I'm switching from a DLT backup system to a disk-based backup system with
occasional tapes for offsite backups.  I followed the instructions at:

http://www.amanda.org/docs/howto-filedriver.html

and was able to get the first backup, but I seem confused about how to do
a "virtual tape" rotation.  I never used a changer before, so perhaps I
don't get the distinction between the slot number and the tape number.  I
basically want to have a 4 week level 0 rotation, where after the 4th
week, the first week gets overwritten, etc, just like a tape would.

I created a directory on a usb drive like this:

/mnt/usb/dumps

I put this in my amanda.conf:

dumpcycle 4 weeks       # the number of days in the normal dump cycle
tapecycle 4 tapes       # the number of tapes in rotation

tapetype HARD-DISK              # what kind of tape it is (see tapetypes
labelstr "^FULL[0-9][0-9]*$"    # label constraint regex: all tapes must

tpchanger "chg-disk"

changerfile "/usr/local/etc/amanda/weekly/changer.conf"

define tapetype HARD-DISK {
         comment "Hard disk backup storage instead of tape"
         length 300000 mbytes
}

Then in my changer.conf, this:

multieject 0
gravity 0
needeject 0
ejectdelay 0

firstslot 1
lastslot 2

slot 1 file:/mnt/usb/dumps/FULL0
slot 2 file:/mnt/usb/dumps/FULL1
slot 3 file:/mnt/usb/dumps/FULL2
slot 4 file:/mnt/usb/dumps/FULL3

I figured the slots would correspond to the tape names and create files or
directories named FULL0-3.  It didn't

In the dumps directory, it just created:

lrwx------  1 amanda  wheel    20 Dec 19 16:55 data ->
/mnt/usb/dumps/slot3
-rw-r--r--  1 amanda  wheel    11 Dec 19 16:55 info
drwxr-xr-x  2 amanda  wheel  1024 Dec 16 13:14 slot1

With the slot1 directory containing the backups.  The data symlink rotates
every time I run amcheck (slot1, slot2, etc), which completely confuses
me.  Is this whole slot business neccessary?  Can we just have amanda look
for the appropriate tape name (ie, FULL0) when that tape is required for
that week's dump?

TIA!

James Smallacombe                     PlantageNet, Inc. CEO and Janitor
[EMAIL PROTECTED]                                                           
http://3.am
=========================================================================

Reply via email to