On Mon, Feb 10, 2003 at 02:06:53PM +0100, Paul Bijnens wrote: > > Pro-Fit wrote: > >Hey folks - thanks for all your help - another newbie > >question... > > > >Is it possible to put the amlabel process in the CRON > >as opposed to running it manually everyday? How would > >one do this? > > I wouldn't do it... :-) > > The label on the tape serves some useful purposes. First it verifies > that the tape in the device is indeed an Amanda tape, and not some > other tape containing the data for your nobel prize project. > With the tapelabel, Amanda can verify that she has the expected tape > and not one that should not yet be overwritten (i.e. not yesterdays > backup that you forgot to take out, because you had a day off for example). > > That's why you first label your tapes, when you awake, and not half > sleeping, and after three times verifing that you put in the correct > tape in the drive. And you also put a sticker on the tape with the > Amanda's label on it, e.g. DailySet1-001. Stickers cannot be put on a > tape by cron afaik. > > Once labelled, you normally never ever have to relabel a tape. > > Taking this in consideration, you don't need to amlabel a tape by a cron > command at night, wiping out whatever tape was someone put by accident > in the tape drive. There is nobody around to verify that the tape that > you put in around 5 PM is still the same... > > If you do feel the need to relabel a tape each time it is used by > Amanda, you are probably trying to force Amanda into something for which > she is not designed, like labeling your tapes "monday", "tuesday", etc. > Look in the archives of this list to find the arguments against this scheme. > > ps. If you really are smarter than Amanda, try this command in your > crontab: "amlabel -f <config> <label>", about 5 minutes before the > amdump entry. > > pps. if you really are smarter than Amanda, you would already know the > above command too :-) >
And if all that smart they probably would also know to amrmtape the old label should a previously indexed tape be used. -- Jon H. LaBadie [EMAIL PROTECTED] JG Computing 4455 Province Line Road (609) 252-0159 Princeton, NJ 08540-4322 (609) 683-7220 (fax)
