* Clive Galway <GalwaC AT gosh.nhs DOT uk> [2005-09-15 22:09]:
> 
> Why is it that all linux documentation seems to be like this ? I
> know catering to the lowest common denominator sucks, but at least
> catering for the user with medium experience would be nice.
> 
> 100+ man-hours and counting to set up AMANDA for just backing up one
> server... And I have a bloody LPI cert in linux so I am not a
> drooling newbie... This is ridiculous.

I must agree that the current documentation does little to minimize
pain.  I started to get into Amanda a year or two ago, and eventually
dropped the ball after reading 60% of the documentation before I even
began to touch the software.  The amount of work required before being
able to see something work makes it risky in terms of time.  Although
the other part of the reason for dropping Amanda was due to the
difficulty of using it for an unsupported purpose -> to backup to an
array of optical drives.

Now with Blu-ray coming, I'm planning to make another go at it.  I've
noticed that the docs have not been simplified.

Comprehensive guides are great, but I think a quick-start doc with
baby steps would be *very* useful.  I just want that immediate
satisfaction of seeing Amanda in action, even if it's just one small
directory being dumped to a small image.  I don't even want to bring
cron into the picture until I see it do something useful.

The scalability of Amanda is magnificent, however, I would much prefer
to start small and scale up.  It seems the documentation out there
expects us to start off with a gimungus 1000 user installation.  I
would think the typical user would rather start drinking from the
faucet before turning on the information firehose.

At first glance, I have a feeling Gavin Henry's tutorial may be right
on the money for filling this need.  I'll soon take a closer look at
it.  In the meantime, I certainly welcome any suggestions for other
lightweight documention that will get new users off the ground
quickly.