> Lately, with the advent of some network viruses, I've had > backups not occur > when I run amcheck before running amdump. My script, which is run from > crontab, checks to see if amcheck ran successfully before I > allow amdump to > run. I'm using samba to back up Windows servers across the > network to my > Sun server. Is there any good reason to have this type of > procedure in > place where amcheck must be successful before running amdump?
Instead of making amdump run in lockstep to amcheck, you might want to just have amcheck send you an e-mail if there is a problem. (See the -m option.) Then amdump will at least try to run even if amcheck failed. > > Also, I don't run amverify either because I lack the time > during the backup > window for this. I'm not sure this is necessary either. What > is amverify > really checking? I don't think it checks what was dumped on > tape vs what is > on the disk. Is it necessary to make sure you really have a > valid backup? I never really worried about amverify, because it only makes sure your backup ran. Instead, I would recommend doing a test restore at least once a month, which makes sure the backup worked, like amverify AND it makes sure that you can restore. (In our case, I was backing up SQL Server databases, and made sure that I could restore the database dump all the way from tape->amanda->samba->SQL Server.)
