Hi.

Meanwhile I sent a mail to amanda-users re-reporting the problem. Here
goes the data relative to that: I have 14 filesystems to dump on
localhost, so that total timeout should be 300*14=4200 seconds, right?
Doing a grep on sensize log, I get:

$ grep "estimate time" sendsize.20050904195400.debug
sendsize[2664]: estimate time for / level 0: 8169.854
sendsize[2664]: estimate time for / level 1: 342.415
sendsize[28610]: estimate time for /boot level 0: 0.186
sendsize[28610]: estimate time for /boot level 1: 0.021
sendsize[28613]: estimate time for /usr level 0: 1200.347
sendsize[28613]: estimate time for /usr level 1: 830.321
sendsize[28613]: estimate time for /usr level 2: 899.342
sendsize[32577]: estimate time for /root level 0: 21.309
sendsize[32577]: estimate time for /root level 1: 2.288
sendsize[32602]: estimate time for /home/ag level 0: 50.686
sendsize[32602]: estimate time for /home/ag level 1: 2.806
sendsize[32636]: estimate time for /home/hm level 0: 127.386
sendsize[32636]: estimate time for /home/hm level 1: 544.951
sendsize[1152]: estimate time for /home/nt level 0: 96.014
sendsize[1152]: estimate time for /home/nt level 1: 4.326
sendsize[1226]: estimate time for /home/uz level 0: 73.265
sendsize[1226]: estimate time for /home/uz level 1: 2.615
sendsize[1305]: estimate time for /var/spool/imap/user/ag level 0: 87.474
sendsize[1305]: estimate time for /var/spool/imap/user/ag level 2: 4.176
sendsize[1305]: estimate time for /var/spool/imap/user/ag level 3: 4.861
sendsize[1393]: estimate time for /var/spool/imap/user/hm level 0: 20.776
sendsize[1393]: estimate time for /var/spool/imap/user/hm level 1: 5.285
sendsize[1393]: estimate time for /var/spool/imap/user/hm level 2: 4.355
sendsize[1458]: estimate time for /var/spool/imap/user/nt level 0: 11.698
sendsize[1458]: estimate time for /var/spool/imap/user/nt level 2: 1.072
sendsize[1458]: estimate time for /var/spool/imap/user/nt level 3: 0.868
sendsize[1465]: estimate time for /var/spool/imap/user/uz level 0: 21.152
sendsize[1465]: estimate time for /var/spool/imap/user/uz level 1: 3.358
sendsize[1465]: estimate time for /var/spool/imap/user/uz level 2: 2.961
sendsize[1486]: estimate time for //new/C$ level 0: 22.735
sendsize[1486]: estimate time for //new/C$ level 1: 1.289
sendsize[1486]: estimate time for //new/C$ level 2: 1.182
sendsize[1498]: estimate time for //new/E$ level 0: 4.540
sendsize[1498]: estimate time for //new/E$ level 1: 0.410
sendsize[1498]: estimate time for //new/E$ level 2: 0.444

It seems that the level 0 estimate for / is the one taking longer.
The tail of that log is:

$ tail sendsize.20050904195400.debug
sendsize[1498]: time 12571.432:                 59992 blocks of size 262144. 
29027 blocks available
sendsize[1498]: time 12571.432: Total number of bytes: 893464856
sendsize[1498]: time 12571.433: .....
sendsize[1498]: estimate time for //new/E$ level 2: 0.444
sendsize[1498]: estimate size for //new/E$ level 2: 872525 KB
sendsize[1498]: time 12571.433: waiting for /usr/bin/smbclient "//new/E$" child
sendsize[1498]: time 12571.433: after /usr/bin/smbclient "//new/E$" wait
sendsize[1498]: time 12571.433: done with amname '//new/E$', dirname 
'//new/E$', spindle -1
sendsize[2659]: time 12571.433: child 1498 terminated normally
sendsize: time 12571.438: pid 2659 finish time Sun Sep  4 23:23:31 2005

It takes 12571.438 secs for the estimates; much greater than
4200.

If this is correct, then I should increase the estimate timeout, maybe
ten-fold. But I'm still not sure that is the problem. Is it worthwhile
to try with a giant timeout and see what happens?

Cheers,

Rodrigo

-- 

*** Rodrigo Martins de Matos Ventura <yoda AT isr.ist.utl DOT pt>
***  Web page: http://www.isr.ist.utl.pt/~yoda
***   Teaching Assistant and PhD Student at ISR:
***    Instituto de Sistemas e Robotica, Polo de Lisboa
***     Instituto Superior Tecnico, Lisboa, PORTUGAL
*** PGP fingerprint = 0119 AD13 9EEE 264A 3F10  31D3 89B3 C6C4 60C6 4585