Amanda-Users

Re: autoflush off, but still flushing to tape after amdump

2006-10-20 14:59:42
Subject: Re: autoflush off, but still flushing to tape after amdump
From: Jon LaBadie <jon AT jgcomp DOT com>
To: amanda-users AT amanda DOT org
Date: Fri, 20 Oct 2006 12:58:13 -0400
On Fri, Oct 20, 2006 at 11:14:20AM -0500, Lee, Raymond wrote:
> I know Amanda wasn't designed to write to a tape until it's full, but I
> need to do that for now since I don't have enough tapes to keep the
> number of days of backups that I want.  So as the FAQ suggested, I'd
> like to keep all the dumps on the holding disk and just run amflush
> whenever the holding disk gets enough data to fill one tape.
> 
> I'm running 2.5.1p1 with the following in amanda.conf:
> 
> autoflush off
> 
...
> 
> However, when I run an amdump that only backs up a 200MB of data, I can
> see the dumps being written to /dump/amanda, but then it's be flushed to
> tape automatically at the end of amdump.  I also tried "autoflush no"
> and commenting the line out (default should be "off", right?), but it
> always flushes to tape after a dump.  Any ideas?
> 

You've misunderstood the autoflush directive.
It is not clearly described in the manpage.

Writing to tape during an amdump is considered the norm.
There is no directive controlling taping or not taping
during a dump, that is not considered "flushing".

The autoflush directive only affects whether the holding
disk is looked at for OLD, previously untaped, dumps.
They are then added or not to the list of things to
tape this run of amdump.

To collect on the holding disk, don't insert at tape.

-- 
Jon H. LaBadie                  jon AT jgcomp DOT com
 JG Computing
 4455 Province Line Road        (609) 252-0159
 Princeton, NJ  08540-4322      (609) 683-7220 (fax)