Gene Heskett wrote:

On Thursday 05 January 2006 05:05, Wim Baetens wrote:

Hi,

Is anyone aware of amflush 2.4.3 not doing what it's supposed to do?

First, 2.4.3 is now _very_ long in the tooth, having been released on 2002-10-07.

Second, it had a buglet fixed that might have resembled this back in version 2.4.4 on 2004-04-23, from the ChangeLog:

2004-04-23  Eric Siegerman <eric_97 AT pobox DOT com>
        Bug fix: amflush would run, and consume a tape, even if there
        were no Amanda directories waiting to be flushed:
        * common-src/sl.c (is_empty_sl): New function to test
          whether a list is empty.
        * common-src/sl.h (is_empty_sl): Prototype.
        * server-src/amflush.sh (main): Use is_empty_sl(),
          rather than ==NULL, to test emptiness of datestamp_list.

2003-06-05  Jean-Louis Martineau <martineau AT iro.umontreal DOT ca>

        * server-src/amflush.c: Implement new -b and -s options.
        * man/amflush.8.in: Document it.

2003-06-02  Jean-Louis Martineau <martineau AT iro.umontreal DOT ca>
        Patch by Paul Bijnens <paul.bijnens AT xplanation DOT com>

* server-src/amstatus.pl.in: Fix for missing amdump.1 or amflush.1.

I don't know if that takes us all the way back to 2.4.3 though. I don't think it does. No, 2.4.3 was released 2002-10-07.

Here's the situation: I have a few backups on the holding disk that
failed to write to tape. I made sure that the correct tape is loaded,
and amcheck runs as expected. I launched amflush 2.4.3 in foreground
mode, which gives me correct list of backups. I select the first
backup to be flushed and confirm to proceed.

And you did this as the correct user?  root won't do.

amflush launches, writes the tape header, but then just sits there,
consuming about 97% of the system resources. After a long time, the
only solution is to kill amflush and do an amcleanup. Last nights
backup was successful, but I'm still stuck with the three backups
from the past days that need to flushed. I admit I have no clue of
how to proceed - any help would be welcome.

In the current snapshot, and for about the last 2 years, there has been a keyword you could add to your amanda.conf that would cause any files that need to be flushed, to be included in the current backup run.

From the current srcdir/example/amanda.conf:
autoflush no #
# if autoflush is set to yes, then amdump will schedule all dump on
# holding disks to be flush to tape during the run.

And from the ChangeLog:
2004-11-08  Jean-Louis Martineau <martineau AT iro.umontreal DOT ca>
        Patch by Orion Poplawski <orion AT cora.nwra DOT com>

* server-src/amstatus.pl.in: a FLUSH command can't be in an estimate

          phase.

* server-src/driver.c: Start autoflush while waiting for estimate.

        * server-src/planner.c: Write FLUSH line before estimate.
2001-11-08  Jean-Louis Martineau <martineau AT IRO.UMontreal DOT CA>

        * server-src/conffile.c (autoflush): New configuration options.
        * server-src/conffile.h (autoflush): New configuration options.

So this was in 2.4.3, being a late 2.4.2 addition.

I personally have zip experience with amflush since I gave up on tapes and converted to vtapes via the FILE: directive. I bought a big hard drive and its been maybe 0.00001 percent of the trouble I was having with tapes, but then I was using DDS2's, all an old fart on SS could afford, but cheap tapes gets you headachey backups, TANSTAAFL.

This hard drive is internal, so it wouldn't do to remove it for offsite storage. OTOH, I'm not running a major public agency here either.

If you know the configuration used to build the version you are running, then its extremely simple to build and install the current snapshot, I do it here for every new one in the 2.4.x release series. It takes me less than 15 minutes here as I long since converted my configuration options to a script that configures and builds it, then a quick 'su -' to install it, run ldconfig, back to the user 'amanda' and run an amcheck.

That script is available in this lists archives, it was posted here several times, but I stopped when I converted to FILE: devices as it became a bit simpler. Back up about 2 years to look for it. Or possibly someone else has adapted it for their system, and could post theirs for an example.

It makes installing and updateing an amanda install into something thats not much more complex than installing from your distro's packaging system. But when you install from a packaged repo, you are stuck with the options compiled into it, and I think every packager has a different idea of where to put stuff, a not very effective way to maintain compatibility across upgrades IMO.

Amanda is being developed, with new features all the time, but with the provision that anything done is backwards compatible, so old clients run with new server releases and vice versa.

So methinks its time to update.  Amanda is getting better all the time.
Current snapshots are available in tarball form at:

<http://www.iro.umontreal.ca/~martinea/amanda/>

Thanks!

Wim

Hi,

Wim