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?
That info comes from different places.
Look for a directory named ~amanda/TheConfig (for for each of
your configs): all (most) files in there keep part of the information.
Note that this is different from etc/TheConfig, which some people
(like me) have put in ~amanda/etc/TheConfig, which contains the
disklist and amanda.conf file for TheConfig.
One of the important info sources, which is even human readable,
is found in the "curinfo" directory.
The normal way to look that at the info is through the utility
program "amadmin". Like this:
amadmin TheConfig info
also nice are:
amadmin TheConfig find
amadmin TheConfig due
amadmin TheConfig balance
(balance is only meaningful after at least one complete dumpcycle)
When using dump or variants, each client keeps the timestamps of the
different levels in /etc/amandates. When using gnutar, you have to
create a directory "gnutar-lists" on each client which contains info
for the incremental levels of gnutar.
Finally, so far I have been changing the file disklist in order to check
different backup scenarios. The file tapelist was automatically updated:
Because "tapelist" is also a program maintained file, which one should
normally not edit, I've stored that one in ~amanda/TheConfig too,
instead of ~amanda/etc/TheConfig.
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?
In my setup, I would (as user amanda):
mv ~amanda/TheConfig ~amanda/TheConfig_testphase
mkdir ~amanda/TheConfig
Followed by, several times:
amcheck TheConfig
and solve every problem amanda flags me. (Because I've probably
forgotten something in the above explanation.)
Then force a full backup for every host in the disklist entry
(to avoid touch /etc/amandates or gnutar-lists on each client),
with the command:
amadmin TheConfig force thishost thathost anotherhost
Which files do I have to modify in addition to the disklist file.
When doing all DLE's at once, be prepared that amanda will complain
loud that one tape is not enough to do all full backups at once.
She will skip some DLE's in the beginning.
Maybe add entries a few at a time in disklist.
Maybe run amdump a few times manually on one day.
It is wise to keep a "Test" configuration, instead of doing tests
with the production environment. For such a config, you may use
a different set of tapes, or vtapes (backup to disk).
--
Paul Bijnens, Xplanation Tel +32 16 397.511
Technologielaan 21 bus 2, B-3001 Leuven, BELGIUM Fax +32 16 397.512
http://www.xplanation.com/ email: Paul.Bijnens AT xplanation DOT com
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