On Thursday 14 May 2009, Brandon Metcalf wrote:
>I recently changed my config from
>
>  dumpcycle 4 weeks
>  runspercycle 20
>  tapecycle 25 tapes
>
>to
>
>  dumpcycle 2 weeks
>  runspercycle 12
>  tapecycle 50 tapes
>
>backups are working fine, but I'm confused by the following output
>which is just an example of one device:
>
>  $ amadmin DailySet1 find quercus sda8
>
>  date       host    disk lv tape or file file part status
>  2009-04-23 quercus sda8  0 DailySet1-04    5   -- OK
>  2009-04-24 quercus sda8  1 DailySet1-05    5   -- OK
>  2009-04-25 quercus sda8  0 DailySet1-06    5   -- OK
>  2009-04-28 quercus sda8  0 DailySet1-07    6   -- OK
>  2009-04-29 quercus sda8  0 DailySet1-08    6   -- OK
>  2009-04-30 quercus sda8  0 DailySet1-09    6   -- OK
>  2009-05-01 quercus sda8  1 DailySet1-10    6   -- OK
>  2009-05-02 quercus sda8  0 DailySet1-11    6   -- OK
>  2009-05-05 quercus sda8  0 DailySet1-12    6   -- OK
>  2009-05-06 quercus sda8  1 DailySet1-13    6   -- OK
>  2009-05-07 quercus sda8  0 DailySet1-14    6   -- OK
>  2009-05-08 quercus sda8  1 DailySet1-15    6   -- OK
>  2009-05-09 quercus sda8  0 DailySet1-16    6   -- OK
>  2009-05-10 quercus sda8  0 DailySet1-17    6   -- OK
>  2009-05-12 quercus sda8  0 DailySet1-18    6   -- OK
>  2009-05-13 quercus sda8  0 DailySet1-19    6   -- OK
>  2009-05-14 quercus sda8  0 DailySet1-20    6   -- OK
>
>It seems that for the last few days Amanda is doing a full backup
>every night.  The filesystem on sda8 contains only the lost+found
>directory and it or its contents are not changing.
>
>However, according to the backup report, incremental s are definitely
>happening:
>
>
>  STATISTICS:
>                            Total       Full      Incr.
>                          --------   --------   --------
>  Estimate Time (hrs:min)    0:22
>  Run Time (hrs:min)         0:57
>  Dump Time (hrs:min)        0:32       0:23       0:10
>  Output Size (meg)        7173.5     6151.5     1022.0
>  Original Size (meg)     15388.1    10798.0     4590.0
>  Avg Compressed Size (%)    46.6       57.0       22.3   (level:#disks ...)
>  Filesystems Dumped           17         15          2   (1:2)
>  Avg Dump Rate (k/s)      3791.0     4639.5     1804.5
>
>  Tape Time (hrs:min)        0:13       0:11       0:02
>  Tape Size (meg)          7173.8     6151.8     1022.1
>  Tape Used (%)               4.1        3.5        0.6   (level:#disks ...)
>  Filesystems Taped            17         15          2   (1:2)
>
>  Chunks Taped                  0          0          0
>  Avg Tp Write Rate (k/s)  9187.6     9193.1     9154.3
>
>  USAGE BY TAPE:
>    Label              Time      Size      %    Nb    Nc
>    DailySet1-20       0:13  7346016K    4.1    17     0
>
>So, I guess my question has to do with interpreting the output from
>'amadmin find'.  Do the '0s' indicated full backups?

Yes.  And what may be happening is Amanda's shuffling the backups around, 
using this particular one as one of the the fillers while Amanda is working 
out a strategy to use about the same amount of the media every run.  That will 
also depend on your dumporder and taperalgo string settings too.  I would not 
be too concerned about it, given time to settle, and a stable system (that 
which doesn't get new CD or DVD images added to it very often for instance) I 
have had it fill a small tape to 95% or more capacity every night for a week 
at a time.

Now I use vtapes with 10x that old tapes capacity per 'tape', and that isn't 
so important, so I tend to grab install dvd images a little more 
promiscuously, as there is now room for Amanda to do those 'adjustments'.

I would not worry about it very much, Amanda is just doing what it does best, 
backing up your data. :)

-- 
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)
Go away, I'm all right.
                -- H.G. Wells' last words.