>I' ve just set up amanda on an almost Standard-PC in a small network.
First, I'd suggest you get version 2.4.2 if you're starting from scratch.
You might as well have the latest bugs instead of the old ones :-).
How did you install Amanda? Did you build it from source or did you
depend on someone else to set up a package?
>WARNING: localhost: selfcheck request timed out. Host down?
Did you read the FAQ at www.amanda.org? Did you do all the tests it
recommends?
>/etc/xinetd.d contains (among others) the files amandidx and amidxtape.
What about amandad itself? That's the only one that really matters.
>In each of them I added a line "banner = /amandaidx.banner" (or
>amidxtape.banner, respectively)
>Each of the banner files contains only a message saying the service was
>started.
I don't know anything about xinetd, but if the banner option is blatting
that text out to the incoming socket, it's going to seriously screw up
the protocol.
>But I never get the messages.
>I tried the same trick with telnet, and there I got a message just
>before the username question!
Which seems to confirm what I was saying. Get rid of the banners.
>Is it true that You can't read from a port on Your loopback device You
>are writing to?
>A friend(a Win NT guru) told me so. If its true , what good is a
>loopback device anyway?
First of all, "friend" and "Win NT" are mutually exclusive terms :-).
It's probably true that if a single process opens a connection on a
loopback device and drops a packet into it that it cannot then read that
same connection (in the same process) and get the packet back.
But in the normal (e.g. Amanda) case, there are two processes and two ends
to the connection, they just happen to be on the same machine and thus the
packets don't have to go out on a physical wire and can be "short stopped"
through the kernel, which is what the loopback interface does.
The loopback device is useful for some testing to see if basic networking
is functional. But most OS's recognize when they are asked to connect to
themself by name and automatically redirect the I/O through the loopback
interface for performance. So I recommend you change your disklist to
refer to the real hostname instead of "localhost".
>Why are the amandidx and amidxtape services disabled by default(as
>stated in their
>respective files in /etc/xinetd.d)?
I don't know. Amanda didn't set those up. Either you or the package
you installed did.
>Why are there files for amandidx and amidxtape, but not for amanda
>itself?
That's the big question.
As a quick test, do "netstat -a | grep -i amanda". You should see
something like this:
*.amanda Idle
If you don't, xinetd is not listening on the Amanda port and until you
get that fixed, Amanda is not going to work.
>Do I have to run amanda as user operator or as root (i always tested
>amanda as root.)
**Never** test as root. Amanda should **always** be run as the Amanda
user, the one you set with --with-user when you built it. If you didn't
build it yourself, you'll need to find out how it was built and use that
user name.
It's entirely possible you've now created directories and files as root
that will cause runs as some non-root user to fail. Keep that in mind
as you continue testing.
BTW, if this is the same package some other people have been using lately
and having trouble with, take a look at the home directory for "operator".
If it's /root you'll either need to open up the permissions on that
to allow operator in, or create a new home for operator and change
/etc/passwd.
Also, make sure /etc/amandates is a file, not a directory.
>Dirk Engelmann
John R. Jackson, Technical Software Specialist, [EMAIL PROTECTED]
