Hi, Frank,

on Freitag, 13. Mai 2005 at 22:21 you wrote to amanda-users:

>> 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.

FS> The problem I see with this approach is that you need to run the script
FS> on the client to find the subdirectories, but you have to generate the
FS> disklist on the server.

Correct. Didn't think client-server when sketching this.

FS>    Another issue is files that might be in that top directory won't get 
backed
FS> up if you just autocreate DLEs for all the subdirs.

Yes, it would have to be "dle-root including files there" plus
"auto-dles with recursive files".

FS>    A third, and probably larger issue is recovery.  If your disklist becomes
FS> dynamic, how do you recover something from a DLE that is no longer in
FS> your disklist?  I know it's possible with some manual editing, but is it 
practical
FS> to try and remember what a DLE was or search through your old reports to
FS> find out?

It would have to be add-only-behavior: Only new subdirs would be
converted into new DLEs, removed directories would simply stay inside
the disklist and pop up because AMANDA reports them as failing. This
would need administrative (and human) interaction, and I think that
this is preferred when it comes to deciding what to remove from
backups (leaving stuff inside to make the disklist work with amrecover
-> indexes) ...

Further wishing:

Maybe this also leads to the need of some special behavior for the
indexes: another parameter like "dle_archive" could tell AMANDA that
this DLE doesn't have to be dumped anymore (because it ain't existing
anymore) but should still be kept inside the indexes for possible
recovery.

(Ok, this would also imply adding new tapes because the tapes
containing the stuff from this DLE must not get overwritten ...)

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

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

This is exactly what we're doing right now.
And I like it.

;-)

thanks,
Stefan

Stefan G. Weichinger
mailto:monitor AT oops.co DOT at