Ian Turner wrote:
> On Monday 21 May 2007 13:54, Chris Hoogendyk wrote:
>   
>> Jordan Desroches wrote:
>>     
>>> I'm trying to figure out how to set backup retention, and was
>>> wondering if it was as simple as making sure the number of tapes a
>>> configuration has to use allows it to cycle through N times, or if
>>> there is an actual "set retention" command I haven't found?
>>>       
>> It's in the relationships among (taking from my configuration):
>>
>>      dumpcycle 1 weeks       # the number of days in the normal dump cycle
>>      runspercycle 5          # the number of amdump runs in dumpcycle days
>>      tapecycle 30 tapes      # the number of tapes in rotation
>>     
>
> Actually, dumpcycle and runspercycle don't affect the retention policy; they 
> only affect the choices Amanda makes about what levels to dump at.
>
> The gory details of Amanda's retention policy can be found here: 
> http://wiki.zmanda.com/index.php/Taper_scan_algorithm

Correct (except that gory would apply to sendmail.cf, not Amanda's
retention policies ;-)  ).

I was trying to provide a little more context in terms of clock time,
because, in some other backup programs, retention is explicitly in terms
of clock time. With amanda, if I ran it more or fewer days than the
config file said, then the tapecycle of 30 would remain true, but would
not correspond to the 6 weeks implied by the config. Also, if backups
run over more than one tape, the interpretation changes. But, at least
it gives some sense that I'm talking about 6 weeks.


---------------

Chris Hoogendyk

-
   O__  ---- Systems Administrator
  c/ /'_ --- Biology & Geology Departments
 (*) \(*) -- 140 Morrill Science Center
~~~~~~~~~~ - University of Massachusetts, Amherst 

<hoogendyk AT bio.umass DOT edu>

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Erdös 4