--On Friday, May 13, 2005 21:36:27 +0200 "Stefan G. Weichinger" <monitor AT 
oops.co DOT at> wrote:

> Hi, Chris,
> 
> on Freitag, 13. Mai 2005 at 19:20 you wrote to amanda-users:
> 
> CL> It would be great if we could tell amanda that all subdirectories of a
> CL> specific root were to be treated as individual disk list entries. i.e.
> CL> balance all sub directories across backups.
> 
> I don't want to sound lazy, but isn't this solved pretty easily by
> some kind of shell-script that you run regularly?
> 
> If this script "find"s some new directory inside that given
> dle-root-directory it appends a new DLE to your disklist.
> 
> Find all the dirs under dle-root-dir, compare them to a list of
> already existing DLEs, if something is new, add DLE to disklist.

The problem I see with this approach is that you need to run the script
on the client to find the subdirectories, but you have to generate the
disklist on the server.
   Another issue is files that might be in that top directory won't get backed
up if you just autocreate DLEs for all the subdirs.
   A third, and probably larger issue is recovery.  If your disklist becomes
dynamic, how do you recover something from a DLE that is no longer in
your disklist?  I know it's possible with some manual editing, but is it 
practical
to try and remember what a DLE was or search through your old reports to
find out?
   I just have a DLE for the top level, and that directory contains an exclude
file containing the subdirs that I back up as separate DLEs.  That way I won't
miss any new subdirs that are created.  This won't work as well for very dynamic
environments or where you don't have much control on the client machines.

> I have to admit that this new auto-DLE-feature inside AMANDA would
> also look good to me ;-)

It sounds good, but there are some practical matters to work out before
someone starts coding it.

Frank

> 
> This would mean we would need some kind of new parameter inside
> amanda.conf, maybe "dleroot yes/no (default: no)" ?
> 
> PAW
> 
> (according to Jon LaBadie this means
> "Stefan G. Weichinger writes : Patches Always Welcome")
> 
> ;-)
> 
> -- 
> best regards,
> Stefan
> 
> Stefan G. Weichinger
> mailto:monitor AT oops.co DOT at
> 
> 
> 



-- 
Frank Smith                                      fsmith AT hoovers DOT com
Sr. Systems Administrator                       Voice: 512-374-4673
Hoover's Online                                   Fax: 512-374-4501