On Saturday 24 March 2007, Joe Konecny wrote:
>Gene Heskett wrote:
>> <snip>
>> I believe, and somebody correct me if I'm wrong, but ISTR that file
>> needs to be touched by root, 'chown'ed to 'amanda:disk' or whatever
>> your amanda user is named: and a member of that :group, then chmod'ed
>> to 0600, so that 'amanda' is the only normal user with rights to that
>> file.  I use amanda:disk here cause then I don't have to remember who
>> the operator for amanda is.
>
>I left it 644 and it seems ok.  Strange the whole amandates thing isn't
>in the docs (except for the cygwin
>part so you'd think it wouldn't apply) and it's not in the faq either.
>Seems like it should be part of the
>installation instructions.

If it was going to be mentioned, I'd think it would be in the manpage for 
amdump, but you are correct, its not in there.

In the src tree's docs dir, a grep shows it in 'amanda.client.conf.5.txt':
amanda-client.conf.5.txt:  amandates string
amanda-client.conf.5.txt:      Default: /etc/amandates. The file where 
amanda keep the last date of each
amanda-client.conf.5.txt-      dumplevel.

And in 'whatwasnew.txt':
---------
Since Gnu TAR does not maintain a dumpdates file itself, nor give an 
estimate
of backup size, those need to be done within Amanda. Amanda maintains 
an /etc/
amandates file to track the backup dates analogously to how dump does it.
NOTE: if your /etc directory is not writable by your dumpuser, you'll have 
to
create the empty file initially by hand, and make it writable by your 
dumpuser
ala /etc/dumpdates.
NOTE: Since tar traverses the directory hierarchy and reads files as a 
regular
user would, it must run as root. The two new Amanda programs calcsize and
runtar therefore must be installed setuid root. I've made them as simple 
as
possible to to avoid potential security holes.
-----------
But that, it appears, does not make it into the manpages.

-- 
Cheers, Gene
"There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty:
 soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order."
-Ed Howdershelt (Author)
Yevtushenko has... an ego that can crack crystal at a distance of twenty 
feet.
                -- John Cheever