Question about messages from amanda.
Is it possible to have amanda sending messages to a client when a backup is started and when it is terminated? -- Erik
Re: Newbie disklist question.
On 12/04/13 23:31, Erik P. Olsen wrote: It looks like you only specify partitions (or entire disk devices) in a disklist for data to be backed up. How should I specify discrete files to be backed up? Never mind. Found some info buried in the gigantic manpage for amanda.conf which I hope I can decipher properly :-) -- Erik Concordia parvæ res crescunt discordia maximæ dilabuntur
Newbie disklist question.
It looks like you only specify partitions (or entire disk devices) in a disklist for data to be backed up. How should I specify discrete files to be backed up? -- Erik Concordia parvæ res crescunt discordia maximæ dilabuntur
Newbie question.
Hi, I am looking at Amanda to solve my backup needs. Can Amanda work without tape devices? I need to backup a Linux box, Fedora 18, which will also act as the server, and a Windows 7 box, which will only act as client. Is that feasible? Which document will guide me through the configuration of such backup scheme? Thanks in advance, -- Erik Concordia parvæ res crescunt discordia maximæ dilabuntur
Strange error message from Amanda.
This time I've got a really strange error message from an amanda back- up: FAILURE AND STRANGE DUMP SUMMARY: epo.dk /var lev 0 STRANGE .. and further down the list: FAILED AND STRANGE DUMP DETAILS: /-- epo.dk /var lev 0 STRANGE sendbackup: start [epo.dk:/var level 0] sendbackup: info BACKUP=/bin/tar sendbackup: info RECOVER_CMD=/usr/bin/gzip -dc |/bin/tar -f... - sendbackup: info COMPRESS_SUFFIX=.gz sendbackup: info end | gtar: ./cache/samba/winbindd_privileged/pipe: socket ignored ? gtar: ./lib/slocate/slocate.db: file changed as we read it | Total bytes written: 545894400 (521MiB, 3.1MiB/s) sendbackup: size 533100 sendbackup: end \ The weird messages do not make any sense what-so-ever. Would someone be kind enough to explain to me what went wrong and whether I have a dependable back-up? Thanks in advance. -- Regards, Erik P. Olsen
Re: Strange error message from Amanda.
On Tue, 2005-11-08 at 22:26 +0100, Paul Bijnens wrote: ? gtar: ./lib/slocate/slocate.db: file changed as we read it This is the strange line. It is not an error. It is up to you to decide if it is bad or not. Thanks for shedding light in the darkness. -- Regards, Erik P. Olsen
Hanging back-up.
I Have had a back-up active since 1 o'clock (this night). When I issue amstatus I can see that it is still active although apparently doing nothing. It reports one dumper busy with no-bandwidth. What ican my problem be and what is this no-bandwidth? [EMAIL PROTECTED] ~]# su amanda -c /usr/sbin/amstatus DailySet1 Using /var/lib/amanda/DailySet1/amdump.1 from Tue Sep 13 01:00:01 CEST 2005 epo.dk:/ 1 1472k finished (6:56:54) epo.dk:/FC4/ 1 137k finished (6:45:23) epo.dk:/FC4/boot 10k finished (6:45:38) epo.dk:/FC4/home 1 1206k finished (6:46:29) epo.dk:/FC4/tmp 11k finished (6:45:53) epo.dk:/FC4/usr 0 2837242k finished (9:29:38) epo.dk:/FC4/var 3 2811k finished (8:51:55) epo.dk:/boot 10k finished (6:46:07) epo.dk:/downloads 2 295k finished (6:44:39) epo.dk:/home 122234k finished (6:47:09) epo.dk:/tmp 1 15k finished (6:45:25) epo.dk:/usr 2 2322k finished (6:55:26) epo.dk:/var 148800k finished (6:48:08) SUMMARY part real estimated size size partition : 13 estimated : 13 2918201k flush : 0 0k failed : 00k ( 0.00%) wait for dumping: 00k ( 0.00%) dumping to tape : 00k ( 0.00%) dumping : 0 0k 0k ( 0.00%) ( 0.00%) dumped : 13 2916535k 2918201k ( 99.94%) ( 99.94%) wait for writing: 0 0k 0k ( 0.00%) ( 0.00%) wait to flush : 0 0k 0k (100.00%) ( 0.00%) writing to tape : 0 0k 0k ( 0.00%) ( 0.00%) failed to tape : 0 0k 0k ( 0.00%) ( 0.00%) taped : 13 2916535k 2918201k ( 99.94%) ( 99.94%) tape 1: 13 2916535k 2918201k ( 14.65%) DailySet109 4 dumpers idle : not-idle taper idle network free kps: 2000 holding space : 3313820k (100.00%) dumper0 busy : 2:26:38 ( 88.61%) taper busy : 0:18:07 ( 10.95%) 0 dumpers busy : 0:18:49 ( 11.38%)not-idle: 0:17:45 ( 94.32%) start-wait: 0:01:04 ( 5.68%) 1 dumper busy : 2:26:39 ( 88.62%)no-bandwidth: 2:04:42 ( 85.03%) not-idle: 0:20:01 ( 13.65%) start-wait: 0:01:55 ( 1.32%) -- Regards, Erik P. Olsen
Re: Hanging back-up.
On Tue, 2005-09-13 at 11:50 +0200, Erik P. Olsen wrote: I Have had a back-up active since 1 o'clock (this night). When I issue amstatus I can see that it is still active although apparently doing nothing. It reports one dumper busy with no-bandwidth. What ican my problem be and what is this no-bandwidth? I am still puzzled by the no-bandwidth report. I do not use network backup so I believe I have oodles of bandwidth. Does amanda have a bug reporting system that I could search for possible bugs in this area? [EMAIL PROTECTED] ~]# su amanda -c /usr/sbin/amstatus DailySet1 Using /var/lib/amanda/DailySet1/amdump.1 from Tue Sep 13 01:00:01 CEST 2005 epo.dk:/ 1 1472k finished (6:56:54) epo.dk:/FC4/ 1 137k finished (6:45:23) epo.dk:/FC4/boot 10k finished (6:45:38) epo.dk:/FC4/home 1 1206k finished (6:46:29) epo.dk:/FC4/tmp 11k finished (6:45:53) epo.dk:/FC4/usr 0 2837242k finished (9:29:38) epo.dk:/FC4/var 3 2811k finished (8:51:55) epo.dk:/boot 10k finished (6:46:07) epo.dk:/downloads 2 295k finished (6:44:39) epo.dk:/home 122234k finished (6:47:09) epo.dk:/tmp 1 15k finished (6:45:25) epo.dk:/usr 2 2322k finished (6:55:26) epo.dk:/var 148800k finished (6:48:08) SUMMARY part real estimated size size partition : 13 estimated : 13 2918201k flush : 0 0k failed : 00k ( 0.00%) wait for dumping: 00k ( 0.00%) dumping to tape : 00k ( 0.00%) dumping : 0 0k 0k ( 0.00%) ( 0.00%) dumped : 13 2916535k 2918201k ( 99.94%) ( 99.94%) wait for writing: 0 0k 0k ( 0.00%) ( 0.00%) wait to flush : 0 0k 0k (100.00%) ( 0.00%) writing to tape : 0 0k 0k ( 0.00%) ( 0.00%) failed to tape : 0 0k 0k ( 0.00%) ( 0.00%) taped : 13 2916535k 2918201k ( 99.94%) ( 99.94%) tape 1: 13 2916535k 2918201k ( 14.65%) DailySet109 4 dumpers idle : not-idle taper idle network free kps: 2000 holding space : 3313820k (100.00%) dumper0 busy : 2:26:38 ( 88.61%) taper busy : 0:18:07 ( 10.95%) 0 dumpers busy : 0:18:49 ( 11.38%)not-idle: 0:17:45 ( 94.32%) start-wait: 0:01:04 ( 5.68%) 1 dumper busy : 2:26:39 ( 88.62%)no-bandwidth: 2:04:42 ( 85.03%) not-idle: 0:20:01 ( 13.65%) start-wait: 0:01:55 ( 1.32%) -- Regards, Erik P. Olsen
Re: Hanging back-up.
On Tue, 2005-09-13 at 12:14 -0400, Joshua Baker-LePain wrote: On Tue, 13 Sep 2005 at 6:01pm, Erik P. Olsen wrote On Tue, 2005-09-13 at 11:50 +0200, Erik P. Olsen wrote: I Have had a back-up active since 1 o'clock (this night). When I issue amstatus I can see that it is still active although apparently doing nothing. It reports one dumper busy with no-bandwidth. What ican my problem be and what is this no-bandwidth? I am still puzzled by the no-bandwidth report. I do not use network backup so I believe I have oodles of bandwidth. Does amanda have a bug reporting system that I could search for possible bugs in this area? What is 'netusage' set to in your amanda.conf? It's set to 600 kbps, standard I suppose and with no other activity in the system that should be adequate. And I don't see how that can become no-bandwidth at worst it should only slow down the backup speed - or have I misunderstood something? -- Regards, Erik P. Olsen
Re: Hanging back-up.
On Tue, 2005-09-13 at 13:53 -0400, Jon LaBadie wrote:
On Tue, Sep 13, 2005 at 06:01:37PM +0200, Erik P. Olsen wrote:
On Tue, 2005-09-13 at 11:50 +0200, Erik P. Olsen wrote:
I Have had a back-up active since 1 o'clock (this night). When I issue
amstatus I can see that it is still active although apparently doing
nothing. It reports one dumper busy with no-bandwidth. What ican my
problem be and what is this no-bandwidth?
I am still puzzled by the no-bandwidth report. I do not use network
backup so I believe I have oodles of bandwidth. Does amanda have a bug
reporting system that I could search for possible bugs in this area?
Every amanda backup is a network backup. I.e. client - host.
That still uses part of the network stack I believe.
OK.
...
4 dumpers idle : not-idle
taper idle
network free kps: 2000
holding space : 3313820k (100.00%)
dumper0 busy : 2:26:38 ( 88.61%)
taper busy : 0:18:07 ( 10.95%)
0 dumpers busy : 0:18:49 ( 11.38%)not-idle: 0:17:45
( 94.32%)
start-wait: 0:01:04 (
5.68%)
1 dumper busy : 2:26:39 ( 88.62%)no-bandwidth: 2:04:42
( 85.03%)
not-idle: 0:20:01
I'm on shakey ground here. This is not a report of the current state, but
how things went during the run. Seems like you would allow 4 dumpers max.
There were times when it could have gone to a second dumper but was
unable to do so. The it gives the reasons, only one in yours, multiple
in Guy's report in the message that follows your in my mailer.
What do you have netusage set to?
As mentioned in an earlier message, 600 kbps. However, I also have:
define interface local {
comment a local disk
use 1000 kbps
}
I have now cranked up the latter to 3000 kbps, so I'll see tonight how
that behaves.
--
Regards,
Erik P. Olsen
Re: Hanging back-up.
On Tue, 2005-09-13 at 15:02 -0400, Joshua Baker-LePain wrote: On Tue, 13 Sep 2005 at 8:44pm, Erik P. Olsen wrote I have now cranked up the latter to 3000 kbps, so I'll see tonight how that behaves. Why so stingy? I'm assuming you have at least a 100Mbps connection? Why let amanda use only 3% of that (0.3% if you're using gigabit)? Oh, was I stingy? If we are talking bus speed it's 400 Mbps, but if it is wise to let amanda have it all then why on earth have this parameter at all? And how is it precisely that amanda uses this value? Will the backup go faster the higher the netuse value? Or how is it? -- Regards, Erik P. Olsen
Re: Hanging back-up.
On Tue, 2005-09-13 at 16:10 -0400, Joshua Baker-LePain wrote: We're talking about network bandwidth -- ethernet. And the parameter is there in case your backup server and/or clients perform other network intensive functions that you don't want to interfere with. Myself, I consider backups most important and want amanda to use all the bandwidth it can. Yes and therefore a netuse value of max would be appropriate. I understand from what you say that the lower the bandwidth the slower the backup, but why does it make a full stop right before the backup finishes? Well, it is probably more an academic question. I would, however, like to get the answer but I will not read the code to get it :-) -- Regards, Erik P. Olsen
Re: Hanging back-up.
On Tue, 2005-09-13 at 17:26 -0400, Jon LaBadie wrote: [snip] Just a clarification on terminology. As your dump progresses, dumpers become available, the dumper has to be assigned to some DLE, i.e. client/disk pair. It is at this point that amanda will decide to start a new dump or not, not the entire backup, just whether to start any particular DLE dumping or not depending on the current network usage. The slower backup does not come by slowing things down to the netusage parameter. It comes from only having fewer DLEs dumping over the network at the same time. Once they start they can actually use whatever network bandwidth they want. Amanda has no further control over it. Just whether to start it now or later. Well, but it never started the backup later. This has happened with the last two backup sessions and on the first I waited almost 7 hours for the backup to finish before I gave up and it looks like it actually started backing up the last filesystem but stopped before it finished. This sounds odd but maybe I have misinterpreted the amstatus output. Anyway I have decided not to be stingy this time and has given it a netusage of 1 Gbps. Hopefully that will cure this problem :-) -- Regards, Erik P. Olsen
Question about data timeout.
I have recently added a set of disks (file systems) to my back-up set and that ended up with a failure due to data timeout. I didn't even know there was a dtimeout value to be specified in amanda.conf. I have learnt that it is an idle time measured against the disks in question. My question is now, how is this idle time measured and where is it reported? Only by knowing what amanda sees of the idle time am I able to specify a reasonable dtimeout value. -- Regards, Erik P. Olsen
Re: Question about data timeout.
On Tue, 2005-08-23 at 09:38 -0400, Jon LaBadie wrote: On Tue, Aug 23, 2005 at 11:19:59AM +0200, Erik P. Olsen wrote: I have recently added a set of disks (file systems) to my back-up set and that ended up with a failure due to data timeout. I didn't even know there was a dtimeout value to be specified in amanda.conf. I have learnt that it is an idle time measured against the disks in question. My question is now, how is this idle time measured and where is it reported? Only by knowing what amanda sees of the idle time am I able to specify a reasonable dtimeout value. I may be totally wrong here, but I don't think it is tracking idle time. I believe it is total time to dump. This would take care of stuck or runaway dump scenarios. The documentation says: dtimeout int Default: 1800 seconds. Amount of idle time per disk on a given client that a dumper running from within amdump will wait before it fails with a data timeout error. -- Regards, Erik P. Olsen
Re: Question about data timeout.
On Tue, 2005-08-23 at 11:24 -0400, Matt Hyclak wrote: On Tue, Aug 23, 2005 at 05:04:02PM +0200, Erik P. Olsen enlightened us: On Tue, Aug 23, 2005 at 11:19:59AM +0200, Erik P. Olsen wrote: I have recently added a set of disks (file systems) to my back-up set and that ended up with a failure due to data timeout. I didn't even know there was a dtimeout value to be specified in amanda.conf. I have learnt that it is an idle time measured against the disks in question. My question is now, how is this idle time measured and where is it reported? Only by knowing what amanda sees of the idle time am I able to specify a reasonable dtimeout value. I may be totally wrong here, but I don't think it is tracking idle time. I believe it is total time to dump. This would take care of stuck or runaway dump scenarios. The documentation says: dtimeout int Default: 1800 seconds. Amount of idle time per disk on a given client that a dumper running from within amdump will wait before it fails with a data timeout error. Yes, and that per disk is important. If you have a machine with 3 Disklist Entries (DLEs), it will wait 5400 seconds (90 minutes) for that machine. Another machine with 1 DLE will only get 30 minutes to complete. I read it the way that each disk gets 1800 seconds idle (wait?) time before a time out. That is if disk 1 uses 1 second of that time the rest of 1799 seconds is lost and will not be added to the idle time of the two remaining disks. I have 13 DLEs that should give me 6H 30M if this theory is true, my data timeout happened after 3H 19M! I had hoped that amanda would report how much idle time had occurred for each disk. -- Regards, Erik P. Olsen
Amanda Statistics.
Hi,
Below the statistics from my last backup. I assume the times are all
elapsed times, but why is amanda so wrong in estimating the times? Or is
it a bug?
STATISTICS:
Total Full Daily
Estimate Time (hrs:min)0:03
Run Time (hrs:min) 1:11
Dump Time (hrs:min)0:51 0:51 0:01
Output Size (meg)7692.4 7648.9 43.5
Original Size (meg) 11996.711886.5 110.2
Avg Compressed Size (%)64.1 64.4 39.4
(level:#disks ...)
Filesystems Dumped7 2 5 (1:5)
Avg Dump Rate (k/s) 2559.5 2584.4 950.4
Tape Time (hrs:min)0:49 0:49 0:00
--
Regards,
Erik P. Olsen
GPG http://pgp.mit.edu 0x71375E63
signature.asc
Description: This is a digitally signed message part
Seeking message clarification.
Hi, Could someone explain to me what the message below from amdump means? Especially the fm 7 [OK] taper: tape DailySet103 kb 1131232 fm 7 [OK] Thanks. -- Erik P. Olsen GPG http://pgp.mit.edu 0x71375E63 signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part
Re: Different tapetypes
On Sun, 2005-04-03 at 00:44 -0500, Jon LaBadie wrote: On Fri, Apr 01, 2005 at 10:19:07AM +0200, Erik P. Olsen wrote: On Fri, 2005-04-01 at 02:06 -0500, Jon LaBadie wrote: Just for my own interest ... Why do you want to do your own scheduling when amanda often does a far superior job to human defined scheduling. Hm. I would like to challenge this statement. I don't normally bite on challenges, but I'll take up this one. I don't want to carry this on ad infinitum, but you asked some questions. I hope you read into my statement that I meant amanda vs human, both using the amanda 'manager and scheduler' software. I say it that way as amanda is not a backup program. It may be true if you have a large network of systems to back up but if you only have one system I doubt if it's true. Did you miss that amanda is an acronym for: Advanced Maryland Automatic NETWORK Disk Archiver In a way I missed it, actually I never payed attention to it. The needs of a site with one system are very different than those of a site with a network of systems for which amanda was intended. The fact that it can be used very effectively on a single system is a testament to its flexible design. Before my switch to Linux I backed up my system (OS/2) on a weekly schedule with one full back-up and four incremental back-ups to one tape only. It worked extremely well, if I crashed my system - which I did very often - it took me about half an hour to recover either using a stand-alone recover program or my maintenance OS/2 if it was alive and I kept an archive of up to 8 weeks of back-ups. Now with Linux and Amanda I use 9 tapes mainly because Amanda won't add today's back-up to yesterday's tape. I could probably do with less tapes but I feel more confident with a large tape pool. On my home site I do have amanda backup more than one system. But I only care about one. The others are test systems. I will often reinstall the OS from scratch on them. For example, I have HP-UX and Tru64 unix systems just because I have clients who use those OS and I like having one available to practice with. The one host I do care about has about 150GB of disk with about 40GB filled. One thing that may be different from your environment is that I've broken it down into about 15 DLE's. By keeping the DLE's small individually, amanda's scheduler can balance when to do level 0's of each DLE throughout the dumpcycle and lets me do daily backups to a single DDS3 tape. Even when I've downloaded a couple of new CD's, amanda adjusts and rebalances its schedule seldom requiring two tapes in a day. I have not worked with OS/2 for over a decade. From that experience I recall a backup program, analogous to dump or tar. I don't recall a backup system one that for example tracked the tapes used and reused them in the correct order, maintained indexes of files on which tapes, had interactive or batch recovery, dynamically and automatically adjusted for missed backups or tape errors, allowed for flexibility in time between level 0's on a file system by file system basis, adjusted the incremental level based on the amount of change in the file system, ... The OS/2 backup program I remember did nothing more than I can do with dump and a little shell scripting. Was there a backup system added to OS/2 of which I'm unaware? What features of that system did you find useful? I have been using BackAgain/2 by cds inc. They were bought by Intradyn a year or two ago and by then the OS/2 version was dropped. You define a schedule to it which would specify on which time of the day a specific back-up set should run. The set would specify full or incremental back-up of one or more drives (partitions). In the process of doing the back-ups a catalogue of the backed-up files was also created and related to the tape used and the file no. on the tape as one back-up set would occupy one tapefile. I would usually leave the tape in the streamer so when the week was over this tape would keep alle the back-ups from that week. I had it arranged so that the last back-up of the week would also eject the tape when it had finished. The tape was then deposited on a remote location. The corresponding restore would start with displaying the back-up catalogue which would show all known tapes with dates for when they were created (had the first back-up written to it). If you select a tape you would get a list of all back-up sets on that tape again with timestamp for when they were written. Selecting a particular back-up set would then expand into the paths and filenames that were backed up by this set. After selecting files (all or some) the restore operation could start provided you had the correct tape mounted. If for some reason BackAgain/2 would not run to do the restore, a stand alone version would create a list of all the files backed up to the tape and you could initiate
Re: Different tapetypes
On Fri, 2005-04-01 at 02:06 -0500, Jon LaBadie wrote: On Fri, Apr 01, 2005 at 08:46:31AM +0200, Belen Isla wrote: Hi all, I am trying to configure amanda to backup my system and I would like to use two different types of virtual tapes in a single configuration file, I mean, I would like to use big virtual tapes for full backups and smaller ones for incrementals. Is it possible to use the parameter tapetype twice in the amanda.conf file? In affirmative case, how can I associate a virtual tape with the appropriate type? Just for my own interest ... Why do you want to do your own scheduling when amanda often does a far superior job to human defined scheduling. Hm. I would like to challenge this statement. It may be true if you have a large network of systems to back up but if you only have one system I doubt if it's true. Before my switch to Linux I backed up my system (OS/2) on a weekly schedule with one full back-up and four incremental back-ups to one tape only. It worked extremely well, if I crashed my system - which I did very often - it took me about half an hour to recover either using a stand-alone recover program or my maintenance OS/2 if it was alive and I kept an archive of up to 8 weeks of back-ups. Now with Linux and Amanda I use 9 tapes mainly because Amanda won't add today's back-up to yesterday's tape. I could probably do with less tapes but I feel more confident with a large tape pool. I would add that I haven't yet found out how to keep a repository of back-ups of the previous weeks like I was used to with OS/2. I like the safe feeling of having a set of back-up tapes from which I know I can recreate the system as it was on a specific day. Now I just have my 9 tapes used in a round Robin fashion. -- Regards, Erik P. Olsen
Re: Different tapetypes
On Fri, 2005-04-01 at 13:09 -0500, Gene Heskett wrote: On Friday 01 April 2005 03:19, Erik P. Olsen wrote: [...] Hm. I would like to challenge this statement. It may be true if you have a large network of systems to back up but if you only have one system I doubt if it's true. Before my switch to Linux I backed up my system (OS/2) on a weekly schedule with one full back-up and four incremental back-ups to one tape only. If useing tapes, and they are big enough, set the holding disk reserved value to some low percentage like 20%, and only put in a tape once a week, with the autoflush option set in your amanda.conf. That will put the whole weeks worth of backups on one tape. It does have the disadvantage of leaving that weeks stuff subject to a disk failure though. But thats something I've not had in about 2 years, no failures out of about 7 drives here when they are all spinning. But I'll lose one yet today just because I mentioned it, Murphy is listening. :( Last year I had head crash with my two 60 GB disks when they where still under warranty. I had them replaced but couldn't wait the 3 weeks it took, so I had to buy new ones. Last time it happened (there were 6 months in between) the tape streamer also died and took the tape with it. I'm sure Murphy has a law for that. As a consequence I could not restore the system even with a new and well functioning tape station in place. Statistically this problem should never occur, but it did. It worked extremely well, if I crashed my system - which I did very often - it took me about half an hour to recover either using a stand-alone recover program or my maintenance OS/2 if it was alive and I kept an archive of up to 8 weeks of back-ups. I was always told that OS2 was stable. And I stay quite bleeding edge in terms of the kernel I run on this FC2 system, which is also backing up my RH7.3 firewall box. Currently running 2.6.12-rc1, the smoothest running, snappiest kernel yet in the 2.6 series. I can't recall the last time I actually crashed a running system. Several months ago in any event. OS/2 is stable though not as stable as FC3. The frequent crashes were mainly because I did a lot of testing with new system software. Now with Linux and Amanda I use 9 tapes mainly because Amanda won't add today's back-up to yesterday's tape. Thats a security risk amanda won't take. When amanda is done, and has released the drive, there is nothing to prevent someone from removing the tape, and either reinserting it, in which case the tape is rewound and will be totally overwritten, or even the wrong tape might be reloaded. Either way, amanda has no ironclad assurance that the tape will be sitting in the same position it was left in, ready to append new files to it. Yes, most drives today can do an 'mt -d/dev/nst0 seof' and hit within a quarter of an inch of it. But some drives cannot, and that locks amanda out of useing that feature for all users. At some point, the last legacy drive that cannot do that might die, but we have no idea when that might be... I suppose the back-up software placed a sort of end-of-tape mark after each back-up and just searched for that tapemark when a new back-up was about to be run. I've used it for 5 years and it never failed. It would even ask for another tape to continue the back-up if the first tape ran full. Maybe that should be the subject of a questionaire at some point? I could probably do with less tapes but I feel more confident with a large tape pool. [...] I answered this in a previous post. -- Regards, Erik P. Olsen
What to do about a failing back-up?
I have had a peculiar situation where a back-up failed to succeed. The error message was: epo.dk /var lev 2 FAILED [no more holding disk space] It later turned out not to be too little holding disk space. I had simply forgotten to set the write inhibit switch off when I inserted the tape. Of course the holding space ran full and that was later written to tape by the amflush command. So far so good, but what about all the data that was not backed-up when the staging area ran full? Has that been backed up by the amflush command? If not what shall I do (have done) in this case? -- Regards, Erik P. Olsen
Re: What to do about a failing back-up?
On Thu, 2005-03-10 at 16:25 +0100, Erik P. Olsen wrote: I have had a peculiar situation where a back-up failed to succeed. The error message was: epo.dk /var lev 2 FAILED [no more holding disk space] It later turned out not to be too little holding disk space. I had simply forgotten to set the write inhibit switch off when I inserted the tape. Of course the holding space ran full and that was later written to tape by the amflush command. So far so good, but what about all the data that was not backed-up when the staging area ran full? Has that been backed up by the amflush command? If not what shall I do (have done) in this case? Sorry, folks. Forgot the attachment. -- Regards, Erik P. Olsen faxcover.msg.gz Description: GNU Zip compressed data
Re: What to do about a failing back-up?
On Thu, 2005-03-10 at 11:44 -0500, Gene Heskett wrote: On Thursday 10 March 2005 10:25, Erik P. Olsen wrote: I have had a peculiar situation where a back-up failed to succeed. The error message was: epo.dk /var lev 2 FAILED [no more holding disk space] It later turned out not to be too little holding disk space. I had simply forgotten to set the write inhibit switch off when I inserted the tape. Of course the holding space ran full and that was later written to tape by the amflush command. So far so good, but what about all the data that was not backed-up when the staging area ran full? Has that been backed up by the amflush command? If not what shall I do (have done) in this case? If you do not have anything left in the holding disk area after the amflush is done, you should be in good shape. Amanda will attempt to play catchup if there is enough spare tape capacity, and should be back to normal in not more than 1 or 2 days. If the tape capacity is short, then maybe an extra run might be in order. There was nothing left in the staging area, but what made me suspicious was the fact that the amflush command took so little time to complete. -- Regards, Erik P. Olsen
Exclude list syntax.
Is it possible to use todays date as element in a filename in an exclude list? -- Regards, Erik P. Olsen
Re: Exclude list syntax.
On Tue, 2005-03-08 at 17:13 -0500, Jon LaBadie wrote: On Tue, Mar 08, 2005 at 10:09:04PM +0100, Erik P. Olsen wrote: Is it possible to use todays date as element in a filename in an exclude list? You can have multiple exclude statements, IIRC, at most one can omit the append argument. Given that, you could have one exclude statement read a file created at the start of your amdump run with an appropriate pattern. echo ./###$(date +%Y%m$d)### /path/to/exclude/pattern/of/the/day/file amdump Replace the ###'s with whatever constant or filename pattern you need and the date command with whatever syntax your date string needs demand. Then your dumptype might have something like exclude list append optional /path/to/exclude/pattern/of/the/day/file The path could be absolute or relative to the root of the DLE. Beautiful! Thanks a lot. -- Regards, Erik P. Olsen
Sockets?
Hi, I receive from the amdump processes a lot of socket ignored messages. I assume this means that there is no indication on the dump media (in casu tapes) of the ignored sockets. Then, what's the proceedure if one has to recover a filesystem with sockets? Should I keep the messages so that I could create the sockets manually? -- Regards, Erik P. Olsen
Can tapes be grouped for different types of back-up?
Until recently I had a DDS3 tape streamer. Then it broke down a few weeks ago and I bought a DDS4 tape streamer. I therefore have a lot of DDS3 tapes which I like to use for incremental back-ups because the new tape streamer can also handle DDS3 tapes. I will then ear mark the DDS4 tapes for full back-ups. Is that possible and how can that be accomplished? -- Regards, Erik P. Olsen
Permission problems with amlabel.
I have labeled the tapes before during my tests without problems. Now, when preparing amanda for production I relabeled the tapes (after having duly removed them from the repository by amrmtape) and changed the directory into which the tapelist would go. Then amanda wouldn't label the tapes. The command used was: [EMAIL PROTECTED] full]# su amanda -c amlabel -f full full01 rewinding, reading label full01 rewinding, writing label full01, checking labelamlabel: couldn't write tapelist: Permission denied Well, I thought it was permissions for the file tapelist and changed that to full permission, but still got the same error. I then saw syslog had the following message: Jan 22 21:13:39 epo su(pam_unix)[9298]: session opened for user amanda by erik(uid=0) Jan 22 21:13:39 epo su[9298]: Warning! Could not relabel /dev/pts/1 with user_u:object_r:devpts_t, not relabeling.Operation not permitted Jan 22 21:13:39 epo su(pam_unix)[9298]: session closed for user amanda I have no idea whatsoever what this is all about. I would be grateful if someone would explain to me what the heck it is and how I can satisfy amlabel? -- Thanks and regards, Erik P. Olsen
Re: Permission problems with amlabel.
On Sat, 2005-01-22 at 17:00 -0500, Jon LaBadie wrote: On Sat, Jan 22, 2005 at 09:58:42PM +0100, Erik P. Olsen wrote: I have labeled the tapes before during my tests without problems. Now, when preparing amanda for production I relabeled the tapes (after having duly removed them from the repository by amrmtape) and changed the directory into which the tapelist would go. Then amanda wouldn't label the tapes. The command used was: [EMAIL PROTECTED] full]# su amanda -c amlabel -f full full01 rewinding, reading label full01 rewinding, writing label full01, checking labelamlabel: couldn't write tapelist: Permission denied Well, I thought it was permissions for the file tapelist and changed that to full permission, but still got the same error. I then saw syslog had the following message: Jan 22 21:13:39 epo su(pam_unix)[9298]: session opened for user amanda by erik(uid=0) Jan 22 21:13:39 epo su[9298]: Warning! Could not relabel /dev/pts/1 with user_u:object_r:devpts_t, not relabeling.Operation not permitted Jan 22 21:13:39 epo su(pam_unix)[9298]: session closed for user amanda I have no idea whatsoever what this is all about. I would be grateful if someone would explain to me what the heck it is and how I can satisfy amlabel? Here is what I wrote to the list in Oct about someone who seemed to have a similar problem: == I forget the details now, and whether it was fixed, but someone == reported that the tapelist file not only had to exist, but either == had to be zero length (not even a blank line) or had to have a == blank line. Sorry I forget which. Oh, tapelist exists and has a length of zero just like when I successfully ran amlabel during the tests. -- Regards, Erik P. Olsen
Re: Permission problems with amlabel.
On Sat, 2005-01-22 at 22:31 +0100, Paul Bijnens wrote: Erik P. Olsen wrote: [EMAIL PROTECTED] full]# su amanda -c amlabel -f full full01 rewinding, reading label full01 rewinding, writing label full01, checking labelamlabel: couldn't write tapelist: Permission denied Well, I thought it was permissions for the file tapelist and changed that to full permission, but still got the same error. I then saw syslog had the following message: Jan 22 21:13:39 epo su(pam_unix)[9298]: session opened for user amanda by erik(uid=0) Jan 22 21:13:39 epo su[9298]: Warning! Could not relabel /dev/pts/1 with user_u:object_r:devpts_t, not relabeling.Operation not permitted Jan 22 21:13:39 epo su(pam_unix)[9298]: session closed for user amanda I have no idea whatsoever what this is all about. I would be grateful if someone would explain to me what the heck it is and how I can satisfy amlabel? FC3 ? Yes, I run FC3. The relabel in syslog has nothing to do with amlabel. You seem to have SElinux enabled. You have a problem with su being restricted by selinux. Very interesting. I have just today updated FC3 with some selinux packages. Perhaps they are the culprits. The fastest way is to disable selinux in /etc/config/selinux -- this needs a reboot. The better way is study selinux, and configure the system to allow what you want. Studying takes a few days, at least... Maybe I should disable selinux until I understand how I can fix my problem. I am most anxious to start backing my system up. -- Regards, Erik P. Olsen
Level clarification.
Hi, a newbie question. I think I have now managed to customise amanda and I am pretty confident that I can now start taking back-ups of my system. One term that I thought I understood is the level set. Apparently level 0 is a full back-up and level 1 is incremental, but what then is level 2 (and up)? If it's in the docs, please tell me where I can find it. -- Regards, Erik P. Olsen
Re: Meaning of bump
On Sat, 2005-01-15 at 10:03 +0100, Stefan G. Weichinger wrote: Hi, Erik, on Freitag, 14. Jnner 2005 at 22:41 you wrote to amanda-users: EPO Hi, EPO I am running Fedora Core 3 which comes with amanda installed and I have EPO just started to set it up. In amanda.conf bumpsize, bumpmult and EPO bumpdays should be specified. My problem is that I don't know exactly EPO what this bump and the associated level mean. EPO Would someone please explain these terms to me? I don't want repeat my new mantra too often, as it might get worn out too early ... : Have you read the description of those parameters at http://www.amanda.org/docs/amanda.8.html ? Yes, I have (and am) reading it. Description of the parameters does not explain the basic philosophy behind amanda. Luckily I got a private mail with a very good explanation which made it easier to understand the parameters. In fact I think it was the level term which puzzled me. If you can't grasp the level term it doesn't make sense to talk about bumping from one level to another. If there are any questions left then, please let us know. -- Regards, Erik P. Olsen
Meaning of bump
Hi, I am running Fedora Core 3 which comes with amanda installed and I have just started to set it up. In amanda.conf bumpsize, bumpmult and bumpdays should be specified. My problem is that I don't know exactly what this bump and the associated level mean. Would someone please explain these terms to me? Thanks. -- Regards, Erik P. Olsen
Re: Amanda compile question.
** Reply to message from Paul Bijnens [EMAIL PROTECTED] on Sun, 22 Feb 2004 14:39:28 +0100 Erik P. Olsen wrote: I am currently trying to implement amanda on a Fedora Core 1 system. It actually contains a precompiled amanda but in order to change its use of directories you'll have to recompile it. I thought - rather naively - that it would be piece of cake. Nah, lots of compile errors due to missing header files. So I downloaded version 2.4.4p2 in rpm format and installed it instead of the former version 2.4.4p1, but it has the same non-standard use of directories. What do you mean with non-standard? It is actually quiet standard. (Or do you mean that is does not put things in /usr/local? /usr/local is things that you install yourself, to keep them seperate from vendor supplied programs.) If you have header files missing, you could just as well download those rpms, and then try to compile again. OK, I understand that you say between the lines that there ought not to be any problem compiling amanda, so I'll give it another try with fresh downloads. So I am up to another compile. This time I would like to hear if there are any known gotchas with this operation. Are there any patches I must have? Or should I dump Redhat's version of amanda and get something else? And what? To compile you just need a decent compilation environment. If amanda wouldn't compile, I doubt you can compile any program (except maybe hello.c, and that proves only you have a C-compiler). I suppose FC1 *is* a decent compilation environment. Thanks, Erik P. Olsen
Amanda compile question.
I am currently trying to implement amanda on a Fedora Core 1 system. It actually contains a precompiled amanda but in order to change its use of directories you'll have to recompile it. I thought - rather naively - that it would be piece of cake. Nah, lots of compile errors due to missing header files. So I downloaded version 2.4.4p2 in rpm format and installed it instead of the former version 2.4.4p1, but it has the same non-standard use of directories. So I am up to another compile. This time I would like to hear if there are any known gotchas with this operation. Are there any patches I must have? Or should I dump Redhat's version of amanda and get something else? And what? Regards, Erik P. Olsen
amlabel problem.
I am installing amanda for the first time and have problems labeling tapes for it. I get the error message: amlabel: could not load tapelist /etc/amanda/normal/tapelist This seems strange since it is the first tape I try to label and therefore there is no tapelist file and there should not be one. In fact the documentation says that it will be generated by amlabel and it should not be modified by the user/administrator. The command I issue from the amanda user is: amlabel /usr/sbin/amlabel normal normal00 and it doesn't help to use the force flag. What am I doing wrong? Regards, Erik P. Olsen
Re: amlabel problem.
** Reply to message from Stefan G. Weichinger [EMAIL PROTECTED] on Tue, 17 Feb 2004 11:55:19 +0100 Hi, Erik, on Dienstag, 17. Februar 2004 at 11:21 you wrote to amanda-users: EPO The command I issue from the amanda user is: EPO amlabel /usr/sbin/amlabel normal normal00 EPO and it doesn't help to use the force flag. What am I doing wrong? Oops, I shot too fast. The syntax is /usr/sbin/amlabel normal normal00 You had 2 times amlabel Thanks Stefan, but it was a typo :) I did use the correct syntax. Regards, Erik P. Olsen
Re: amlabel problem.
** Reply to message from Stefan G. Weichinger [EMAIL PROTECTED] on Tue, 17 Feb 2004 11:54:09 +0100 Hi, Erik, on Dienstag, 17. Februar 2004 at 11:21 you wrote to amanda-users: EPO I am installing amanda for the first time and have problems labeling tapes for EPO it. I get the error message: EPO amlabel: could not load tapelist /etc/amanda/normal/tapelist Do you really want to keep your config-files in /etc/amanda? The default points to /usr/local/etc/amanda, for example. Anything wrong in that? That's where the sample config is located. Of course I can easily change it if it makes any difference. Regards, Erik P. Olsen
Re: amlabel problem.
** Reply to message from Stefan G. Weichinger [EMAIL PROTECTED] on Tue, 17 Feb 2004 11:54:09 +0100 Hi, Erik, on Dienstag, 17. Februar 2004 at 11:21 you wrote to amanda-users: EPO I am installing amanda for the first time and have problems labeling tapes for EPO it. I get the error message: EPO amlabel: could not load tapelist /etc/amanda/normal/tapelist [snip] EPO modified by the user/administrator. The command I issue from the amanda user is: EPO amlabel /usr/sbin/amlabel normal normal00 EPO and it doesn't help to use the force flag. What am I doing wrong? Nothing. Just try a touch /etc/amanda/normal/tapelist and amlabel again. Thanks, that did it. I now have labels on my tapes and may move on to the next problem. Regards, Erik P. Olsen
Re: amlabel problem.
** Reply to message from Stefan G. Weichinger [EMAIL PROTECTED] on Tue, 17 Feb 2004 14:05:11 +0100 Hi, Erik, on Dienstag, 17. Februar 2004 at 12:06 you wrote to amanda-users: Do you really want to keep your config-files in /etc/amanda? The default points to /usr/local/etc/amanda, for example. EPO Anything wrong in that? That's where the sample config is located. Of course I EPO can easily change it if it makes any difference. [snip] From FHS: The /etc directory contains configuration unique to the system and is required for boot time. You see? Just configure your AMANDA-sources with --with-configdir=/usr/local/etc/amanda/ put your configs in there and feel the satisfaction of meeting the standard ;) I realize I have a lot to learn. I am new to Linux and before I can move my production to Linux I need a reliable backup system. I am all for standards, so I'll see to that my system complies to it - as long as I know about it :) Regards, Erik P. Olsen
Re: amlabel problem.
** Reply to message from Stefan G. Weichinger [EMAIL PROTECTED] on Tue, 17 Feb 2004 14:29:51 +0100 Don't fear the steps you have to take. I assume you try to install and setup the most recent AMANDA-release 2.4.4p2. This should take most of the standard-issues off your shoulders. Here parts of my config-string, maybe it helps you: ./configure --with-user=amanda --with-group=disk --with-owner=amanda --with-tape-device=/dev/nst0 --prefix=/usr/local --with-debugging=/tmp/amanda/ --with-tape-server=YOUR-AMANDA-SERVER --with-amandahosts --with-config=daily --with-configdir=/usr/local/etc/amanda/ With this you get a pretty standard-directories-Linux-setup. Create directories if you need to. Edit parameters like --with-user to meet your needs ... Thanks, you have been most helpful. Regards, Erik P. Olsen
Where is the archive?
I am new to this list and wanted to peruse the archives. The welcome message refers to ftp://ftp.amanda.org/pub/amanda/maillist-archives, but maillist-archives seems to be missing. What is wrong? Regards, Erik P. Olsen
