On Tue, Jan 11, 2005 at 11:11:06AM -0600, Gil Naveh wrote:
> Hello, I am quit new with Amanda and I don't understand an important concept
> regarding Amanda.
> 
> I realize that Amanda decides what type of backup to perform (level 0 ,
> level 1 etc) according to its algorithm.
> 
> However, how does it knows which backup level to perform when a user have a
> tape drive with X different tapes that are manually changed?  Is there a
> file that tells Amanda which backups has been performed and if so what is
> this file name?
> 
> Finally, so far I have been changing the file disklist in order to check
> different backup scenarios. The file tapelist was automatically updated:
> 
> The new tapelist file looks like:
> 
> 20041222 DailySet105 reuse
> 
> 20041222 DailySet104 reuse etc.
> 
>  
> 
> At this point, I want to run the backup - which means I have to initialize
> all my experiments so far - any ideas on how to do so?
> 
> Which files do I have to modify in addition to the disklist file.
> 

Years ago I had a script to do just the thing I think you are asking,
leave the configuration along but make amanda think it is the first
ever amdump of everything.

Here are the things I think I had to do in the automated script.
Others may add or subtract with their input.

 - blow away the current dump info, index info, and logs
   In my case these were in subdirs named in amanda.conf.  The default
   amanda.conf keeps the logs in the top level of the config directory.
   I always modify it to <configdir>/logs.  No sense cluttering up a
   perfectly good config directory.  So for me this was just three
   rm -rf <dir>/* commands.  You might have to do something different
   about your logs.  Don't remove the curinfo, index, and ?log? directories
   themselves, just their contents.

 - In the tapelist file change all the dates to a zero.  This indicates
   unused.  If you want your tapes used in sequence, sort the list with
   with the first tape you want used at the bottom and the last tape at
   the top,
 
 - If you use a changer and your changer script mantains any state files,
   you may need to edit or remove them.  My changer script, chg-mtx, did
   not so I did not have to do anything there.

When you do this remember that amanda must do a level 0 dump of everything
disklist entry it sees the first time.  After doing this, every entry will
be new.  So everything will get a full backup which may not be desireable.
I would comment out all the entries in your disklist, then go back and
uncomment one or two entries from each client.  Run amdump, maybe even
during the day.  Uncomment a few more disklist entries and let amdump
run at its normal crontab time.  Next day a few more etc.  You get into
a balanced situation much quicker this way without having a massively
huge first amdump run.

-- 
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)