On Tuesday 09 March 2010, Dustin J. Mitchell wrote: >On Wed, Mar 3, 2010 at 1:58 PM, Steve Wray <[email protected]> wrote: >> Right, so the LATEST most up-to-date version of Debian uses a 3 year old >> version of amanda. Fantastic, thanks Debian for keeping things so >> 'stable'. > >To be fair, that's exactly the intent, and maintaining a Linux >distribution is *not* easy. All of the binary-only distros are >"behind the times" to varying degrees, although Debian is usually >bringing up the rear of the bunch. > >> I downloaded the actual latest stable version of amanda (2.6.1p2 from >> November 2009), compiled it and tested it. >> >> No bug. > >Yay! > >> Thanks, Debian package maintainer. Not. >> >> Backup software is mission critical. Failing to track the upstream to >> this extent is simply unforgivable. I'm revising my opinion of Debian. > >I hear from a *lot* of folks on #amanda in exactly the same situation as > you.
Amanda is not one of the distros favorite applications, having its own security model that has been at odds with the constraints of the packaging systems. Rpm in particular broke it regularly, and I long ago gave up helping the rpm folks who were determined to bend amanda to suit them. The tarball, OTOH, lends itself to the enterprising bash script writer, who can then install and test check the latest version of amanda in about 3, maybe 4 minutes on a fast machine using ccache. In fact I just installed the 20100308 snapshot of amanda-3.2alpha. And I used the same pair of scripts that has been installing amanda for me since about 2.5.1. >Please do consider contacting the maintainer, or perhaps other Debian >maintainers that might be able to poke the maintainer more >effectively. I, as an upstream developer, don't have much impact on >distro maintainers - apparently "why don't you ship the latest >release?!" is a common refrain from upstreams. Distros aren't >democracies, but they do listen to their users, and if enough people >are asking "why hasn't Amanda been bumped in 3 years?" then someone >with commit access will step up to take care of it. or you could build the tarball, which very nicely auto-configures amanda to run optimally on _your_ system. You have to setup a couple of files, maybe 3, and then just let the crontab of the amanda user take over from there. If configured to send the operator an email, you can 'read all about it' the next morning with your first cuppa. Whats not to like? My scripts are available, just ask. They are not 'big' scripts either. >If there are Amanda bugs that are holding back a version bump, please >let me know. At the moment, I only see two open bugs, one from 2006 >and one from 2008, neither of which is blocking a bump. > > http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=500364 > http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=370319 > >Dustin I'm on your side here Dustin. The distros, debian in particular need prodding. What you use for a prod is up to you. :-) I go back 11+ years with amanda, usually running the bleeding edge as now. Considering that I build the new snapshot and use it nightly several times a week, the number of real bugs has been almost vanishingly small even when its labeled as alpha, not for production use. FWIW, 90% of those were tar's fault, not amanda's. There are several tar versions about, not all of which are even compatible with themselves. Amanda is compatible with itself with one exception, a format change a good 8 or 9 years ago. Folks like Dustin and Jean-Louis write tight, and correct code. I mentally salute them as I toss last nights printout on top of the stack (should, heaven forbid, I need to consult it) every morning. -- Cheers, Gene "There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order." -Ed Howdershelt (Author) Visits always give pleasure: if not on arrival, then on the departure. -- Edouard Le Berquier, "Pensees des Autres"
