Mark Cooke wrote:

The only thing I'm not sure on is the -f option to amrestore

The man page states:
-f     Do a rewind followed by a fsf <fileno> ... restore an image.

I cannot work out what this represents (I'm sure it's obvious :))

I stabbed at it and just entered 1 and it seems to work ok.

# cd /tmp/restore
# amrestore -p -f 1 file:/path/to/tape/tape01  |  tar -xpGvf - .

Without the -f option, amrestore uses the slow method to find the
correct image:  read header, check is this matches the pattern(s)
given on the command line, if not, read and throw away the image.
For a multi gigabyte tape, this can takes a while.

Amrestore does normally NO rewind of the tape, so, the experienced
Amanda administrators used "mt -f .. fsf 32" to quickly skip to
image 32 on the backup tape, and then issues "amrestore".  Much
quicker.

Amrecover uses "amrestore" behind the scenes too.  And "amrecover"
now can instruct amrecover to quickly do the same as those experiences
admins.

If you specified "-f 1", then amrestore just advances one file (=backup
image), and then starts the slow scan as explaned above.
If you have only one backup image, then you want notice the difference
of course.


--
Paul Bijnens, Xplanation                            Tel  +32 16 397.511
Technologielaan 21 bus 2, B-3001 Leuven, BELGIUM    Fax  +32 16 397.512
http://www.xplanation.com/          email:  Paul.Bijnens AT xplanation DOT com
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