On Mon, Feb 28, 2005 at 02:32:31PM -0700, Fairbank, Bob wrote:
> Normally, AMANDA uses one tape per run. With a tape changer (even the
> chg-manual one), the number of tapes per run may be set higher for extra
> capacity. This is an upper limit on the number of tapes. AMANDA uses
> only as much tape as it needs. AMANDA does not yet do overflow from one
> tape to another. If it hits end of tape (or any other error) while
> writing an image, that tape is unmounted, the next one is loaded, and
> the image starts over from the beginning. This sequence continues if the
> image cannot fit on a tape. 

No, I don't see any out of date info.

What I hope is clear is the term "image" as used in the above paragraph.
Amanda works with entities called DiskList Entries (DLEs) from the name
of one of its control file.  Each DLE defines some piece of your network
and how to backup that piece.  My simple home lan has about six hosts
and 25 DLEs.  Some DLEs are entire filesystems others are directory trees.
The term "image" in the above text is synonymous to the backup image of a
a single DLE (full, level 0 or incremental, level >0).

To allow for parallelism during backup, most DLEs are not backed up directly
to tape but to an empty space on the tapehosts disk drive, aka holding disk.
Only completed images are taped.  Reread the above with this info in mind.


So to address your original question, the image of a single DLE, possibly
after compression, must fit on a tape.  If after backup and compression,
you have a filesystem that does not meet this requirement, you can't back
up that FS as a single DLE.  It must be divided into several DLEs each
corresponding to a directory tree under the FS mount point.

Or try John Stang's patch.

-- 
Jon H. LaBadie                  jon AT jgcomp DOT com
 JG Computing
 4455 Province Line Road        (609) 252-0159
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