snip
>>
> And that has nothing to do with this instant problem.  The instant problem
> is that you don't have enough tapes in your tapecycle, so you never have a
> 2nd or 3rd generation backup.  At the price of dds tapes, thats being
> rather penny wise and pound foolish.   And, having rather extensive
> personal experience with dds tapes, my backups got about 100 times more
> dependable when I bought a big hard drive and changed to vtapes 2 years
> ago.

That is your situation. Not mine.  The price of tapes has nothing to do
with it.


> Please don't go around bad-mouthing amanda when the real constraint is the
> operating environment, one that would cripple any backup protocol.

The constraint is NOT the operating environment, but the behaviour in
these conditions.
I've heard the more tapes argument, and yes I agree more tapes are necessary.

The behaviour of Amanda is wrong IMHO, and regardless of how it behaves
_today_ , backup software should never knowingly overwrite yourlast valid
backup and leave you with none. THAT is the point.

As for bad - mouthing Amanda, I'll rise to that little dig. Amanda is free
software, which I gratefully accept (I also develop free software
http://testmaster.sourceforge.net/), and I am reporting a problem, not bad
mouthing it. When my users report problems, I take it on board and strive
to improve the software, not defend it's behaviour.


If the developers think that it is desired behaviour to overwrite your
last valid backup, then fine, I'll either quit using it or attempt to fix
it myself, as it doesn't fulfill my needs.

But considering the number of other checks that Amanda does to ensure that
backups aren't over written, I believe I've identified a corner case that
needs to be fixed.

Remember, I believe I have found a flaw in the software and didn't expect
to be told that it was ME that was in the wrong. Arguments about tapes
aside, in this case Amanda did the WRONG thing and left me without a valid
backup. Instead it should have screamed and shouted and done the best it
could by saving in the holding disk at a minimum, or not running the
backup.

I'd rather be with an out of date backup than none at all.




>
>>--
>>AlanP
>
> --
> Cheers, Gene
> People having trouble with vz bouncing email to me should add the word
> 'online' between the 'verizon', and the dot which bypasses vz's
> stupid bounce rules.  I do use spamassassin too. :-)
> Yahoo.com and AOL/TW attorneys please note, additions to the above
> message by Gene Heskett are:
> Copyright 2006 by Maurice Eugene Heskett, all rights reserved.
>