On Fri, Sep 29, 2006 at 08:33:58AM -0700, Steven Kurylo wrote:
> >
> >> well we run a full monthly backup, rotating through the tapes yearly.
> >>
> >> Running a weekly backup and then a monthly backup is rather wasteful,
> >> the data will almost be identical.  Is there anyway I can take the
> >> weekly backup which just finished and copy it to the monthly tapes?
> >>     
> >
> > It has been suggested as an excellent enhancement to amanda.
> > No one has yet taken up the task of implementing it.
> >   
> 
> Poking at it a bit it looks like I could:
> 
> 1) Use dd to copy the weekly tape to the monthly tape
> 2) Modify the amanda label on the monthly tape from "week1" to "month1"
> (it looks like dd and sed could do this)
> 3) Modify the tapelist in the monthly config to reflect the tape "month1"
> 4) Copy the log file, curinfo, and index files from the weekly config to
> the monthly config
> 5) Modify the log file to refer the tape "month1" instead of "week1"
> 
> 
> To those more familiar with the amanda data layout, does it look like
> I've missed anything?


That is basically what I anticipated too.  It is surprising to me
how little the strings for a tape name appear in the logs, curing,
and index files.  A recursive grep turns up basically only the
logs where the tape writes are noted.  On the tapes, only in the
header file.

Even more surprising is the lack of the config name anywhere,
logs or tape files.

What I'm unsure about is which, if any, of the above are really
needed for recovery/restores.  index files to use amrecover.
curinfo, I don't see a need, but have been wrong many times.

What about the logs?  Does amrecover/amrestore/amfetchdump
actually use the logs?  I don't know.

If such a utility were developed, I think its usefulness would
be greatly enhanced if it were more than a "duplicate an entire
tape to a different config".  What I'd like to see is the ability
to pick and choose archives from different backups to merge into
a pseudo backup in the new config.  For example, you might say
get the most recent level 0 dumps from a set of DLE's or hosts.
Or all the dumps of a particular DLE between two dates.

If the log files are needed for recovery, then some extraction
of specific entries from multiple logs and editing them would
be needed.

-- 
Jon H. LaBadie                  jon AT jgcomp DOT com
 JG Computing
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