On Fri, May 12, 2006 at 11:10:59AM +0100, John Clement wrote:
> > 
> > Use of amrecover is not limited to the client.  It could be 
> > run from the server or from a third-party client.  Where there 'might'
> > be a limitation is the availability of the correct tools.  
> > For example a backup made with ufsdump from a Solaris host 
> > could not be recovered to a linux client because it lacks 
> > ufsrestore.  But to another Solaris client it should be fine. 
> >  Or if both used guntar it should be fine.
> > 
> 
> Ahh, I may be starting to see the light (I hope).  The client is W2k3
> server.  This means then that I need to use amrecover on that server to
> restore from the tape? - rather than trying to use Linux tools on the
> server to restore a Windows directory... 
> 

Well, the terminology client vs server may be a little confusing.
But the point is that for amrecover you have to have available
consistant tools.  With amrestore you could pull the archive off
of the tape as a single big file, transfer that to the target
machine and use the appropriate tools there.  Amrecover automates
the extraction and transfer part of the procedure as well as
allowing you to interactively select which files to pull out of
the big archive.

How was your w2k machine incorporated into the backup schedule?
I can think of several ways:

 - cygwin and amanda software installed on the w2k machine
   thus it acts as a direct client of amanda and can do
   amrecover/amrestore directly using the cygwin tar

 - nfs server software (eg. M$'s SFU) installed on the w2k
   machine and mounted on a direct amanda client
 - smbmount used to make the w2k share appear as a mounted
   directory on a linux direct amanda client

   for either of the last two possibilities, the direct client's
   tar would be the recovery program

 - the indirect w2k client is backed up through a direct amanda
   client using samba's smbclient (aka smbtar) in which case
   smbclient would have to be the recovery program

 - some type of windows backup program made a single dump file
   that was saved to amanda tape.  In this case recovery is a
   two step process first extracting the dump file and transfering
   it to the windows box and then using the windows program to
   extract the data

At various times I've tried all the above except the last.  And
right now I'm wondering if that wouldn't be a good possibility
for doing my wife's machine.

Are there any good, free/cheap, windows backup programs suitable
for incorporating into an amanda scheme?

-- 
Jon H. LaBadie                  jon AT jgcomp DOT com
 JG Computing
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 Princeton, NJ  08540-4322      (609) 683-7220 (fax)