My 5 cent to this discussion:

Depending on the level of abstraction, the client and server names can
be ascribed in reverse order. It is true that it is the machine with
the tape and running amdump that initiates the transactions with the
amandad's spread across the netword, and that the latter provide the
data. This implies that the former machine is the client, while the
latter ones are the servers. However, this corresponds to the level of
the network connections.

Whenever talking about an amanda system, i.e. a system comprising a
machine with tape drives and one of more machines to be backed-up, it
seems to be more illustrative and clear, at least to us humans, to
call the former the server, and the latter the clients. The servers
runs amdumps and contacts the clients for estimating and dumping
data. Sounds ok to me. Even if under the wood, there is a network
client process in the amanda server that contacts a server deamon in
the amanda client machines.

But as it is obvious, as long as the choosen terminology is coherent
throughout the documentation, man pages, --help screens, and so on...

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