"John R. Jackson" wrote:
>
> [ My apologies in advance for the following. I normally brag about how
> little heat there is on this mailing list, but I'm sure going to break
> that mold below. If it helps, pretend I'm trying to be funny. --JJ ]
>
No problem - go ahead and let truth shine ;-)
>
> This and the vfat discussion are getting me really, really, pissed off.
>
I wanted a moment of truth and I am getting it...
> If Amanda is running an absolutely normal Samba command and that command
> is triggering a Windows crash, then obviously it's either a Samba or
> Windows problem (and I know which one I'd bet on). It is **not** an
> Amanda problem. If you type the same Samba command Amanda did under
> the exact same circumstances, it would have done the same thing.
>
Correct. But covers only part of the story (by design).
> And for anyone paying the slightest bit of attention, substitute GNU tar
> for Samba and Linux kernel for Windows in the above and you'll know how
> I feel about blaming Amanda for the vfat problem between that pair.
>
Pointing out a deficiency is here perceived as blaming. If I were to
blame something, then this would be the very design of AMANDA (yes!). It
is designed to do its job as independently as possible. This is a real
strength - but as it happens in real life, it is a strength for only 90%
of all cases. I happened to have the honour of choosing the other 10%
for my configuration (I do this often in other areas too, whith similar
results...). And I had the strength to point out that, in my case,
AMANDA's strength is a weakness. Why? Because AMANDA cannot solve my
problem.
"But it is the interplay of tar, vfat and the Linux kernel, all of which
are out of AMANDA's influence", you will say. This is correct, but it is
exactly the problem here: in order to compute incrementals, AMANDA
relies on mechanisms which in my special case do not work. I don't care
if the mechanisms are out of AMANDA's influence - this is a design
issue. To put it more blatantly: if AMANDA relies on something and this
something does not work in my case, then it is not only a fault of this
something (as you implicitly suggest) but also of AMANDA for relying on
it in _all_ cases.
> I'm clearly torqued off these days by people blaming
> Amanda for things it has no control over. And throwing Windows into
> the mix just winds me up tighter.
>
If you say that AMANDA can backup SAMBA shares, people will believe it
and be happy. People like me (a mathematician...) will believe it so
much, that they will eventually construct a case that does not work -
and will get a problem. The case that does not work is when you have a
dual boot system (Win/Linux) and the SAMBA shares you are trying to
backup with AMANDA (when running Linux) are the vfat partitions of
Windows. Just because exceptions confirm the rules, does not mean that
we should not point them out.
> Better yet, how about asking Microsoft for help? I'm sure they'll put
> every effort into getting you quality assistance right away.
>
You understand a chance as a curse: AMANDA _has_ the qualities to become
a real, integrative, superlative backup tool. But if we say "this is
M$'s problem, this is tar's problem, etc.", perceiving the challenge as
a curse, then it will miss this chance. And anyone who has ever tried to
figure out full and incremental backups on only 5 computers running both
Linux and Windows on the same machine at different times, will
understand what I mean by saying that the chance should not be lost -
even at the price of some more pressure pills... :-)
--
Regards
Chris Karakas
Don´t waste your cpu time - crack rc5: http://www.distributed.net
