I am running amanda-server-1:2.5.2p1-1--i386 on Ubuntu 8.04, Hardy
Heron, and backing up to vtapes. For about a week, I have gotten the
following error messages in my reports:

  dzur.localdomain     /home  lev 0  FAILED [dump to tape failed]
  taper: FATAL taper.c@616: memory allocation failed (1073741824 bytes
  requested) taper: FATAL writer: Syncpipe failure before start

...

NOTES:
  planner: Incremental of dzur.localdomain:/var bumped to level 2.
  taper: open of /crc/back/split_diskbuffer/splitdump_bufferfailed (No
  such file or directory): +using fallback split size of 1048576kb to
  buffer dzur.localdomain:/home.0 in-memory driver: taper pid 9554
  exited with signal 6

...

dzur.localdo /home       0 FAILED
--------------------------------------------

I was able to solve the second error message by creating the
directory /crc/back/split_diskbuffer/ and changing its ownership to
that of the user under which amanda runs:

root@chaffee:/crc/back# ll
total 16
drwxr-xr-x  4 root   root   4096 Sep 23 06:30 .
drwxr-xr-x  3 root   root   4096 Aug 30  2008 ..
drwxr-xr-x 10 backup backup 4096 Sep 23 07:24 amanda
drwxr-xr-x  2 backup backup 4096 Sep 23 07:21 split_diskbuffer

(Shouldn't split_diskbuffer be under the amanda directory for better
information hiding? And if Amanda needs it, shouldn't it create it for
itself?)

I then ran amdump manually. I still got the taper allocation error
message. I did not get the missing directory message. I did, however,
get this:

NOTES:
  driver: WARNING: This is not the first amdump run today. Enable the
  usetimestamps option in the +configuration file if you want to run
  amdump more than once per calendar day.
  taper: mmap failed (Cannot allocate memory): using fallback split
  size of 1048576kb to buffer +dzur.localdomain:/home.0 in-memory
  driver: taper pid 25816 exited with signal 6

and that backup still failed.

The offending directory, minus an exclude that has worked well for over
a year, is 19.5 G. I can probably cut that back a bit, but is there
anything else I can do to remove this error. Would upgrading the server
to 2.6.1p1 help?

Thanks

-- 

Charles Curley                  /"\    ASCII Ribbon Campaign
Looking for fine software       \ /    Respect for open standards
and/or writing?                  X     No HTML/RTF in email
http://www.charlescurley.com    / \    No M$ Word docs in email

Key fingerprint = CE5C 6645 A45A 64E4 94C0  809C FFF6 4C48 4ECD DFDB