"Lonny Selinger" <lonny AT bangtherockstogether DOT net> writes:

> Is there another way to have backups forced to the holding disk?
> Fomr what I understand if you just don't mount a tape then the
> holding disk is where the images go to. I'm just wondering if
> there's a way for me to leave a tape in my drive and still force the
> backups to holding disk.
>
> Basically I'd like to set a job to check the holding disk to see
> when it reaches a threashold, then run amflush to dump it all to
> tape but most of this will be scripted. Basically all I want the
> real tapes for are weekly and monthly fulls which I'd like to write
> to tape and keep my incrimentals on vtapes.

We do something similar.  At night (0005), we do normal backups in the
mainstream amanda way.   At 1200, we swap in a different disklist and
config file.  The disklist is a subset, containing only the machines
that are expected to usually not be present at night.  The config file
is the same except that it specifies /dev/null for the tape drive,
which in our version fails properly.   The daytime run then dumps to
holding disk (and we have reserve set so it does fulls).  At night,
these get flushed to tape.

You have to be careful with multiple configs to be clear about how
your incremental metadata is stored.  There seems not to be support in
dump(8) for different dumpdates files (in NetBSD), or in amanda to
select this.

I also use a second config for offsite tapes.  This is set up no-incr,
no-record, so I just get fulls.  It's done once a week and the tape is
never in, so goes to holding disk, and then I amflush during the day.

Overall it sounds like you may be wanting to force dumps to be done
not the amanda way (specific schedule).  You might consider something
that just dumps to holding disk the normal way by swapping configs,
and then does a flush when it's big enough.

Beware that flushing more than a full tape result in tape wastage if
amanda writes a large file at the end.  But if your tapes are on the
same order of magnitude as your dumps, you need a new tape drive and
wouldn't be asking the questions you are.