Hi,

Correct me if I am wrong. It seems that when a DLE is set to
incremental backup, Amanda will try to get the size using various
methods:

- full backup size
- same incremental level as the last one size
- next incremental level size

I see in /tmp/amanda/sendsize... the following lines:

sendsize[78984]: time 27.295: getting size via gnutar for /home/fidji level 0
sendsize[78984]: time 36.611: getting size via gnutar for /home/fidji level 3
sendsize[78984]: time 38.428: getting size via gnutar for /home/fidji level 4

and it happens that the last incremental backup for /home/fidji was
level 3.

Then Amanda would choose what level to use (0, 3 or 4).

Do I understand well?

My problem is the following. I need to backup a Zope
installation. Zope keeps all the data in one single BIG file (it
quickly grows GBs). Amanda cannot do proper backup on the fly so I
need to either:

- stop zope during the backup. Easy using a gnutar wrapper, but that
  would put my web site away for some time.

- use a tool provided by zope to make a safe copy of that big data
  file and backup that copy.
 
  That tool allows incremental copies. How nice, I could match the
  full copy with Amanda full backup and incremental copies with Amanda
  incremental copies... But to get the size right, I need to make the
  copy at the size estimate stage, not at the dump stage. And the size
  estimate of Amanda always proceed to do a full estimate, so I would
  end up anyway using Zope tool to do a full copy.

  If I do the copy at dump type only, the size estimate will be all
  wrong (eventually by a large amount). How much can that affect
  Amanda?

Best regards,

Olivier