Hello everyone,

Just recovering from a panic attack, where I was unable to perform a
restore from dumps done on an RHEL v4 client.  Since others may see
this as well, I thought I'd drop a heads up.

You'll know you've seen this when amrecover complains that "root is
missing from tape".  If you save the dump file from amrecover and look
at it with restore, you will get nothing useful.  You won't be able to
rebuild QFA data, you won't be able to get things off the tape.

If you have amrestore look through the tape (something like: "amrestore
-f 0 -p file:/var/backups/tape01 doesnotexist > /dev/null"), you'll
notice that the tape listing stops before it actually lists everything
there (easy for me to see on vtapes, heh).

What happened:

Some new version of dump must've gone into RHEL v4U3 which produces
dumps that make older versions of restore very unhappy.  I was able to
solve the issue by upgrading the server and the client to the newest
dump/restore.

In particular, Knoppix v4.0.2 (which I use for baremetal restores) is
affected by this issue.  I'm not sure if this is a RedHat specific
bug, or if it affects all newer versions of dump for ext2/3.

-- 
Ross Vandegrift
ross AT kallisti DOT us

"The good Christian should beware of mathematicians, and all those who
make empty prophecies. The danger already exists that the mathematicians
have made a covenant with the devil to darken the spirit and to confine
man in the bonds of Hell."
        --St. Augustine, De Genesi ad Litteram, Book II, xviii, 37