On Sun, 5 Sep 2004, Gene Heskett wrote:
> On Sunday 05 September 2004 11:57, Alex Owen wrote:
> >
> >I was wondering how ready is the span-and-split patch for production
> > use? Also is there any plan to get this merged into the amanda
> > development branch and from there into the stable branch?
> >
> There has been a rather entrenched resistance to such ideas in the
> amanda camp, mainly because the dependability of such a setup is
> reduced considerably by the act of changing the tape.
  [SNIP]
> I don't think anything that effects that dependability will ever make it
> into mainline.

I understand reluctance to make amanda less reliable. I use it at work
_because_ it is relaiable. However I'm sure that some scheme where by
span-and-split is made "optional" and the current code path is used for
"starndard" backups could be arrived at. Anyhow seeing as John Stange the
span-and-split patch author says is is "alpha-quality" then such
discussion is moot!

On Sun, 5 Sep 2004, John Stange wrote:

> I still consider it alpha-quality.  There are a couple of known bugs
> with my current patch (one critical, albeit with a workaround), which
> I've been too mired in work projects to address.  I hope to get back to
> it in the next few weeks and knock those down.
>
> The patch, for interested parties, is here:
>
> http://www.cs.umd.edu/~building/span_split_2.4.5-current.patch.gz

Maybe when the patch gets to Beta-quality some kind of scheme do get it
merged into the amanda development branch can be hammered out...

Until then may all your backups be sucessful!

Alex Owen