On Wednesday 20 October 2004 22:33, Jon LaBadie wrote:
>On Wed, Oct 20, 2004 at 10:08:59PM -0400, Gene Heskett wrote:
>> On Wednesday 20 October 2004 17:54, Jon LaBadie wrote:
>> >On Wed, Oct 20, 2004 at 05:02:38PM -0400, Todd Pfaff wrote:
>> >> I'm using amanda-2.4.4p3 with the file driver and chg-disk
>> >> changer for vtapes.
>> >>
>> >> Sometimes a dump fails and driver retries:
>> >>
>> >>   driver: client /some/path 1 [dump to tape failed, will try
>> >> again]
>> >>
>> >> and then it fails again and retries again, and this repeats
>> >> until I kill the amanda processes.
>> >>
>> >> This last time this happened I caught it after
>> >> driver/dumper/taper had created about 200 0 length dump files
>> >> in the vtape directory. The client machine it was trying to
>> >> dump from was offline.  It had gone offline sometime after the
>> >> planner stage and so the planner had included it. There was no
>> >> indication that this retrying was ever going to stop.
>> >>
>> >> I have been using amanda for years with tapes and I never
>> >> experienced this behaviour before so it came as quite a
>> >> surprise.
>> >>
>> >> Is there any way to limit this retrying by driver?
>> >
>> >A guess only, might your vtape size be smaller than your DLE?
>> >Similar to trying to write to a tape and reaching end of tape.
>> >And what do you have "runtapes" set to.  For real tapes that
>> >specifies the maximum number of tapes that can be used for
>> >any one amanda dump or flush.  I guess that affects vtapes too.
>> >
>> >jl
>>
>> I think Jon, in that event (DLE too big for the tape) that it will
>> simply go into an advance to the next vtape and retry till it runs
>> out of vtapes (runtapes > 1 of course) to use loop.  This happened
>> to me when I was first setting my current lashup up.  This walks
>> and quacks like a different duck to me if it made 200 zero length
>> files on the same vtape.
>
>I probably read more into it than was there.
>I thought that each dump file was on a different tape.

I didn't read that into it, but then the questioner could have worded 
it better, so its possible, but that would take 200 vtapes, and I 
don't think anyone has explored it that far for lack of sufficient 
storage space.  And 200 50 megabyte vtapes on a 20GB drive would seem 
to be counter-productive even if it could be made to work with a 
disklist that almost defined each file.  That would be like feeding 
the locate db into it for a disklist, very extreme.  My 'common 
sense' if you can call it that, precluded drawing that conclusion.  
OTOH, my common sense has been known to be wrong too.  :-)

-- 
Cheers, Gene
"There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty:
 soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order."
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Copyright 2004 by Maurice Eugene Heskett, all rights reserved.