>Now I tried (as root) to throw everything I could at that process to kill it,
>I even RESTARTED xinetd with NO amanda options, killed every shell, killed
>X (not that this matters as PPID of selfcheck is "1", so init). All I had
>running was ONE shell and my normal deamons (httpd,sendmail,squid etc).
>Tried it as amanda. Nothing. Zilch.
That usually means the process is hung in the kernel someplace.
>What does it do?
It does a number of things. Many of the tests are optional, depending
on other dumptype settings. For instance, it only looks for GNU tar if
there is a disk that will be backed up with GNU tar.
Anyway, here are the things 2.4.2p2 (you didn't say what version you were
running) does (all I'm doing is looking through the code and translating
it to English):
* Look for the Amanda runtar and rundump programs.
* Look for the system dump and restore programs, GNU tar and smbclient.
* Look for the compress program.
* Make sure /etc/amandapass, /etc/dumpdates and/or /etc/vdumpdates
are accessible.
* Make sure /dev/null is accessible.
* Make sure there is enough space in the Amanda temp directory, the
debug directory and /etc (for /etc/dumpdates).
* Make sure each device or directory to be backed up is accessible.
For Samba shares, this involves actually connecting to the share
and doing a dummy command.
Most of this is done with the access() system call. Other than the
smbclient check of a share, selfcheck is trivial.
>Sadly, I used my last option; my uptime is rather small now and it was
>pretty big :-(((.
I doubt you had any choice. Something in your kernel got lost and there
was probably no hope of unwedging it without the reboot. You'd have to
dig into kernel debugging to track down exactly where it was at.
>jobst
John R. Jackson, Technical Software Specialist, [EMAIL PROTECTED]
