>Is there a way to run a "pre-backup" script or command prior to Amanda
>starting the backup?
As others have described, the easiest way is to run a wrapper script
from cron around a command that can reach out to the client and do what's
needed and then run amdump. Mine is in:
ftp://gandalf.cc.purdue.edu/pub/amanda/run-amanda*
In particular, you would write a pre.amdump script it would call. We use
it to reach out to our Oracle machines and checkpoint them to a scratch
area that Amanda then backs up.
If that won't work (due to problems with permissions between Amanda
server and client, too much time would elapse, etc), you can cheat and
tell Amanda about a fake version of GNU tar when you configure it and
then have that (script) do the right things to gather an estimate and
whatever else is needed. See:
ftp://gandalf.cc.purdue.edu/pub/amanda/gtar-wrapper*
The real solution will be in 2.5 and is called DUMPER-API, where the
interface between Amanda (sendsize/sendbackup/etc) and a dump program
is generalized, but very little, if any, work has been done on that yet
(although you can read about it in docs/DUMPER-API).
>Dave
John R. Jackson, Technical Software Specialist, [EMAIL PROTECTED]
