Evan, What OS, type of tape, type of drive, HW platform ?
I'm unfamiliar with a parameter to do what your asking for for good measure, what version of Amanda ? Actually, how did you determine that a drive within a changer was shoe-shining ? What else shares the bus with the tape and with the amanda work area drive(s) ? On Wed, Dec 06, 2006 at 02:34:31PM -0600, Evan Harris wrote: > > I'm having a problem with my tape drive shoe-shining because the holding > disk can't keep up with the tape drive if it is also being written to by a > dumper. Without the extra disk seek overhead of dumpers writing to the > holding disk at the same time, the holding disk should be plenty fast > enough to keep the tape drive streaming. > > Is there any way I can force amanda to serialize the dumper/taper so that > they are never run concurrently? I've already set inparallel to 1, but > that only affects how many dumpers can run, not the taper. > > I've also tried increasing the tapebufs parameter to 8000 (256MiB) to see > if that would at least let the drive stay streaming for longer periods, but > if it made any difference, it wasn't significant. What thresholds does the > taper use to decide when the tapebufs are filled enough to start tape > motion? There doesn't seem to be any docs on that, or settings to > customize. > > I did get a suggestion that I should just leave the tape out of the drive, > let the dumpers fill the holding disk and then load the tape and run > amflush, but that doesn't really work when using a changer, plus the > holding disk isn't large enough for the total size of all the backups, > though it can fit them one-by-one. > > Seems like there should be a "speed" config option for holding disks like > there is for network interfaces and tape drives, so that amanda could test > to see if the holding disk can't handle dumpers using the holding disk at > the same time a taper is running. That seems like it'd solve the problem > nicely, and even seems to fit with the scheme amanda uses for network > interfaces. > > Thanks. > > Evan --- Brian R Cuttler [EMAIL PROTECTED] Computer Systems Support (v) 518 486-1697 Wadsworth Center (f) 518 473-6384 NYS Department of Health Help Desk 518 473-0773
