Greetings;

Conditions still the same, but last night I was again forced to use dd to 
extract a directory from a backup vtape file, amrecover again complaining it 
cannot find the Daily-18 vtape.  And if you ask it to rescan, there seems to 
be a lock on chg-disk and it cannot access chg-disk to repeat the operation.

Is this one of the failures inherent in switching to the use of amgtar maybe?
The last 8 or 9 runs before the boot disk had a heart attack were made with 
its use.

amcheck is still as happy as a clam FWIW.

No tape labels have been changed in a year, and the vtape directory structure 
is too big to post, but looks like this:

/amandatapes/Dailys/data ->slot(n), and the first file in each slot directory 
is the tape label, 00000.Daily-1 through Daily-30.  It doesn't help if I edit 
the symlink 'data' to point at the correct slot(n) directory either.

[root@coyote F9respins]# ls /amandatapes
Dailys  grub  lost+found  mbr-backups

In the Dailys dir:
Dailys-16  slot1   slot12  slot15  slot18  slot20  slot23  slot26  slot29  
slot4  slot7
Dailys-8   slot10  slot13  slot16  slot19  slot21  slot24  slot27  slot3   
slot5  slot8
data       slot11  slot14  slot17  slot2   slot22  slot25  slot28  slot30  
slot6  slot9

And the label files:
[root@coyote F9respins]# su amanda -
[amanda@coyote F9respins]$ ls -lR /amandatapes|grep 00000
-rw------- 1 amanda disk      32768 2008-11-09 06:22 00000.Dailys-1
-rw------- 1 amanda disk       32768 2008-11-12 01:36 00000.Dailys-10
-rw------- 1 amanda disk      32768 2008-11-13 01:25 00000.Dailys-11
-rw------- 1 amanda disk      32768 2008-11-14 01:25 00000.Dailys-12
-rw------- 1 amanda disk      32768 2008-11-14 05:11 00000.Dailys-13
-rw------- 1 amanda disk      32768 2008-11-14 06:22 00000.Dailys-14
-rw------- 1 amanda disk      32768 2008-11-14 07:35 00000.Dailys-15
-rw------- 1 amanda disk      32768 2008-11-15 01:51 00000.Dailys-16
-rw------- 1 amanda disk      32768 2008-11-16 01:37 00000.Dailys-17
-rw------- 1 amanda disk      32768 2008-11-16 05:50 00000.Dailys-18
-rw------- 1 amanda disk      32768 2008-11-02 01:47 00000.Dailys-19
-rw------- 1 amanda disk      32768 2008-11-09 08:25 00000.Dailys-2
-rw------- 1 amanda disk      32768 2008-11-03 01:57 00000.Dailys-20
-rw------- 1 amanda disk      32768 2008-11-04 01:42 00000.Dailys-21
-rw------- 1 amanda disk       32768 2008-11-05 01:35 00000.Dailys-22
-rw------- 1 amanda disk      32768 2008-11-06 01:42 00000.Dailys-23
-rw------- 1 amanda disk      32768 2008-11-07 01:42 00000.Dailys-24
-rw------- 1 amanda disk      32768 2008-11-08 01:50 00000.Dailys-25
-rw------- 1 amanda disk      32768 2008-11-09 01:43 00000.Dailys-26
-rw------- 1 amanda disk      32768 2008-11-09 03:14 00000.Dailys-27
-rw------- 1 amanda disk      32768 2008-11-09 04:43 00000.Dailys-28
ls: cannot open directory /amandatapes/lost+found: Permission denied
-rw------- 1 amanda disk      32768 2008-11-09 05:19 00000.Dailys-29
-rw------- 1 amanda disk      32768 2008-11-09 13:11 00000.Dailys-3
-rw------- 1 amanda disk      32768 2008-11-09 07:23 00000.Dailys-30
-rw------- 1 amanda disk      32768 2008-11-09 14:12 00000.Dailys-4
-rw------- 1 amanda disk      32768 2008-11-09 15:47 00000.Dailys-5
-rw------- 1 amanda disk      32768 2008-11-09 16:49 00000.Dailys-6
-rw------- 1 amanda disk      32768 2008-11-09 17:39 00000.Dailys-7
-rw------- 1 amanda disk       32768 2008-11-10 01:35 00000.Dailys-8
-rw------- 1 amanda disk      32768 2008-11-11 01:25 00000.Dailys-9

Humm drive perms?
[amanda@coyote F9respins]$ ls -l /
total 213
drwxr-xr-x   6 amanda disk    4096 2008-11-15 00:29 amandatapes

So that is ok,
[amanda@coyote F9respins]$ ls -l /amandatapes
total 44
drwxrwxr-x 32 amanda disk  4096 2008-11-20 23:26 Dailys

as is that, but I just found two of the slot dirs were owned by root and fixed 
that.

Trace of procedure:

[root@coyote share]# amrecover Daily
AMRECOVER Version 2.6.1alpha-20081114. Contacting server on 
coyote.coyote.den ...
220 coyote AMANDA index server (2.6.1alpha-20081114) ready.
Setting restore date to today (2008-11-21)
200 Working date set to 2008-11-21.
200 Config set to Daily.
501 Host coyote.coyote.den is not in your disklist.
Trying host coyote.coyote.den ...
501 Host coyote.coyote.den is not in your disklist.
Trying host coyote ...
200 Dump host set to coyote.
Use the setdisk command to choose dump disk to recover
amrecover> setdisk /usr/dlds
200 Disk set to /usr/dlds.
amrecover> lcd /tmp/dlds
amrecover> ls
2008-11-15-01-25-04 tgzs/
2008-11-15-01-25-04 rpms/
2008-11-15-01-25-04 misc/
2008-11-15-01-25-04 .
amrecover> add tgzs rpms misc
Added dir /tgzs/ at date 2008-11-14-05-11-08
Added dir /tgzs/ at date 2008-11-15-01-25-04
Added dir /rpms/ at date 2008-11-14-05-11-08
Added dir /rpms/ at date 2008-11-15-01-25-04
Added dir /misc/ at date 2008-11-14-05-11-08
Added dir /misc/ at date 2008-11-15-01-25-04
amrecover> extract

Extracting files using tape drive chg-disk on host coyote.
The following tapes are needed: Dailys-13
                                Dailys-16

Restoring files into directory /tmp/dlds
Continue [?/Y/n]?

Extracting files using tape drive chg-disk on host coyote.
Load tape Dailys-13 now
Continue [?/Y/n/s/d]?
Volume labeled 'Dailys-13' not found.
Load tape Dailys-13 now
Continue [?/Y/n/d]?                                       

At which point you have to answer n twice to get the amrecover prompt back.

So its all there. What could have changed?  PEBKAC?

-- 
Cheers, Gene
"There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty:
 soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order."
-Ed Howdershelt (Author)
Don't worry if you're a kleptomaniac; you can always take something for it.