I'm just completing the first bare-metal recovery I've experienced in my
six years as a system administrator. A backplane seemed to fail and
wiped out two disks of a four-disk RAID-5 array. After replacing all the
suspect parts, I followed this process to restore the host:
--Installed an IDE hard drive and configured to boot before the SCSI
RAID drives
--Installed Debian 3.1r3 on the IDE drive.
--Mounted the SCSI array and partitioned as the original was
--Manually examined my backup tapes (tar) and assembled a list of the
tape file to restore, in the proper order.
--Restored the data to the proper partitions on the SCSI array.
--Powered down the host, removed the IDE drive, and booted using Debian
CD and 'rescue root=/dev/sda2'. This worked correctly.
--Ran lilo to restore the MBR. After removing CD, 'shutdown -r' seems to
work correctly.

 I thought that after all this, I'd be done. However, I'm discovering
pockets of files and directories that seem to have never made it to the
backup tapes in the first place. Some examples:
--/service/tinydns, dnscache, qmail-send, ... All these were soft links
to the files, so from the recent discussion, they wouldn't have been
backed up by tar. Is there a recommended procedure for dealing with
this? Would using 'dump' have prevented this?
--/var/qmail/*  Directories below this level, such as control and bin,
exist, but they're empty
--/var/lib/dpkg/* (This is frustrating my efforts to restore this Debian
system with 'aptitude' or 'apt-get.')
--/var/spool/cron/crontabs Empty
--/var/amanda/* (All my amanda database information is missing.)

One common thread is that all of these directories are in /var/.
However, other files in this branch, such as /var/lib/apt/lists/* seem
to be restored just fine.

I don't understand why these files and directories are missing. My
disklist includes:
amanda@cn2:/etc/amanda/DBackup$ grep -i center disklist
centernet sda2 tar      #/
centernet sda14 tar     #/boot 
centernet sda3 tar      #/usr 
centernet sda5 tar      #/opt/analog/logdata 
centernet sda6 tar      #/var/www/centernet/htdocs 
centernet sda7 tar      #/var/lib/mysql 
centernet sda9 tar      #/var/www/centernet/logs 
amanda@cn2:/etc/amanda/DBackup$

This matches the /etc/fstab on this host:
amanda@cn2:/etc/amanda/DBackup$ cat /etc/fstab
# /etc/fstab: static file system information.
#
# <file system> <mount point>                   <type>  <options>
<dump>  <pass>
/dev/sda2       /                               ext2
errors=remount-ro       0       1
<snip>
/dev/sda14      /boot                           ext2    defaults
0       2
/dev/sda3       /usr                            ext2    defaults
0       2
/dev/sda5       /opt/analog/logdata             ext2    defaults
0       2
/dev/sda6       /var/www/centernet/htdocs       ext2    defaults
0       2
/dev/sda7       /var/lib/mysql                  ext2    defaults
0       2
/dev/sda9       /var/www/centernet/logs         ext2    defaults
0       2
/dev/sda8       /dumps/amanda                   ext2    defaults
0       2
/dev/sda10      /dumps/amanda2                  ext2    defaults
0       2
amanda@cn2:/etc/amanda/DBackup$

Here's what I think are the relevant portions of amanda.conf:
define dumptype global {
    comment "Global definitions"
}

define dumptype tar {
    global
    program "GNUTAR"
}

I don't understand why these files and directories didn't end up on the
root (sda2) tape, like I expected.

Can anyone show me an error that I made, or did something go wrong that
wasn't supposed to occur?

To make this work more smoothly the next time, six years from now, when
I have to do another bare-metal backup, what should I change?

Thanks for your advice and suggestions.

-Kevin

Kevin Zembower
Internet Services Group manager
Center for Communication Programs
Bloomberg School of Public Health
Johns Hopkins University
111 Market Place, Suite 310
Baltimore, Maryland  21202
410-659-6139