On Tue, Feb 17, 2009 at 11:33:12PM -0500, Dustin J. Mitchell wrote:
> On Tue, Feb 17, 2009 at 11:06 PM, stan <stanb AT panix DOT com> wrote:
> > When we upgraded from 2.5.1p2 to 2.5.2p1, we had to copy the chg-multi 
> > script
> > from the 2.5.1p1 release into the new tree, as the newer script did not
> > work correctly.
> 
> Interesting -- did you submit patches?

No, we never had the time to figure out what problem had been introduced.
But, I suspose we must do this now, as we cannot make 2/`.6.1 work at all,
the old script does not work with it.

> 
> > 2.5.1p2 chg-multi does not work with 2.6.1. We have observed a couple of
> > things. First it seems that the tape handler that we were using, ammt from
> > the earlier amanda release is depricated. Since this mahcine is a Linux 
> > machine we are back to the bad old days of trying to figure out wheter to 
> > use mt-st or
> > gnu-mt, and I honestly cannot remember which one of those used to work.
> 
> I'm curious - what do you need mt for?

I thought that chg-multi used it, no?
> 
> > In addition, we seem to be having problems with some syntax in chg-multi. 
> > There are lines that look like this:
> >
> > echo `_ '$var'` >> $logfile
> >
> > I (nor my sh interperter) understand these. Looks to me like we are trying
> > to execute something called + which does not exist.
> 
> It's a rather ill-advised attempt at internationalization.  It's not
> pretty, especially in shell.

It's a syntax erro in any Bourne relate shell I am aware of the back ticks
say run this command, and substiture the output of it into the coammand
line. Thus we are trying to excute a command called _ which does not exist.
I have checked my bash, and korn shell books, and niether has any reference
to a construct like this. What is it "supposed" to do?

> 
> > So since we are no longer going to be able to use ammt, what commands can
> > we expect mt to be involed with & what are the expected returns. Cause both
> > versions of the Linux mt commands (gnu-mt & mt-st) available for Ubuntu
> > return something different for an, mt -f /dev/nst0 status than ammt -f
> > /dev/nst0 status (none of the three match results).
> 
> Amanda does not use mt at all at this point.  I do notice that
> chg-multi still begins with:
> 
>  51 if ! error=try_find_mt; then
>  52     echo <none> $error
>  53     exit 2
>  54 fi
> 
> but the result ($MT) is never used.  I'd rip that out if I weren't
> about to delete the whole file :)

I had looked at that.

> 
> > We got past the syntax
> > problem after getting rid of all the '_ ' in chg-multi & then amcheck which
> > calls the changer script fails to be able to find a valid slot. We suspect
> > that this is because chg-multi expects different behavior from mt than
> > it used to get from ammt. We tried forcing the existing, working 2.5.2p1,
> > that normally uses chg-multi from 2.5.1p2 and ammt to not find ammt & so
> > use the system mt. It reproduces the same error just described (confirmed
> > suspicion that Ubuntu gnu-mt & mt-st are incompatible with the changer
> > code)
> 
> OK, a few pieces of Amanda history may be relevant to your investigations 
> here.
> 
I'll comment on this ina seperate message.


-- 
One of the main causes of the fall of the roman empire was that, lacking
zero, they had no way to indicate successful termination of their C
programs.