>I configured AMANDA that way to use the first time 8 magazines, each
>holding 5 tapes and one cleaning tape. For all filesystems GNU tar
>(GTAR) is used so I do not fall into problems when dumping images
>bigger than one tape.
I think you're confused about some things, so let me explain a bit.
Using GNU tar does not guarantee you avoid the problem of a dump bigger
than a tape. That's a problem no matter what program you use with the
current version of Amanda. Using GNU tar, however, allows you to break
up on large dump into several smaller ones by listing each top level
directory independently.
But if you have a 2 GByte tape (just to pick a number) and tell GNU tar
to dump something that is 5 GBytes, it's still not going to work.
>The first time this runs well, AMANDA saved all the images out to
>two or three tapes (like the multi volume mechanism when using a
>simple tar -M backing up a big filesystem ...). ...
But what really happened here was that when Amanda ran into EOT while
writing one image, it started that image over again **from the beginning**
on the next tape.
Also note that tar had no idea this was going on. In fact, tar may not
even have been running any more if the dump was put in the holding disk
and Amanda is in the process of writing the image from there to tape.
>amlabel labels each used cartridge used by AMANDA and in the manner
>of using dump as the backup/save tool this means that each run is
>made to tapes with increasing numbers.
I didn't quite understand this, but I think I understand that you want
to label each tape with an increasing number (which is normal).
>At this moment, our magazines are filled up with cartridges each
>labeled with the same label, means mag one is completely labeled
>throughout each cartridge with LABEL00, the second mag's tapes
>LABEL01 ...
That was a mistake. You need to put a unique label on each tape.
When Amanda wants a new tape, it looks in the "tapelist" file (probably in
the same directory as amanda.conf) and it looks at your tapecycle value.
If tapelist does not have as many tapes as tapecycle, Amanda will insist
on a new tape (one not listed in tapelist).
If there are enough tapes in tapelist, Amanda will ask for the oldest
one but will also accept a new one.
I'm not quite sure I understand what you want to do with your cartridges.
If one amdump run uses three of the five tapes, what does the next
run use? Does it use the next two tapes in the same cartridge, or do
you want to put in the next cartridge?
>How can I delete each label a fast way? ERASE is not a good idea
>(using mt) due the fact it takes a long time for each tape to be
>cleaned and delabeled ...
You can use the -f option on amlabel. Or you can "mt rewind ; mt eof",
but then you'll have to run amlabel again anyway.
>O. Hartmann
John R. Jackson, Technical Software Specialist, [EMAIL PROTECTED]
