Any Debian users/gurus around?

I found that Debian has Amanda broken into 3 packages:
    amanda-common
    amanda-client
    amanda-server

What I expected was I could install amanda-client on client machines and
amanda-server on a server machine (both on a machine that is the tape
server _and_ has data to be backed up).  I expected amanda-common to be
needed on either client or server.

However, when installing amanda-common, it also installs amanda-client.
Anyone know why Debian has things arranged this way?

These packages configure the user to run Amanda as "backup".  But it
seems the "backup" user also does other things.  Does anyone see any
possible conflict in this?

For this machine, I'm not going to have the usual means to test it very
readily available.  Once it is re-located to where it will be used (and
finally gets a real tape drive) I won't have direct access anymore.  I
had originally hoped to try out Amanda on my home Slackware machines,
but I ran into compatibility issues between the machines I now run and
the SCSI controller to access my DAT drive.  I'll deal with that in time,
but I hope I can do some preliminary tests on the Debian machine first
(e.g. backup up to disk should test most things, I think).

Any other Amanda on Debian experiences I should be advised of?

-- 
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
| Phil Howard KA9WGN       | http://linuxhomepage.com/      http://ham.org/ |
| (first name) at ipal.net | http://phil.ipal.org/   http://ka9wgn.ham.org/ |
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------