Jean-Louis Martineau wrote at 14:50 -0500 on Mar  6, 2008:
 > By defaults, amanda will never do more than runtapes * tape_length, 
 > unless you set 'maxdumpsize', added in 2.4.4.

... or the estimated dump size winds up being less than the actual
dump size.  But I understand your basic point.

I was wrong about us running 2.4.2p2... we're using 2.4.5, so I can
try maxdumpsize right now.

But maxdumpsize seems like it is just a substitute for runtapes *
tape_length.  That is, it's directly used by the planner to decide
what size to target.  So bumping up maxdumpsize seems like the
equivalent of lying about your tape size.

What I'd like is for a nominal planner target size and then beyond
that, if some dumps wind up not fitting, have a knob (say,
overflow_to_holding=true or dont_skip=true or something) to allow
dumps that would otherwise be skipped to go to holding disk instead.
I'd even go as far as saying 'true' should be the default for such a
knob even though that is different than the current behavior.  I think
skipping dumps is almost always a bad choice.

I don't have code to implement this at the moment.  But is there any
future directions that might help in this area?  Any other opinions?