On Tuesday 30 November 2004 11:55, Brian Cuttler wrote:
>Gene,
>Stefan,
>
>I should clarify further...
>
>Extracted from "disklist"
>samar   /      comp-root
>samar   /usr1  comp-user
>samar   /usr5/amanda {
>        user-tar
>        }
>
>Extracted from "amanda.conf"
>
>define dumptype comp-root {
>    global
>    comment "Root partitions with compression"
>    compress client fast
>    priority low
>}
>
>define dumptype comp-user {
>    global
>    comment "Non-root partitions on reasonably fast machines"
>    compress client fast
>    priority medium
>}
>
>define dumptype user-tar {
>    program "GNUTAR"
>    comment "user partitions dumped with tar"
>    compress
>    index
># exclude list
>    priority medium
>}
>
Ok, I stand a bit corrected, I think both of us naturaly assumed you 
were using tar, and in fact, in this clarifying message, there is no 
reference to xfsdump.  Is this in the "global" definition?

>ya know, I'm not seeing it explicitely but the default is to
>dump via xfsdump (I have no efs partitions on this box). I
>don't believe the dump of either root nor /usr1 is causing a
>problem and think that I've got the proper definitions to subdivide
>the raid (mounted on /usr5) into directories.
>
>I've written the technical contact for the departement and assigned
>/usr5/dumps which is NOT a DLE to act as amanda's holding area. This
>however is a far from optimal solution. Raid is nice but still must
>suffer from I/O contention and the jukebox/SDLT is on the same bus.
>
>    My initial analysis was correct ?
>
>    Without a holding area than any DLE being written direct
>    to tape will fail and not be retried when the next tape
>    is loaded into the drive from the jukebox.

Dump programs in general do not have an exclude function as they are 
low level dump/restore operations paying no attention to the 
directory structures.  They do the whole, complete 
partition/filesytem without any exceptions that I'm aware of.

Translated another way, this means that if you are using /usr5/dumps 
as a holding area, and /usr5 IS a partition and a DLE, then you have 
a recursive situation because the dump will be trying to dump its own 
dumps.  At best this would lead to "interesting" results, but not 
something one would want to repeat intentionally.

>I haven't followed the thread as closely as I could have. There is
>a patch for spaning DLE across output/tape volumes ? Would it be
>effecatious in a direct to tape senario like this one ? Is it ready
>for prime-time ?

Yes, there was one published, probably a year ago, and while it was 
discussed at the time, the basic framework for amanda simply doesn't 
want to take a chance on breaking up the file, it leads to all sorts 
of scenarios that reduce the dependability considerably, usually 
right when you need a solid backup the most.

You can probably search the archives of this list for mentions and 
links.  And, whether that patch wwould apply to todays code is a 
quarter toss with the tails side of the coin 20x heavier than the 
heads.  Lots has been changed/adjusted since.

>      thank you,
>
>      Brian
[...]
-- 
Cheers Brian, Gene
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Copyright 2004 by Maurice Eugene Heskett, all rights reserved.