On Tue, Dec 28, 2004 at 05:15:30PM -0700, Dwight Tovey wrote:
> I'm looking at using Amanda for my backup solution, and I've run into a
> bit of a problem that I'm hoping to get some help with.
> 
...
> 
> If I try to use the device instead of the mountpoint, amcheck (and
> eventually amdump) fails with "Can't open disk 'hda6'" for each 'include'.
>  Looking at the source I found that every time it encounters an 'include',
> Amanda trys to do an 'opendir()' to verify the included name.  Since the
> device is not a directory, the opendir() fails resulting in the displayed
> error.
> 
> So, is there any way around this short of running Amanda as 'root'?  Is
> there really any problem with running as root?

If the amanda installation was done as root, then all the necessary
set-user-id-root permissions should have been done at that time.
Amanda tries to run with the minimum necessary permissions, but
at times, the minimum is root.  Thus several amanda programs are
setuid'ed during installation.  These include the "runtar" program
that invokes gnutar.


-- 
Jon H. LaBadie                  jon AT jgcomp DOT com
 JG Computing
 4455 Province Line Road        (609) 252-0159
 Princeton, NJ  08540-4322      (609) 683-7220 (fax)