Dustin J. Mitchell wrote at 09:32 -0400 on Sep 12, 2008:
 > On Thu, Sep 11, 2008 at 11:53 PM, Olivier Nicole <on AT cs.ait.ac DOT th> 
 > wrote:
 > > Is there a mechanism in Amanda to ensure that only a single tape
 > > changer process is running at any given time?
 > 
 > No -- and this poses a problem for processes that want to move data
 > between devices.  I'm working on such a process, and for that reason
 > I'm working on an overhaul of the changer API at the moment.  The key
 > problem with the existing API is that it has no way to indicate that a
 > process is finished with a device, and that the changer can load a new
 > volume into that device.

I use lockf(1) in a wrapper script to protect accesses to a resource
where amanda (currently) does not.