Actually the reuse/no-reuse parameter doesn't tell you whether AMANDA will
accept the tape on the next run; it refers to whether AMANDA considers that
tape in the media pool available for that config. Unlike a program such as
Lone-Tar Backup where you can put just about anything in the drive and it
will use it, AMANDA actually manages the tape pool and forces you to use the
correct tape in order.

If you look at tapelist (/usr/local/etc/Amanda/[config]/tapelist), note the
tape on the top of the list -- that tape and that tape only will be accepted
for the next run.  

A quicker way to check is to, while logged in as the Amanda backup user, run
/usr/local/sbin/amadmin [config] tape (e.g. /usr/local/sbin/amadmin daily
tape).  The response message will tell you the tape it expects next in a
message such as 

"The next Amanda run should go onto tape Daily03 or a new tape."

If you want to have 35 tapes in your tapelist, you can't set aside
sub-pools.  Let's say you set aside tapes 1-4 for Monday's job but it only
took three tapes to do the backup.  You must insert tape 4 as the first tape
in the next run; you may think of Tape 5 as the first tape in the Tuesday
set, but AMANDA doesn't -- it wants Tape 4 next.



Larry A. Dunham
Firstech, Inc.
Decatur, IL



-----Original Message-----
From: owner-amanda-users AT amanda DOT org [mailto:owner-amanda-users AT amanda 
DOT org]
On Behalf Of Jay Ted
Sent: Tuesday, August 17, 2004 8:38 AM
To: amanda-users AT amanda DOT org
Subject: Amanda refusing to reuse old tapes

Am I missing something really easy here.... 
 
I have 35 tapes in rotation with a Dell Powervault 120T 7 tape autochanger. 
 
Usually the backups only take about 2 or 3 tapes, I have runtapes set to 4
just in case.  This is still a work in progress.  The problem that I am
having is that when amanda uses the the last set of tapes (DailyDLT-29-35) 
and the next available tapes (DailyDLT-01-07) are loaded, amanda thinks they
are active and refuses to use them.  For example, even though the tape list
shows an entry like "20040801 DailyDLT-01 reuse " well over 
the 7 day dumpcycle and not even containing data that is needed for a full
dump, amanda still thinks the tape is active and won't use it.  For a
workaround i keep having to amrmtape and amlabel to relabel it and set 
tapelist right- I know I must be missing something simple...  Am I correct
in understanding that by setting the dumpcycle to one week that amanda
should happily reuse any tape older than seven days provided there 
were not any errors in the previous weeks run? 
 
Here's an excerpt from my amanda.conf: 
dumpcycle 7 days  
runspercycle 7       
tapecycle 35 tapes 
bumpsize 20 Mb     
bumpdays 1            
bumpmult 4             
etimeout -3600  
dtimeout 1800   
ctimeout 1300 
tapebufs 20 
runtapes 4       
 
Thanks for any help!! 
 
Jay 
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