On Friday 28 January 2005 14:16, Michael Loftis wrote:
>--On Friday, January 28, 2005 11:22 -0700 Mark Costlow
> <cheeks AT swcp DOT com>
>
>wrote:
>> The script is fairly generic (I tried not to let it depend on my
>> local environment too much, but there may be some gotchas).  I was
>> also lazy about a couple of assumptions (like the fact that my
>> dumps all used gtar). If anyone wants it, let me know.
>
>I'd love to have a copy of it...While we're right now using vtapes,
> we'll be changing methods to a tape library soon, but I want to
> keep offsite dumps as well...I think this would be easier than
> doing them 'in' amanda. I know the script isn't exactly meant for
> that but it's a starting point, and will save me coding time.
>
>Thanks!

As a suggestion to preserve the indices, it might be possible to use 
that level 0 name retrieved from the vtape, to reach into the indices 
directory and recover each of those indice files that go with it, and 
stuff it out to the media used for the long term storage too.  This 
is something that would be possible if one were doing a seperate, 
appended to the tape, saving of both the config directory tree, and 
the indice directory tree as I am now doing with my wrapper scripts 
such that if I had to do a bare metal recovery to a fresh drive, the 
first thing I would do is re-install the os in bare bones mode, use 
dd, tar and gzip to recover the /home/amanda tree, reinstall amanda 
from that, then untar the config dir file and the indice dir file.  
At that point, all of amandas amrestore and amrecover stuff should be 
up and running, makeing an exact restore of the whole machine 
possible.

If one were to select just the current indice file for that backups 
last level 0, it certainly seems like it could be made to work, how 
satisfactory remains to be seen.

Negative Comments anybody?  Here is my concern:

Particularly from the standpoint that such a level 0 scenario only, it 
does have the potential to restore things out of sync if the last 
level 0 on /home was say 6 days old, and the /usr/local was last 
nights.  That could be interesting on a machine with lots of volatile 
stuff, like the maildirs?  Or a freshly installed program.

Personally I think I'd be more interested in this train of thought if 
a days snapshot was more fully done, by getting the last level 0, and 
all subsequent higher levels of that DLE at the same time, and 
combining that into (as seperate files of course) the offsite storage 
medium chosen.  That would no doubt add to its size, but at least it 
would be a valid 'snapshot' then.  For a business doing such a thing 
for its accounts payable and accounts receivable, I'd think it would 
be of paramount importance.

-- 
Cheers, Gene
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Copyright 2005 by Maurice Eugene Heskett, all rights reserved.