On Tue, Jan 30, 2007 at 09:27:53PM +0100, Stefan G. Weichinger wrote:
> 
> Greets to all of you,
> 
> as some of you may have noticed on amanda-users-ml I ran into trouble
> when trying to restore data on an older server (and I am still in
> trouble there).
> 
> This is the perfect lesson to remember that one should test restores
> regularly.
> 
> Couldn't we build this *into* amanda?
> 
> I imagine something like:
> 
> After successful amdump (ran by cron, so that the testing would be
> includable into doing the backups), amanda chooses one of the DLEs
> dumped onto the current tape, amrestores it to a temporary space ...
> 
> There could be parameters like:
> 
> - testrestore yes|no
>       switch it on off
> 
> - testrestore_cycle num_days
>       how often to do these tests     
> 
> - testrestore_filelist file
>       containing a list of dirs/files that were placed for testing,
>       and which are pretty static on the given DLE
>       Maybe even with MD5-checksums or something like that.
> 
> - testrestore_tmpdir
>       where to restore those files to
> 
> - testrestore_tmpdir_size
>       how much space to take there (similar to holdingdisk-handling)
> 
> ...
> 
> I think you get the picture.
> 
> This is a rough idea, and has to be discussed, sure.
> 

Top of the head things to consider:

 - may not be space to restore large DLEs

 - assuming the restore is done to the original client;
   right now the client is only asked to supply things to
   the server, this would be putting data to the client,
   and substantial security considerations arise

 - assuming the restore is done to the server;
   the tools used to create the dump may not exist on
   the server or be in different locations

-- 
Jon H. LaBadie                  jon AT jgcomp DOT com
 JG Computing
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 Princeton, NJ  08540-4322      (609) 683-7220 (fax)