On Thursday 27 July 2006 17:08, Alan Pearson wrote: >snip > >> And that has nothing to do with this instant problem. The instant >> problem is that you don't have enough tapes in your tapecycle, so you >> never have a 2nd or 3rd generation backup. At the price of dds tapes, >> thats being rather penny wise and pound foolish. And, having rather >> extensive personal experience with dds tapes, my backups got about 100 >> times more dependable when I bought a big hard drive and changed to >> vtapes 2 years ago. > >That is your situation. Not mine. The price of tapes has nothing to do >with it. > Price, or availability in a timely manner. Its mochs nichts, the end result is the same when amanda didn't have sufficient resources to do the job.
>> Please don't go around bad-mouthing amanda when the real constraint is >> the operating environment, one that would cripple any backup protocol. > >The constraint is NOT the operating environment, but the behaviour in >these conditions. >I've heard the more tapes argument, and yes I agree more tapes are > necessary. Yippers. >The behaviour of Amanda is wrong IMHO, and regardless of how it behaves >_today_ , backup software should never knowingly overwrite yourlast valid >backup and leave you with none. THAT is the point. And it should be taken as a valid point, given the context that you got bit in. >As for bad - mouthing Amanda, I'll rise to that little dig. Amanda is > free software, which I gratefully accept (I also develop free software > http://testmaster.sourceforge.net/), and I am reporting a problem, not > bad mouthing it. When my users report problems, I take it on board and > strive to improve the software, not defend it's behaviour. We do tend to try and protect the girl a wee bit from the folks who think they know more than amanda about how to do a backup, so I'm guilty of that. >If the developers think that it is desired behaviour to overwrite your >last valid backup, then fine, I'll either quit using it or attempt to fix >it myself, as it doesn't fulfill my needs. I think it was Jon LaBadie that came up with an acronym for that, something to do with "patches always welcome", but I don't think it was "PAW". Jon? :) More than one patch that extended amanda's abilities has been posted to this list over the 7 years I've been lurking. >But considering the number of other checks that Amanda does to ensure > that backups aren't over written, I believe I've identified a corner > case that needs to be fixed. Now thats an interesting phrase, corner case. I've never seen a really good definition of that, but it sure is popular. >Remember, I believe I have found a flaw in the software and didn't expect >to be told that it was ME that was in the wrong. Arguments about tapes >aside, in this case Amanda did the WRONG thing and left me without a > valid backup. Instead it should have screamed and shouted and done the > best it could by saving in the holding disk at a minimum, or not running > the backup. I think you meant "ruining" the backup, and in that context, I'm inclined to agree, amanda should not overwrite the last good full of any dle. >I'd rather be with an out of date backup than none at all. > Agreed. -- Cheers, Gene People having trouble with vz bouncing email to me should add the word 'online' between the 'verizon', and the dot which bypasses vz's stupid bounce rules. I do use spamassassin too. :-) Yahoo.com and AOL/TW attorneys please note, additions to the above message by Gene Heskett are: Copyright 2006 by Maurice Eugene Heskett, all rights reserved.
