I don't think amanda was designed with such a goal in mind.
Here's a couple ideas to consider:
Idea 1:
It's too bad you're amanda server isn't on solaris, or another OS with
support for large files. I know the 2.4 kernel has support for large
files, but I'm not sure about RH7.0. It would simplify the following
hack, because you wouldn't have to deal with as many files...
Here's what I would do:
Since you can predict a large part of the holding disk filename that
amanda will pick for a backup of a file system on any given day.
something like date/hostname.device.*
I would write a script that watches the holding disk for a
filename that matches your important partitions, and then
creates a hard link of the same name in a different directory.
This allows amanda to do what it wants with the file (spool it
to tape and delete it) yet you still get your copy.
A script like this would need to run the whole time amanda is
running and wake up every few minutes to check for the important
files, otherwise you might miss them...
You'd also need another script to manage the expiration of your
copied dump files.
If you backups are bigger than the 2gig file limit your script will have
to be more intelligent to watch for each chunk file and then create the
corresponding hard link...
Idea 2:
Split your holding disk into two partitions, half is still a holding
disk for amanda, the other half is for manually dumping the
important partitions to, and then let amanda back up the new
partition and the dumps your important partitions to tape...
Again the 2gig file limit might bite you, so you could use rsync
instead of dump or tar if your all your files on the important
partition are less than 2gigs.
With this idea restores from tape are a lot more work because after
amanda gets the files off of tape you still have copy/restore them
to the important system...
Cheers,
Jason
On Tue, May 01, 2001 at 03:40:57PM +1000, Srdjan Nikolic wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I just recently started using Amanda across a Linux/AIX/Solaris/NT/2000
> environment.
>
> We have an arrangement where the Amanda server (Compaq DL380, RAID array,
> DLT-8000, RH 7.0, Amanda 2.4.2p2 + the client patch) happily does nightly
> backup across all the machines.
>
> What I would like to do is, for a given set of sensitive file systems, keep
> the last Level 0, level 1 etc.. on the holding disk, in case speedy recovery
> is needed. I have allocated a 26GB holding disk for this purpose only. I
> have not seen anything in amanda.conf backup type definitions that points to
> this feature?
>
> Is it the case of RTFM, or does Amanda not support this type of arrangement?
>
> Cheers,
>
> Srdjan Nikolic
> Melbourne
