This one time, at band camp, Gene Heskett wrote:
>On Wednesday 12 January 2005 20:57, Jamie Wilkinson wrote:
>>This one time, at band camp, Germán C. Basisty wrote:
>>>Hi!
>>>
>>>I have Amanda server running on a Linux box. In another machine, I
>>> have Solaris 9 running Amanda client and PostgreSQL. I would like
>>> to know if someone has experience backupping PostgreSQL with
>>> Amanda.
>>>
>>>I have thought the following solutions:
>>>
>>> 1. Making a file system level backup. The problem is that I'll
>>> have to stop the PostgreSQL engine first, so the DB will be
>>> unoperative for a while.
>>> 2. To use pg_dump to get a hot snapshot of the desired DB, put it
>>> on some directory and then backup that directory with amanda.
>>
>>I do this, and cross my fingers that the pg_dumpall is done before
>> the amanda run.
>>
>>>I saw somewhere a kind of script that interacts between Oracle and
>>> Amanda, and it is possible to backup the desired DB without
>>> stopping the engine. Is there something like that for postgreSQL??
>>
>>So I had a crazy idea that hasn't yet been implemented, a pg dumper
>> similar in appearance to GNUTAR and DUMP on the client machine. 
>> Your DLE would look somethign like:
>>
>>host database/table pg
>>
>>where pg would be the dumptype telling amanda to use the pg dumper.
>>
>>The net effect is that you'd get a hot snapshot written straight to
>> amanda, so you wouldn't have to worry about scheduling the dumps of
>> each at the right time.
>>
>>If someone wants to beat me to the implementation though, please go
>> right ahead :-)
>
>I've no idea why it cannot be scripted, such that amdump is started 
>when pg_dump is done and the shell returns to the next line of the 
>script.

Because the database being dumped is not on the machine that runs amdump,
and adding another RPC that duplicates the one already in amanda is
unjustifiable.