Corrections:

I probably should say that I'm not using VTAPES: the drive I'm backing
up to tape is a disk on the AMANDA server. There are no other backups running.
No network activity whatsoever to reach other servers. Everything local.

Perhaps what I should do is limit the holding disk to a few gig. It's
on the same partition is the data i'm trying to back up.

On 3/11/07, Jon LaBadie <jon AT jgcomp DOT com> wrote:
> On Sun, Mar 11, 2007 at 05:42:15PM -0400, FL wrote:
> > I'm using AMANDA to back up a disk that is periodically rsynced from
> > a NAS. At a certain point in the backup, amdump complains that it doesn't
> > have enough diskspace, persumably for the holding disk. Is this something I
> > should be concerned about?
> >
> > Since the files are on a disk on the tapebackup server, I don't need a
> > holding disk: I just want the tape backup to read the files from disk as
> > they are needed; they don't need to be copied to a holding disk, as if the
> > backups could be speeded up by sending them over a network to the server's
> > holding disk.
> >
> > How do I ensure the desired behavior for this setup? Am I missing the point
> > (no doubt I am, and no doubt it's the crucial point).
> >
>
> When using virtual tapes (disks) to store amanda dumps,
> amanda still acts as if it were going to a physical tape
> with a single data stream.  The purpose of a holding disk
> in this case is to allow multiple dumps run simultaneously
> to the holding disk.  As each completes it is transfered
> to the vtape, a very fast operation.  Thus the overall
> time for backup should be shorter due to many running in
> parallel to the holding disk rather than one a a time
> going at dump rate (not disk to disk rate) directly to vtape.
>
> --
> 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)
>