> Refresh our collective minds, is ambience your server (and a client)
> or is it a client only?

ambiance is a client only, whimsy is the server.

> When you changed inparallel to 6 (a reduction from default 10)
> did you also change maxdumps?

No.

> My understanding of the two parameters is:

> maxdumps refers to the clients -- how many simultaneous dumps
> can be running on any one client.  I.e. how many backups can
> each client stand to run at the same time.  Typically 1 but
> I often set it to 2 unless there are complaints.

I was confused then, I'll try:

inparallel              3
maxdumps                2

As most of the 6 jobs were sitting idle anyway.

> inparallel refers to the server -- how many client dumps total
> can be running at the same time.  I.e. how many client dumps
> can the server cope with streaming into it at the same time.
> It has to deal with putting them to the holding disk and possibly
> taping one at the same time.  Of course if it also backups up
> itself, that is additional load.
> 
> I just reread the amanda.conf man page, and if my understanding
> is correct, the client/server distinction is not very clear.

> For you to have 12 gtar processes running, it sounds like maxdumps
> is set to 6 also (raised from 1).  It gives 12 processes because
> you have 6 DLEs being dumped and each takes two gtar's, one for
> the dump and one to generating the index.

Since I had no maxdumps in my amanda.conf perhaps it defaults to
the inparallel setting 6 * 2 = 12?

I've changed the ACK_WAIT to 10 and made these other changes.  I'll
let you know how it goes tonight.

Steve
-- 
Steven J. Backus                        Computer Specialist
University of Utah                      E-Mail:  steven.backus AT utah DOT edu
Biomedical Informatics                  Alternate:  backus AT math.utah DOT edu
391 Chipeta Way -- Suite D150           Office:  801.587.9308
Salt Lake City, UT 84108-1266           http://www.math.utah.edu/~backus