Hi...

> Hmm.. this sounds like a network/firewall issue to me, with a 90
> second timeout.  Have you had a look at the packet dump between the
> server and the client? Are reply packets being dropped?  Amanda's
> STARTUP_TIMEOUT is 60s, so this is probably some other timeout.
There are no filter rules on the network devices between the ESX and the
backup server. There is no firewall on the backup server.

I know there's an integrated firewall on the ESX server.
I just re-read the docs about ports, and I hope to understand it right.
- If I have a firewall between the backup client and  server, the
easiest thing is to compile the client with custom --with-tcpportrange
and --with-udpportrange settings, and then open these ports in the
firewall for packets that are send between client and server?


> Could you try
>   strace -f tar -cf - . 2>/tmp/trace | true; tail /tmp/trace
> and see what happens?
[root@test boot]# /root/strace/strace-4.5.15/strace -f tar -cf - .
2>/tmp/trace | true; tail /tmp/trace
read(3, "\353H\220\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0"...,
512) = 512
fstat64(3, {st_mode=S_IFREG|0644, st_size=512, ...}) = 0
close(3)                                = 0
lstat64("./grub/stage2", {st_mode=S_IFREG|0644, st_size=104028, ...}) =
0
open("./grub/stage2", O_RDONLY|O_LARGEFILE) = 3
read(3, "RV\276\3\201\350(\1^\277\370\201f\213-\203}\4\0\17\204"...,
3584) = 3584
write(1, "./\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0"...,
10240) = -1 EPIPE (Broken pipe)
--- SIGPIPE (Broken pipe) @ 0 (0) ---
+++ killed by SIGPIPE +++
Process 1493 detached
[root@test boot]#


regards,

olli