I'm brand new, so let me first say thank you, this looks like a pretty full-blown backup implementation.
Bunch of new user questions: can I put the holding disk on one of the file systems I'm backing up (backing up the tape server host itself)? Does amanda backup the entire filesystem, both the used space and the empty space? Since it uses the fs /dev/ entries, do I need to be concerned about symlinks that cross slices? I'm using a Seagate Scorpion DDS-2 (4G/8G) drive. Should I skip amanda's compression and use the hardware compression? I've been using tar, and I made uncompressed tar files of about 1.8G and 1.2G and used hardware compression to get them to both fit on a 2G/4G tape. But I've added more content, and now the 1.8G file is over 2G, and tar seems to use a signed 32-bit int, so I'm hosed beyond 2G (.tar cannot contain any single file over 2G). So since the tape is a .tar file itself, it was crapping out on the 2G file. Here's what I used to do: /usr/bin/tar -cf /var/spool/backup/ns.tar --exclude /mnt --exclude /dev --exclude /var/tmp --exclude /var/spool/backup --exclude /var/squid --exclude /usr/tmp --exclude /usr/home/smbd/MP3 / Then I'd tar _that_ file (ns.tar) and one other similar tar file from another host onto my tape drive. _That's_ what wouldn't work once ns.tar grew beyond 2G. Sorry to ramble. I think I can dig enough to figure out amanda's exclude mechanism. Do I need to explicitly exclude the directory where amanda is putting the dump images, or will amanda know to do that? How does amanda handle symlinks that cross filesystems? When an excluded directory is a symlink, should I exclude both the physical dir _and_ the logical link, or just the physical dir? Here's what I want to back up. Subtract about 2G from /usr/home for stuff that doesn't have to be backed up, and another 3-3.5G on /usr that doesn't need to be backed up. /var/spool/backup is a symlink to /usr/tmp/backup, and I'm putting my holding files under /var/spool/backup. Hence the question about excluding symlinks, will amanda know to exclude /usr/tmp/backup/dumps because that's where /var/spool/backup/dumps resides? Filesystem Size Used Avail Capacity Mounted on /dev/idad0s1a 124M 83M 31M 73% / /dev/idad0s1h 9.7G 5.0G 3.9G 56% /usr /dev/idad0s1d 4.9G 3.1G 1.4G 68% /usr/home /dev/idad0s1e 124M 64M 50M 56% /var /dev/idad0s1g 992M 37K 913M 0% /var/spool /dev/idad0s1f 124M 73M 41M 64% /var/tmp Holler if I can confuse this a little more. The evening is still young here on the left coast. Thank you!
