On Sunday 13 February 2005 18:20, David Newman wrote:
>On Sun, 13 Feb 2005, Gene Heskett wrote:
>> On Sunday 13 February 2005 12:02, David Newman wrote:
>>> Greetings. For backups to a server with one DLT-IV drive, I would
>>> like to change the tape once per week. During the week, I would
>>> like to do one full backup on day 1, and incremental backups on
>>> days 2-5.
>>>
>>> To do this, I set "dumpcycle 1 week" and "runspercycle 5" and
>>> "tapecycle 1 tapes". However, in the dump reports, I get this
>>> message every dump, even on the incremental days:
>>
>> Tapecycle is the number of tapes in the inventory that can be
>> re-used. For you, the minimum would be at least 10.
>>
>>> planner: tapecycle (1) <= runspercycle (5)
>>>   planner: Full dump of hostname.networktest.com:/ promoted from
>>> 6 days ahead.
>>>
>>> This sounds like amanda does a full dump each time. True?
>>
>> Yes, because it thinks its over-writing the last full level 0 with
>> each new backup.
>
>This isn't so good; again, I'm looking for one full dump and four
>incremental dumps on each tape. (FWIW, the server in question is at
> a remote location and we can't get to it every day.)

The only way you are gong to do that is with a big holding disk, which 
you then dump weekly by putting a tape in the drive and doing a 
amflush.  How many tapes do you actually have, and are they being 
stored off-site should the worst happen?

Anyway for that, dumpcycle=7 runspercycle=5, tapecycle=how many you 
have.  Put a tape in the drive monday morning and do an amflush.
Note that the reserve value for the holding disk will need to be 
reduced considerably in order for amanda to be able to do level 0's 
to it.  The default is that 100% of it is reserved for incrementals.

Set that up on that machines crontab that belongs to the operator you 
configured amanda to be run as.  Monday thru friday evenings for exec 
times.

>Jon LaBadie's post on the Amanda top 10 list suggests that Amanda is
> not the right tool for this. Is there some way to do this using
> Amanda?

>If not, any recommendations for alternatives?

Most are more costly, often by large amounts.  If the tape server 
itself isn't part of the facilities daily operations, the monday 
morning flush should be ok.yxt^JYVa  Just call that dept, have 
someone put the tape in that you mailed back to them the previous 
week, monitor the dumps progress and when its done, have them eject 
the tape and mail it back to you, provided that you are the offsite 
storage site.

You could even put the tape in and out instructions in the machines 
crontab by having it send the email to the responsible person.  
Better yet in a wrapper script but I'll leave the writing of that to 
you since I'm not privy to enough to even think about it.

>thanks
>
>dn

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