On Sunday 13 February 2005 20:27, Steve Wray wrote:
>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.
>
>[snip]
>
>>> 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.)
>>
>> 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?
>
>Not exactly an answer to your question, but its a familiar problem;
> I know 'stuff' about the backups and the machines that are being
> backed up. I know 'stuff' about rate of file changes and filesystem
> growth. How do I explain this to amanda?
>
>Eg;
>
>Cases where zero-level backups are virtually guaranteed to fit onto
> a tape... I've been experimenting with 'stratecy noinc' (IIRC the
> spelling of that).
>
>Unfortunately, I've found that when, in rare cases, the zero-level
> won't fit I sometimes see messages like 'cannot switch to
> incremental' and knock me down with a feather but it doesn't back
> anything up at all for that DLE.

That is by default, the holding area is 100% reserved for 
incrementals.  Add a line in your amanda.conf that says

reserved = 30%

Make sure that the holding disk is big enough, but drive space is 
peanuts these days.
>
>What I'd like to know is how to tell it "always do a full dump
> except when theres not enough room and then -- and *only* then --
> revert to an incremental"

You are trying to housebreak amanda, which can be done.  But it then 
ignores the smarts built into amanda in the form of amanda collecting 
its own history data, and reacting to that.  Once you start a regular 
scheduled backup strategy, amanda will typically take around 2 
dumpcycles before the individual nites scheduled work will settle 
down.  Subject to modifications if amanda can see that a huge anount 
of a disklist entry is new every night, which will cause that entry 
to remain at a level 1 for incrementals.

Her targets are:

1) to use about the same amount of media every run in order to make 
the best use of the facilities it has, and it can be quite good at 
that, putting 3.9GB on a 4GB tape night after night without hitting 
an EOT error.

2) to make sure that at any one time, there will have been a full 
level 0 backup of everything in the disklist at some point in the 
last "dumpcycle" days worth of tapes.

-- 
Cheers, Gene
"There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty:
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Copyright 2005 by Maurice Eugene Heskett, all rights reserved.