On Thursday 27 July 2006 17:08, Alan Pearson wrote:
>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.
>
Price, or availability in a timely manner. Its mochs nichts, the end
result is the same when amanda didn't have sufficient resources to do the
job.
>> 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.
Yippers.
>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.
And it should be taken as a valid point, given the context that you got bit
in.
>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.
We do tend to try and protect the girl a wee bit from the folks who think
they know more than amanda about how to do a backup, so I'm guilty of
that.
>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.
I think it was Jon LaBadie that came up with an acronym for that, something
to do with "patches always welcome", but I don't think it was "PAW".
Jon? :) More than one patch that extended amanda's abilities has been
posted to this list over the 7 years I've been lurking.
>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.
Now thats an interesting phrase, corner case. I've never seen a really
good definition of that, but it sure is popular.
>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 think you meant "ruining" the backup, and in that context, I'm inclined
to agree, amanda should not overwrite the last good full of any dle.
>I'd rather be with an out of date backup than none at all.
>
Agreed.
--
Cheers, Gene
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Copyright 2006 by Maurice Eugene Heskett, all rights reserved.
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