This sounds promising, but again I want to only write to the tape when
BM> there is enough data to fill it, and I'm not sure how to set up that
BM> config.  I'll read the vtape documents and see what I can learn.

BM> I suppose I can not put amanda into cron, and have a cron job that
BM> sees how full the vtape disk is, and when it is full enough it could
BM> kick off a backup.

Why not?

Setup a config with device=<your-physical-changer>, define a DLE
pointing at your vtapes-dir, let the dumptype contain "dumpcycle 0",
which will make it do always full dumps.

Check fillage, if it is close to tapesize, run amdump.

Do an optional amverify, if OK, you could let the script remove the
vtape from the configs db and "erase" that vtape.

-- This is just quick-and-dirty stuff and should get worked out
better...

>> I think you should just take the straight way, setup your
>> changer, configure a dumptype for your nearly-static stuff 
>> that has a long dumpcycle and start going.
>> 
>> If you leave the tapes out, AMANDA will fill your 
>> holdingdisk, modify the "reserve"-parameter to even get 
>> lev0-dumps in there.

BM> I don't understand the last paragraph.

In a conventional setup it works that way:

If no/the wrong tape is inserted at the runtime of amdump, nothing
will be written to the tapedrive. The images stay in the holdingdisk
and can be flushed to the next tape via amflush or (if the parameter
autoflush is set) is getting flushed automatically at the next run of
amdump.

If the reserve-parameter in amanda.conf is anything else than 100%,
AMANDA will only do incremental backups in that case, but if you have
sufficient space, you can set "reserve" to something else, and then
get full backups to the holdingdisk, even without a tape inserted.

Better?

-- 
best regards,
Stefan

Stefan G. Weichinger
mailto:monitor AT oops.co DOT at