>Yup, that worked! Here's output:
>...
Looks good.
>But why do you have to use both "mt fsf" and "skip=1"? Does "mt fsf"
>skip the volume label? And then "skip=1" skips over the first block, which
>contains the amanda file header? ...
That's correct. You would (might) also use fsf to get to the second,
third, etc, image on the tape. Typically you'll back up dozens or
hundreds of file systems on a single tape, and each one is in its
own (tape) file.
>Kind of a worst-case scenario....we want to make sure we can use low-level,
>standard Unix utilities to restore files/directories. ...
Ahh, I see. You're one of those silly plan ahead types :-).
>With that dd/ufsrestore
>combo, it looks like we can access files on an amanda tape using an
>Exabyte attached to another Unix server - and that Unix server doesn't
>need to run amanda utilities.
Absolutely. One of the greatest things about Amanda.
If I were you, I'd go ahead and install the Amanda software (it's pretty
small) on your other Unix server just so you can have amrestore if needed.
As you've found out, dd works fine, but why have to remember that at
3AM if you don't have to? :-)
FYI, I have one or more alternate server hosts (actually, they are
primaries for their own configurations) for each of my primary hosts.
At the end of each amdump run, I rdist most of the config information
(it's not all the big) to the alternate host so if the primary goes
down, I can still use the Amanda tools on the alternate and even have
the databases to do searches just like it was the primary.
I also take tapes from the primary to the alternates each week and make
sure they can be read with amverify. This makes it more likely that
the drives are not drifting too far out of alignment w.r.t. each other.
> date host disk lv tape or file file status
> 2000-11-20 emerald /usr/samba 0 DailySet101 1 OK
> 2000-11-24 emerald /usr/samba 1 DailySet103 1 OK
> 2000-11-27 emerald /usr/samba 1 DailySet104 1 OK
>
>I would use this data to track down a tape for a backup of /usr/samba,
>right?
Not only the tape but the file on the tape. In the above, it's always
the first file, 1, but here's an example from my site:
date host disk lv tape or file file status
2000-10-18 gandalf.cc.purdue.edu /work 1 B00101/acmaint 4 OK
2000-10-19 gandalf.cc.purdue.edu /work 1 B00102/acmaint 3 OK
2000-10-20 gandalf.cc.purdue.edu /work 1 B00103/acmaint 29 OK
...
So if I wanted the backup of the 19'th, it would be on tape B00102/acmaint
and in file 3, i.e. I'd do an "mt rewind && mt fsf 3".
Although if you've got enough of Amanda working that you can run amadmin,
you'll probably just use amrestore or amrecover to pull the image off
of tape.
On the other hand, doing the fsf by hand is much faster (at the moment)
than letting amrestore skip through the tape file by file.
>Lisa
John R. Jackson, Technical Software Specialist, [EMAIL PROTECTED]
