Hi, I have a question regarding dump levels in Amanda. I do backup several DLEs with an Amanda server 3.2.1 on a dedicated machine (Ubuntu Natty). On another machine (Ubuntu Lucid, Amanda 2.6.1) there is a DLE which approx. 175GB data. The first time backup was a level 0 backup with approx. 175 GB (surprise :-). Then Amanda made level 1 backup and dumped just changes (some megs, which is fine, my bumpsize is 1MB). After that, Amanda made a level 1 with 175 GB (WTF?).
Is this as designed? Could one explain to me how Amanda works? I really read many things about Amanda on Zmanda website and several boards and I also follow this maillinglist for a while, but wether I missed this information or I could not find it. I know that Amanda decides by herself when she makes level 0 within the dumpcycle and she always ensures that at minimum one is available. But why are level >0 dumps sometimes the same size as a level 0? In my understanding Amanda should backup first a level 0 with 175GB and then bump to level 1, as soon as the saved disk-space is more than 1 MB (bumpsize). This will dump just a few MBs as the changes on this DLE are really small and very rare. After that I would expect that Amanda will make level 1 with very small amount of data, as there again are practically no changes in the filesystem (each level bumpsize will be multiplied with 1,5 in my case (bumpmult)). But Amanda makes a level 1 dump again with 175GB!? After that Amanda bumped to level 2, and dumped a few MBs (as expected). But the next day a level 2 occurred with 175GB. This was done also the next day: Level 2 with 175GB. I always thought, that dumps > level 0 are just incremental. Why is that different in Amanda? What I would expect or what I want to achieve is the following: Within 14 days I want to run dumps every day to backup as less as possible the full DLE data (level 0) the other days I want to dump just changes, as my DLEs change very rare and the changed data is normally really small (I am backing up private data not in a company). How can I achieve this with Amanda? I have about 21 DLEs with sizes between some MBs and 175GB and work with 100GB vTapes. I tried to force Amanda to do smaller dumps by setting runtapes to 2 or 3, but than Amanda moans that dumps are way too big (of course they are, if Amanda makes that large level >0's)... Any help will be appreciated. If necessary, please let me know which kind of information you need for helping me. Thank you! Regards, Thomas
