Thanks very much.  Makes perfect sense now.

I did not expect that dump to bypass the holding disk, but I'm a bit low
on holding disk space as things stand, so will look into that.  Thanks
for pointing that out, though.

Much appreciated.

Johan

-----Original Message-----
From: Paul Bijnens [mailto:paul.bijnens AT xplanation DOT com] 
Sent: 23 July 2008 12:35
To: Johan Booysen
Cc: amanda-users AT amanda DOT org
Subject: Re: dumporder parameter

Johan Booysen wrote:
> Another question:
>
> How can I verify that those DLE entries were in fact only dumped after
> 05:00?  In the Amanda email report I can see when the backups
completed,
> and can more or less work out from that when writing to tape started
for
> them.  But I'd like to check when they actually started dumping.
>
> I checked through the logs in /var/log/amanda/server/daily, but the
only
> relevant thing that may be what I'm looking for is from
> dumper.20080722235901.debug (my job started at 23:59, and I set up
those
> disklist entries with starttime 0500):
>
> 1216790552.349935: dumper: getcmd: PORT-DUMP 00-00006 11003 server2
> fffffeff9ffeffff070000 /dir4/backups/backup1 NODEVICE 0 1970:1:1:0:0:0
> GNUTAR X X X
> |;auth=BSD;compress-fast;index;exclude-list=/etc/amanda/exclude-list;
> OPTIONS features=ffffffff9ffeffffffff00;hostname=server2;
> 1216790552.535954: dumper:     name             = 'server2'
>
> Any ideas on where I can find this information?
>   

Each line there is tagged with a timestamp, in seconds
since epoch.  To convert to human readable format use
(assuming you are now in GMT+1

  $ TZ=UTC perl -le 'print scalar localtime(1216790552.349935)'
  Wed Jul 23 05:22:32 2008

(leave out the "TZ=UTC" on the local computer to have the time
in local time there).

btw, the word "PORT-DUMP" indicates that this dump bypassed
holdingdisk.  If that is what you were expected, then that's ok.
Bypassing holdingdisk and using a fast tapedrive usually does
not work very well together: the backup datastream cannot follow the
tape streaming, resulting in frequent stop/rewind/restart of
the tapedrive.  This really wears out the hardware of the tape
(and at the same time looses lots of capacity in those gaps).
Typically LTO drives can fall back to about half the top speed
without shoeshining the tape; below that speed the process will
damage the drive within a year for daily operations.
Keep an eye on that too.

--

Paul