On Fri, Apr 28, 2006 at 03:25:34PM +0200, Paul Bijnens wrote:
> On 2006-04-28 14:49, McGraw, Robert P. wrote:
> >To try and make my backups smaller I run a perl script that runs goes
> >through my "users" directory and produces the following lines for each 
> >user.
...
> >
> >host  /export/fssnap/users/zhangj     export-users-tar  -1  local 
> >host  /export/fssnap/users/zhangs     export-users-tar  -1  local 
> >host  /export/fssnap/users/zink     export-users-tar  -1  local 
> >host  /export/fssnap/users/zjelonek     export-users-tar  -1  local 
> >host  /export/fssnap/users/zli     export-users-tar  -1  local 
> >host  /export/fssnap/users/zmullero     export-users-tar  -1  local
> >
> >define dumptype export-users-tar {
> >    global
> >    comment "Full Backup of users  using tar"
> >    program "GNUTAR"
> >    maxdumps 10
> >}
> >
> >But I ran into a major problem when I had to rebuild the entire "users" 
> >disk because of a major crash.
> >
...
> >What I really need is for the backup tar file to be relative to
> >/export/fssnap/users.
> >
> >QUESTION
> >
> >Is there a way to force the relative path in the amanda tar command?
> 
> 
> Use disklist entries in this form:
> 
>    host  unique_name   /top/level/dir  {
>           base-dumptype
>           include "./subdir"
>           }
>    host  /export/fssnap/users:zli  /export/fssnap/users  {
>             export-users-tar
>             include "./zli"
>             }
>    host  /export/fssnap/users:zmullero /export/fssnap/users  {
>           export-users-tar
>           include "./zmullero"
>           }
> 
> The second arg must be unique in a disklist.  It can be whatever you
> like.  I used the concatenation of topdir and subdir with
> colon as separator between the dir and subdir, but you could also
> use a slash (no space).

I was going to suggest the same solution.

Minor correction (I so seldom can find any flaws in Paul's posts :).
It is the pair, hostname/diskname that must be unique.  When used
with a diskname and a starting directory I consider the "diskname"
to be a "tag".  Thus I don't make it resemble a pathname.  So I
might chose tags like "Users:zli" or "SnapUsers-zmullero".  Or
even just the username which would be unique on any particular host.

> Remark:  when using vtapes, you are limited to those chars in that
> unique name that the filesystem where the vtapes are located can handle.
> E.g. many USB-drives use vfat, which *cannot* handle a colon in the
> name.  You get a very obscure error message from taper in that case.

Didn't think about that when I added my USB drives.  Another reason
I'm happy I reformatted to ext2.  BTW I got a few extra GB on those
drives by creating the ext2 filesystem with no reserve for root (5%
by default) and by reducing the number of inodes by a factor of 8.
I don't expect my vtapes will consume the million inodes that left ;)

-- 
Jon H. LaBadie                  jon AT jgcomp DOT com
 JG Computing
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