Ok, on Thurday night at 21:00 I kicked off a backup job that should span
over 2 tapes.  I wasn't in the office on Friday, but this morning the
first tape was ejected, and amstatus tells me the following:

server:/whatever/clients  0127494663k writing to tape (9:43:32)

I believe then that amanda wrote stuff to tape until 09:43 on Friday
morning, and then filled up the first tape, ejected it, and has been
patiently waiting for the second tape.  Or will it have timed out by
now?

So I inserted the second tape this morning, and nothing seems to be
happening at all.  It certainly does not appear to be writing anything
to the second tape...

What's the best way of seeing what amanda's doing now?

I've tried the following:

Amcheck skips the tape check, and tells me that amdump or amflush is
running.

Changer.debug contains lots of these (lots and lots):
  -> rewind /dev/nst0
  /dev/nst0 rewind failed: Input/output error
  -> status /dev/nst0
  /dev/nst0 status failed: Input/output error
  -> loaded <>

ps -ef | grep amanda
 amanda    9485  2915  0 Jun05 ?        00:00:00 crond
 amanda    9486  9485  0 Jun05 ?        00:00:00 /bin/bash
/var/lib/amanda/backup_job
 amanda    9487  9486  0 Jun05 ?        00:00:00 /bin/sh
/usr/sbin/amdump daily
 amanda    9497  9487  0 Jun05 ?        00:00:02 /usr/lib/amanda/driver
daily
 amanda    9498  9497  0 Jun05 ?        00:05:52 taper daily
 amanda    9499  9497  0 Jun05 ?        00:12:34 dumper0 daily
 amanda    9500  9497  0 Jun05 ?        00:00:00 dumper1 daily
 amanda    9501  9497  0 Jun05 ?        00:00:00 dumper2 daily
 amanda    9502  9497  0 Jun05 ?        00:00:00 dumper3 daily
 amanda    9503  9498  0 Jun05 ?        00:03:33 taper daily
 amanda   11652  9503  0 Jun06 ?        00:00:00 /bin/sh
/usr/lib/amanda/chg-manual -slot next

Would appreciate it if anyone has any advice on this.

Thanks.

Johan

-----Original Message-----
From: owner-amanda-users AT amanda DOT org
[mailto:owner-amanda-users AT amanda DOT org] On Behalf Of Dustin J. Mitchell
Sent: 04 June 2008 16:28
To: Johan Booysen
Cc: Amanda user's group
Subject: Re: Amanda 2.5.0 spanning

On Wed, Jun 4, 2008 at 11:04 AM, Johan Booysen <johan AT matrix-data.co DOT uk>
wrote:
> One question:

That's *three* questions ;)

> When amdump runs and fills up the first tape, what should I expect to
> see?
> Does Amanda simply eject the first tape and just waits until the
second
> tape is inserted?
> Does it give any sort of indication that it's time to insert the
second
> tape?

But they do have a single answer: it depends on the changer you're
using.  From previous emails in the thread, you don't have a changer,
so you should be using chg-manual.  Here are the comments from the
header of that file:

#
#       Changer config file (changerfile)
#
#       resend_mail=900         # 15 minutes
#       timeout_mail=604800     # 7 days
#       request="tty"           # Use the tty to ask the user to change
tape.
#                               # Can't be use by cron
#       request="email"         # Send an email to ask the user to
change tape.
#       request="tty_email"     # Use the tty if it exist or send an
email.
#                       #Default is "tty_email"
#       mtx_binary="/path/to/mtx" # path of 'mtx'; default is value
discovered by
#                               # configure

So you probably want request="email".  The other defaults should
probably be fine.

That way, when Amanda needs a new tape, it will send you an email.
You then take the previous tape out of the drive, stick in a new one,
and Amanda picks right up where it left off.

VOLUNTEER OPPORTUNITY:
 The changer documentation on the wiki could use some help.  If you
use chg-manual, head over to http://wiki.zmanda.com/index.php/Changers
and make it better!

Dustin

-- 

Storage Software Engineer
http://www.zmanda.com