Frank and Alex, thanks for replying. Alex, you're right, I believe,
GNUtar behaves differently than tar with respect to symbolic links, and
I'm using GNUtar:
amanda@cn2:/var/lib$ tar --version
tar (GNU tar) 1.14

Frank, all my entries look like this one for sda2 (root):
amanda@cn2:/var/lib$ amadmin DBackup disklist centernet
line 48:
    host centernet:
        interface default
    disk sda2:
        program "GNUTAR"
        priority 1
        dumpcycle 28
        maxdumps 1
        maxpromoteday 10000
        strategy STANDARD
        compress CLIENT FAST
        comprate 0.50 0.50
        auth BSD
        kencrypt NO
        holdingdisk YES
        record YES
        index YES
        skip-incr NO
        skip-full NO

>From this, it seems there's no exclude lists in the disklist. It also
seems that there isn't one on the host, which is both client and server
(tapehost, amandahost):
amanda@cn2:/var/lib$ locate exclude
/home/kevinz/perl-5.8.6/perl-5.8.6/plan9/exclude
amanda@cn2:/var/lib$

None were NSF filesystems or links to other filesystems.

Your suggestion that the last tapes might be corrupt is an excellent
one, and one that I'll begin exploring immediately. Your suggestion to
check the restore procedures more than once every six years is also
good, and one that I'll also put into practice just as soon as this fire
is out.

You also caused me to question if I performed the restore correctly. I
manually went through the first record on each tape file and copied the
filesystem and level. It's possible that I omitted a level 0 and only
restored a level 1. Just about all the files missing are very static
ones that change infrequently. I'll have to check into this, too.

Thanks, again.

-Kevin


-----Original Message-----
From: Frank Smith [mailto:fsmith AT hoovers DOT com] 
Sent: Wednesday, September 13, 2006 1:20 PM
To: Zembower, Kevin
Cc: amanda-users AT amanda DOT org
Subject: Re: Why didn't my backup work (the way I thought it should)?

Did you have an exclude list?
Were any of those directories symlinks to other filesystems or NFS
mounts? A symlink would have still been backed up, just not what it
was pointing to, and a mount point would just show up as an empty
directory.
Did the system have problems before the last backup?  Perhaps these
files were corrupted/gone  before/during the last backup.  Since
Amanda restores the state at a point in time, you may have most of
the data on a previous level that the latest level removed (related
to recommendations often given here to restore to a tmp directory
and move files into place since otherwise existing new data in the
target directory would be deleted by the restore).  You might want
to try recovering from tapes from a day or two before and see if
the data is there, the dpkg data at least probably hadn't changed
much from earlier backups.

Test restores more than once per 6 years to verify you are backing up
what you think you are, since data seems to get shifted around and
the excludes you need today eventually end up excluding things you need.
Also, backup media (tape and disk) can fail in ways that give no errors
during backups but make a restore impossible, and the sooner you are
aware of it the better.

Frank

> 
> 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 
> 


-- 
Frank Smith                                      fsmith AT hoovers DOT com
Sr. Systems Administrator                       Voice: 512-374-4673
Hoover's Online                                   Fax: 512-374-4501