[no subject]

[Todd Kover]

testing new mail configuration, this should not go to the list. fingers crossed.

Re: List-Id etc

[Todd Kover]

 > 
 > Dear admin of this list / hey, Todd (?)  ;-)
 > 
 > Recently the mails I receive via my subscription to this list miss the
 > domain-part in (at least) these two fields in the header:
 > 
 > Sender: "owner-amanda-users@"@
 > List-Id: amanda-users.@
 > 
 > My sieve-scripts therefore don't trigger correctly anymore ... (which
 > isn't the most important thing, sure ...)
 > 
 > But I think this should be corrected.

This and the influx of spam (to -hackers and -users) were caused by
the same thing and both have been corrected.  Majordomo subscribes and
unsubscribes were also not working right, which has also been corrected.

I don't necessarily read the amanda lists every day (though I do try to
keep up), and the list is heavily tightened down so if you do see spam
leak through, please don't hesitate to contact postmas...@amanda.org which
is regularly monitored.

apologies for the spam.

-Todd

email issues in past 24 hours

[Todd Kover]

due to an issue with some upgrades on the server hosting amanda.org,
messages in the past 24 hours were dropped in the bitbucket and need
to be resent.

Apologies for any inconvenience.

-Todd

Re: Stopping Autoresponders

[Todd Kover]

 > > Hmmm ... can auto-responders distinguish between normal user e-mail
 > > and e-mail from a mailing list?
 >
 > Yes, if the list processor implements rfc2919 (see
 > ); then simply check for the
 > existence of the 'List-ID' header.  Mailman, iirc, also adds
 > 'X-BeenThere'.  Sieve, as an example, is able to deal with them
 > properly without any further user intervention as to suppress
 > auto-replies.
 >
 > Unfortunately, this list doesn't contain any of these headers,
 > though.  Thus, this needs to be fixed in the mailing list software
 > IMHO.

If the majordomo config is to be believed, a List-Id header will now
show up on messages to the amanda lists and should be on this message.
If not and one of the filtering programs is being naughty, it will be
there soon.

In the past, a precedence: bulk header was added, but it looks like
it was being stripped and its been broken for a long time.  Given the
negative verbiage on it in rfc2076, I declined to add it back in.

The majordomo config mostly predates rfc2919. :)

-Todd

Re: beep! (encryption, multiplexing...)

[Todd Kover]

 > >  > Yes. Multiplexing the data streams/error stream/index stream
 > >  > over one connection is a good idea.  Kevin Till has done some
 > >  > investigation in this area. I hope he will comment on this.
 > >
 > > The Kerberos 5 implementation in 2.5.0 actually does all this over
 > > one tcp connection right now.
 >
 > Is it possible to make the multiplexing change over one TCP
 > connection work without Kerberos 5?

Anything's possible. :) It should be relatively easy to merge
bsd-security.c and krb5-security.c into tcp-security.c or some such.

However, what I'd really like to see is a tcp port that allowed you
to negotiate session information so that multiple security mechanisms
could go over the same port.  That is, the server can say, "switch to
krb" or "switch to bsd" and then the session would switch to a different
security mechanism, and we could get away from this different port for
different authentication methods.  Clients would obviously reject what
they didn't support, and this could also allow for the server to easily
try different varities with one client.

The original motivation for using a split udp/tcp setup like this
was because workstations of that era couldn't sustain so many tcp
connections, but that's pretty silly in this day and age.  The amanda
server at UMD was initially a Sun IPC if I remember correctly, and was
limited by the capabilities of that box.

 > > There is a minor protocol issue that needs to be corrected (that
 > > causes amandad to timeout at the end, rather than properly end a
 > > session, but it's also there under udp-based connections today, so
 > > less of a big deal).
 >
 > Can you provide more information about this problem? Do you get
 > "connection reset by peer" error from amrecover after the files have
 > been extracted?

no, this is a protocol level issue that you'd probably never notice
unless you were debugging the protocol, particularly a tcp driver where
you multiplex connections.  :-)

If I remember the details, a "FINISH" packet in the protocol doesn't
actually mean FINISH anymore (since the addition of the capabilities
being passed over during the session negotiation the protocol has gotten
more complicated).  I think what needs to happen is a REALLY_FINISHED
state in the state machine that actually exits, which will require
changes to the security api, most likely.  This currently occurs as a
result of a timeout, which means that amandad lingers 30 or so seconds
longer than it needs to.  It obviously needs to be done in a backwards
compatible sort of way.

If doing a tcp implementation of the protocol, you'll end up with
periods where there's no open connections in between messages, which
causes amandad to die down (I think this is right before or after the
capabilities get sent), which given the old protocol would mean it's
time to shut down, but now is not an exit state.

If you look at krb5-security.c, at references to refcnt, you'll see the
hack I put in to work around this and make krb5-security behave like
bsd-security and rsh-security and basically timeout to end.  It would be
better to split this out into it's own routine and part of the protocol,
I think.

This is my initial thought, I haven't dug that deeply into it, either.

-Todd

Re: beep! (encryption, multiplexing...)

[Todd Kover]

 > > Just because it's almost newyear, and I have seen The Light... (or
 > > was that just an illusion?)
 > >
 > > Some thoughts about the new proposed features, concerning:
 > >
 > > - multiplexing the data streams, error stream, index stream, over
 > > one TCP connection (this would make passing firewalls and NAT so
 > > much easier and safer)
 >
 > Yes. Multiplexing the data streams/error stream/index stream over one
 > connection is a good idea.  Kevin Till has done some investigation in
 > this area. I hope he will comment on this.

The Kerberos 5 implementation in 2.5.0 actually does all this over one
tcp connection right now.

There is a minor protocol issue that needs to be corrected (that causes
amandad to timeout at the end, rather than properly end a session, but
it's also there under udp-based connections today, so less of a big
deal).

-Todd

Re: Amanda - unable to create temporary directory

[Todd Kover]

Jon LaBadie said:
 
 > On my system /usr/sbin/ufsdump is a symbolic link to /usr/lib/fs/ufs/ufsdump.
 > The latter program is root-owned, set-uid.  Perhaps yours has been altered.
 > 
 > $ ls -l /usr/lib/fs/ufs/ufsdump
 > -r-sr-xr-x  1 root  bin   83820 Apr 12  2004 /usr/lib/fs/ufs/ufsdump

We actually strip the setuid bit on ufsdump and this seems to work in
most circumstances.

We had this problem every night on one specific solaris 9 system, and
no other sol9 or sol8 systems (and our amanda client is installed via a
package, so it's the same across all machines).  The solaris boxes are
also installed from the same jumpstart images, so they should all behave
the same.

This error comes from ufsdump, and near as I've been able to tell,
ufsdump is creating a directory named something like '.rlg.zyaaGR in
each of /tmp and /var/tmp (and failing to be able to in / since it's not
running as root, the jibberish after .rlg. changes with each run).  This
directory is called with mode 000 and then ufsdump attempts to create a
file in it, which fails and generates that error message.

I wasn't able to get ufsdump to behave better (nor did I look for
a patch or try to reset ufsdump to being setuid again) but on that
specific system we had amanda incorrectly configured to backup something
other than the mountpoint of the filesystem, but something inside the
filesystem (that is, instead of /export/home it was /export/home/foo/bar
where the filesystem was mounted on /export/home).

Switching this to the mountpoint made the error go away.  There may be
some limitations in ufsdump that cause you only be able to use ufsdump
this way if you're root (though sounsd lke a bug).

If you're doing this, and doing it on purpose, I'd suggest using gnutar
instead of dump since incremental dumps don't work right except on
filesystem boundaries.

If you're not doing this and actually backing up a mountpoint, then
maybe the above info will help track it down. (perhaps the setuid bit,
as Jon suggests).

-Todd

Re: barcode reader help (and faq-o-matic-toast?)

[Todd Kover]

 > (and is the FOM gone for good?)

no, it should be back up now.

-Todd

Re: unsubscribe

[Todd Kover]

 > OK just for fun, I gave it a shot, and it looks to me like someone
 > used RCS (ci, co, rcsdiff etc.) to manage something within the
 > Majordomo tree and Majordomo is unhappy about having an RCS directory
 > within the tree because it is not a valid list.  That's what I
 > suspect.  You're probably going to have to: 1) store the "*,v" files
 > in another directory; 2) remove the RCS directory; 3) or, figure out
 > how to make Majordomo ignore the RCS directory.

actually, this was only a problem with 'unsubscribe *'. I've corrected
this.

 > Why oh why do people still insist on using antiquated Majordomo
 > when there are a dozen or so better MLMs out there these days?  Try
 > Mailman for instance, available as an RPM on multiple Linux distros.

I looked into others but mailman was really the only other one
that I came up as any better and python is icky and not an area I
wanted to tred into.  If you have a suggestion for something that
I missed in my brief search, that's not in python, please contact
[EMAIL PROTECTED]

please don't respond to the list...

-Todd

mailing list issues

[Todd Kover]

There were problems with unsubscribing from the amanda lists.  This has
been corrected.

As always, please contact [EMAIL PROTECTED] if you have problems
with the mailing list rather than pestering everyone on the list.  This
isn't in the headers (I'll see about adding it) but it is described on
the amanda web page on where to go for help if this comes up again.

The amanda lists were recently reverted back to it's 1/16/04 state
and all the subsccribe/unsubscribes since then that were logged were
reapplied.  Apparently, they weren't all logged.  The partition that
held the list wasn't being backed up (left out of the disklist) and
that's the last copy I had (It is being backed up now).  My apologies
for any inconvenience.

I have unsubscribed anyone who's complained about being resubscribed.
(cc:'d on this message).

Again, if you have addiional issues, please contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]

-Todd

Re: Closed list

[Todd Kover]

 > > Until I can get a better solution in place for filtering out
 > > irrelevent mail, both amanda-users and amanda-hackers are now closed
 > > for posting to non-subscribers.  At some point, this will change, but
 > > it will coincide with some better filtering software.
 > 
 > What are the reasons for not *keeping* them as closed lists?

The answer to this should be found in the archives, but a large
percentage of posts come from non-members. (at least for amanda-users.
This is less so for amanda-hackers).

Since that's where people are directed for help, this is not really
surprising.

Beyond that, if there's a noticable increase in maintainer mail from
people who have trouble posting, this is another motivater. (I'm not
sure if that will be the case, but based on what I get now, I wouldn't
be the least bit surprised if it picks up).

As I said before, please direct followups to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
There's no point in cluttering the list up with off-topic traffic.

-Todd

Closed list

[Todd Kover]

The s/n ratio is getting too high with spam/virus reports and all that.
(particularly on amanda-users).

Until I can get a better solution in place for filtering out irrelevent
mail, both amanda-users and amanda-hackers are now closed for posting to
non-subscribers.  At some point, this will change, but it will coincide
with some better filtering software.

You MUST send mail from the address you are subscribed with.

Please send any comments/questions/concerns to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
rather than clutter up the list itself.

-Todd
(amanda-core and list maintainer).

Re: Win32 client (was: Re: Amanda GUI)

[Todd Kover]

 > If not, it is possible that my employer would be willing to pay
 > someone to bring it sufficiently up-to-date that it actually works.
 > (Since the backup image is created OK, we are expecting that this
 > ought not be a huge amount of work for someone with a reasonable
 > ability & willingness to develop in/for the win32 environment.)  It
 > would be Nice(tm) if, aas an additional result, it would be possible
 > to do an amrecover from the UNIX side against a backup created in the
 > win32 side and have a reasonable expectation that some arbitrary set
 > of the files could be restored.

It's actually rather much a pain, although this is someone who's
primarily a unix geek talking who only has marginal experience in the MS
world. (and most of it under win 3.1).  This is assuming you don't want
to break the unix-philosophy driving much of amanda's design.

I've actually gotten everything to build in client-src natively under
Windows (using visual studio .NET and a few hacked up Makefiles, no
configure), but not actually working.

I think all that's really left is getting the event driver working
and figuring out how to interact with some backup program, although
each time I get someting working, I've found something else that needs
attention.

Unfortunately, things like select() don't work the same way under
Windows as they do under Unix (you can't select on a file descriptor,
only sockets, for example).

For the software required to backup, it would be nice if amanda stored
things in the microsoft tape format used by the "backup" program that
ships with the NT Track, that is:

http://www.layton-graphics.com/mtf/MTF_100a.PDF

I don't think "backup" can dump to stdout.  However, in theory this
would allow for bare-metal restores if you have the dump image.

I haven't really considered amrecover yet, figuring that in a pinch
someone could use microsoft's backup utility over samba to a big disk on
the unix side if something was generating dump imaages in MTF.

Also, for people just wanting to get at files in the backups without
having to touch NT:

http://www.layton-graphics.com/mtf/

would mitigate that (I think; I've never tried it).  Certainly WinTar
(or whatever) would be another reasoable alternative.

all of my work was against the 2.5.0 track. (top of the cvs repository)
which has significantly different innards for the clients, but should
theoretically be compatible with 2.4 servers. (never tried).

I was avoiding all the glue packages lke cygwin or mingw for at least
the client portion to try to simplify the world for would-be users.

I've touched this maybe a few hours recently (it still builds) but not
with any significance since last March or so.  One of these days, I'll
get back to it.

-Todd

Re: Amanda overwrites level 0 dumps?

[Todd Kover]

 > Perhaps a warning should be added to amdump and amcheck to alert
 > users to the situation when tapecycle is less than dumpcycle.

I would think you'd actully care if tapecycle < runspercycle (and I've
added a warning when this happens to planner and amcheck).

-Todd

Re: amanda-patches?

[Todd Kover]

 > I went to the amanda-patches page to download patches for 2.4.2p2 but 
 > the links are broken.  Where can I get the patches?  I'm running Red Hat 
 > 7.3 so I think I need to keep using 2.4.2p2.

This has been repaired and the patches accessible again (assuming you
haven't upgraded).

-Todd

Re: Solaris9 : netinet/ip.h: present but cannot be compiled

[Todd Kover]

 
 > For more explanation, see this fragment of a thread from the
 > Autoconf mailing-list archives.  The first of these links points
 > to the question, the second to the reply; the rest of the thread
 > can be safely ignored :-)
 > http://mail.gnu.org/archive/html/autoconf/2003-03/msg00154.html
 > http://mail.gnu.org/archive/html/autoconf/2003-03/msg00156.html
 > 
 > The second of these messages also suggests an approach that the
 > Amanda folks could use to suppress this scary-sounding warning,
 > which is why I've CCed this to the amanda-hackers list...

Thanks for passing this along.  I've applied something resembling the
fix at those URLs. (while I was there I dealt with a manifestation of
the same problem for NetBSD for sys/mount.h).

-Todd

[off-topic, hopefully final word: spam to amanda lists] Re: Pornography

[Todd Kover]

 > > Have we enjoyed talking about spam so far? Is this still
 > > an "amanda" list? Are we interested in spam more than in
 > > amanda? Finally, is enough enough?
 > 
 > The same discussion occurs about every year or so on many
 > lists.  Those that aren't interested can hit their
 > delete-thread key.
 > 
 > It's something that affects all the list members and some
 > are obviously quite concerned about it, so it's a valid list
 > topic, IMO.

It's not.  See http://www.amanda.org/ for the one setence "charter" for
the list.  Beyond that, the only person who can do anything about it
really doesn't read amanda-users.

The last time this came up was a little over six months ago and here's
what I said last time.  Everything still stands, although I didn't have
the time in October I thought I would.  It (or some simpler solution)
still beckons from my list of things I really need to get to soon.

I'm concerned about a lot of things that have nothing to do with amanda,
but really there are other appropriate forums for discussing those and
this just wastes everyone's time.

please, everyone, this discussion is not accomplishing anything and it's
already generated far more traffic than the spam that comes through the
list does.  Let's move on to what's on topic.

If legal threats over this come to pass, that's the fastest way to
shut down the mailing list itself.  No volunteer in their right mind
(certainly not this one) would spend their spare time doing something
that's going to get them in legal trouble that benefits them about zero.

I'm still waiting for volunteers, btw.  Nobody has stepped up and
offered to write any code to help deal with the problem.

as before, please don't reply to this on the list.

-Todd

--

To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: spam to amanda-users
Date: Tue, 10 Sep 2002 16:12:21 -0400
From: Todd Kover <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>


Please, please, please, let's take discussion of what to do about spam
on amanda-users offline.

It does nobody any good to debate dealing with spam on the list and it's
unquestionably off-topic as much as the spam itself is.  If it will
make people feel better, I'll setup an unmoderated open list called
[EMAIL PROTECTED] to give you a place to vent
about it.

To be frank, the list is not a democracy and it does no good to debate
the topic here, especially since I (the guy who hosts the lists) do
not read amanda-users that closely these days (it's as time permits
but it's low on my list -- my day job is too consuming).  All it's
accomplishing is aggrevating folks.

Given that over 50% of messages to amanda-users come from
non-subscribers (I've done occasional spot checks of this over the past
five or so years I've run amanda-users), it seems inappropriate to me to
restrict it to non-subscribers.  There are many other philosophies on
this point and we can debate it again and again, but that won't likely
change anything.

All that having been said, (and with this message, I've probably already
annoyed a bunch of people who will be sending unsubscription requests
in response to what they think is an unreasonable attitude :-) I have
some thoughts on how to deal with the spam better, and will likely be
dropping something into place that interacts with spamassassin to make
non-subscribers whose messages cross it's thresholds to have to manually
acknowledge that they meant to send it. (similar in theory to the auth
mechanisms in place with majordomo when you describe).

This will likely not happen until at least October when I expect spare
cycles to write up and test the scripts to do this.  If someone is aware
of something out there that already exists that does something along
those lines please send mail to be privately and it will likely get done
a lot faster.

If you'd like to volunteer to write such a beast, please let me know
privately.

If you'd like to debate this matter with the people right now who can
affect any change whatsoever, please direct it at [EMAIL PROTECTED]
and not to the mailing list.  However, that's most likely going to just
delay implementation of the above since I'll be spending more time
dealing with discussing what to do than actually doing. :-)

please, please please do not reply to this message including the list
and let's get the messages back to discussions about amanda.

-Todd

Re: Re-registering?

[Todd Kover]

 > Looked to me like it was sent to the entire list.
 > 
 > Now, if anyone replies to that email, I guess the entire list is going to
 > get a second copy of every single email :(
 > 
 > Maybe time to unsubscribe

As several folks figured out, someone messed up a subscription request
FOR amanda-users (rather than for thamselves) to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
resulting in that authorization message.  Apparently majordomo does not
check for this sort of thing and prevent it from happening.

Even if someone were to respond with the authorization message and
amanda-users were to get subscribed to itself, this wouldn't cause any
duplicate messages.  The setup on the server side is smart enough to
send a message once per subscriber and notice if a forwarding loop were
to happen and squash it. (an aside, if you managed to subscribe yourself
twice, you'll still get one copy of the message).

majordomo will set the To: field of a message correctly, so you can
check that to see who the message was destined for.

please ignore this and any other auth messages that may appear, and if
you happen to see a message indicating amanda-users was subscribed to
itself, you can either ignore it or contact [EMAIL PROTECTED] so
it can be removed (but even if it happens, you will NOT start seeing
multiple copies of the messages, and the removal is just part of keeping
things neat and tidy).

please direct any follow up to this message (if any) to
[EMAIL PROTECTED]  Thanks.

-Todd
(list manager)

Re: FAQ-O-Matic gone?

[Todd Kover]

 > > Just noticed that the FAQ-O-Matic linked off of amanda.org seems to be 
 > > down: http://www.amanda.org/cgi-bin/fom?
 > > 
 > > It asks for a temporary password to install the faq-o-matic!
 > 
 > Best one to tell that to is the [EMAIL PROTECTED]
 > 
 > I just did.

actually, [EMAIL PROTECTED]  (different set of people).

It looks like someone wiped out a bunch of the faq-o-matic data at
sourceforge.  I'm seeing if I can recover it but it mean reverting the
faq-o-matic back to an old backup version... :-(

-Todd

Re: Deja vu all over again

[Todd Kover]

 > What's up with last week's postings getting re-injected into the list?

I've removed a bunch of queued up messages from last week, blocked the
originating site and sent mail mail to their postmasters.

In the future, if you see someone doing this, please let
[EMAIL PROTECTED] know, and if you could include complete headers to
one of the offending messages, that would be even better.

-Todd

spam to amanda-users

[Todd Kover]

Please, please, please, let's take discussion of what to do about spam
on amanda-users offline.

It does nobody any good to debate dealing with spam on the list and it's
unquestionably off-topic as much as the spam itself is.  If it will
make people feel better, I'll setup an unmoderated open list called
[EMAIL PROTECTED] to give you a place to vent
about it.

To be frank, the list is not a democracy and it does no good to debate
the topic here, especially since I (the guy who hosts the lists) do
not read amanda-users that closely these days (it's as time permits
but it's low on my list -- my day job is too consuming).  All it's
accomplishing is aggrevating folks.

Given that over 50% of messages to amanda-users come from
non-subscribers (I've done occasional spot checks of this over the past
five or so years I've run amanda-users), it seems inappropriate to me to
restrict it to non-subscribers.  There are many other philosophies on
this point and we can debate it again and again, but that won't likely
change anything.

All that having been said, (and with this message, I've probably already
annoyed a bunch of people who will be sending unsubscription requests
in response to what they think is an unreasonable attitude :-) I have
some thoughts on how to deal with the spam better, and will likely be
dropping something into place that interacts with spamassassin to make
non-subscribers whose messages cross it's thresholds to have to manually
acknowledge that they meant to send it. (similar in theory to the auth
mechanisms in place with majordomo when you describe).

This will likely not happen until at least October when I expect spare
cycles to write up and test the scripts to do this.  If someone is aware
of something out there that already exists that does something along
those lines please send mail to be privately and it will likely get done
a lot faster.

If you'd like to volunteer to write such a beast, please let me know
privately.

If you'd like to debate this matter with the people right now who can
affect any change whatsoever, please direct it at [EMAIL PROTECTED]
and not to the mailing list.  However, that's most likely going to just
delay implementation of the above since I'll be spending more time
dealing with discussing what to do than actually doing. :-)

please, please please do not reply to this message including the list
and let's get the messages back to discussions about amanda.

-Todd

Re: META mailing list policy....

[Todd Kover]

 > [ On Tuesday, August 13, 2002 at 11:34:23 (-0400), Todd Kover wrote: ]
 > > Subject: Re: Free Adult Movies 
 > >
 > > There are some spam constraints in place.  One of the biggest
 > > ones that's not in there is restriction of posting to the list to
 > > members-only.  Generally, amanda-users sees about 50% of it's traffic
 > > from non-members.
 > 
 > Perhaps there should be an "amanda-bugs" and/or "amanda-info" list(s)
 > which are open to non-members and "amanda-users" should be for members
 > only.  That way new users could post bug reports and request basic info,
 > etc., and the regular crowd could avoid most (or at least more) spam.
 > Real people need not even subscribe to the open lists -- the bug reports
 > could be filtered and forwarded to a mail gateway for the bug tracking
 > system on sourceforge, and the info list could basically be a semi-smart
 > autoresponder.

amanda-users is documented all over the place as the place to go for
help for amanda so it would make more sense to fan traffic to other
lists, however this sounds somewhat onerous for people to interact on
the mailing list.

I'd like to set things up so non-members get pased through a different
set of rules (possibly the message gets run through spamassassin
somehow) and/or the relay maps and the like, and if it's suspicious
enough, making the sender acknowledge the message somehow (as with
subscriptions).

Is anyone aware of packages that do this sort of thing before I consider
writing one? (please respond to be privately, this is already a bit off
topic).
 
 > > I see a similar amount of spam on other lists I'm on that are as old as
 > > amanda-users.
 > 
 > I'd say amanda-users is better than many other "open" lists, but then
 > again I've unsubscribed to many other "open" lists because of spam
 > problems  :-)

yeah, ever since I've started using spamassassin, I've seen it cut down in
all lists.  :)
 
 > How many subscribers are there now?

  1592 amanda-announce
   494 amanda-hackers
  1086 amanda-users

remember that amanda-users is also on amanda-announce.

-Todd

Re: Free Adult Movies

[Todd Kover]

 > Don't you think it's about time to start using spam control? I get
 > hardly any unsolicited junk on other mailing lists. It's just this
 > one.

There are some spam constraints in place.  One of the biggest
ones that's not in there is restriction of posting to the list to
members-only.  Generally, amanda-users sees about 50% of it's traffic
from non-members.

I see a similar amount of spam on other lists I'm on that are as old as
amanda-users.

Most (all?) of the "standard" mail controls are in place on the servers
amanda-users is housed on although I do stop at using the various
open-relay maps since I've had problems with them in the past.  This is
probably the difference you're seeing compared to other lists.

-Todd

Re: amanda-users list problem

[Todd Kover]

 > >   [EMAIL PROTECTED]:
 > >
 > >   That got brought to my attention today, but unfortunately, my
 > >   tape cycle is only eight days, so the last good backup of the
 > >   file was erased quite some time ago.
 > >
 > > I've seen others near me have this sort of problem, and I've only
 > > narrowly avoided it myself.  This need to notice/restore before the
 > > tape cycle runs out is a recurring theme in amanda usage.
 >
 > [...]
 >
 > Is surly.omniscient.com backed up by Amanda?

yes, but in a cycle of eight DLT4k tapes.

-Todd

amanda-users list problem

[Todd Kover]

Around October 30, 2001, the system housing amanda-users crashed.  When
it was resurrected, the file with the amanda-users list in it had zeroed
out and I did not notice.

That got brought to my attention today, but unfortunately, my tape cycle
is only eight days, so the last good backup of the file was erased
quite some time ago.

As a result, I've taken the list from the way it was back when it
was hosted at cs.umd.edu in 9/1998, and applied all the changes that
majordomo had logged since then.

In theory, this means that the list is exactly how it should be, but
reality may be different.

Should you have been inadvertently placed back on to the list, you can
unsubscribe by sending a message containing 'subscribe amanda-users' or
'unsubscribe amanda-users' to [EMAIL PROTECTED]

If you have any problems with unsubscribing or otherwise with the list,
please direct them at [EMAIL PROTECTED]

amanda-hackers and amanda-announce were unaffected.

Needless to say, anyone who sent a message in November may want to
consider re-sending it...

-Todd
(Amanda Core Team)

Re: Is something wrong with amanda-users list server??

[Todd Kover]

 > Is there something wrong with the server for amanda-users?  I finally
 > got around to changing my subscription from an old address to my
 > current one today and am very dismayed at what I'm seeing from this
 > list.  My old address is receiving amanda-users messages more than
 > an hour sooner than my current address!  I was going to un$ubscribe
 > the old address but this is rediculous.  Is this list so huge that it
 > takes more than 1 hour to run a single message through it?  Or is the
 > server or it's network connection just way too overloaded?
 > 
 > Yes, I can provide Received: headers to verify all this if you'd like.
 > Further, my old address is forwarding to my current one, so I'm receiving
 > both copies in the same mailbox, disproving any possibility that the
 > problem might be an overload on this end.  Is there anything that can
 > be done?

There's a slew of people on the list that are causing name server
timeouts or have really slow connections resuling in it taking a long
time for everyone on the list to be gotten to.  I'm currently flushing
those people out and have a few other configuration changes I'm planning
that will likely streamline the process.

I do not keep a close eye on the lists except for possible major issues
and unsubscribe/subscribe problems, so this sort of cleanup doesn't happen
that often.

In the past, the amanda lists went through UUNET's mail relays which
did delivery in parallel, but when I switched providers recently, it went
back to serial delivery which is why this is a relatively new problem.

At some point (I keep saying this but never get around to executing),
the amanda lists will move to sourceforge with the rest of the project,
which theoretically has delivery more optimized for large lists.

-Todd

Re: spam messages in the amanda-user mailing list

[Todd Kover]

 > There are now daily spam messages about toner supplies going to the
 > amanda mailing list. This is a big annoyance. Please do something to
 > prevent such a thing from happening again. If needed I can provide
 > headers and the emails that I recieved.

your best bet when you see repetative spam like that is to send
something about it to [EMAIL PROTECTED]  Full headers of
the offensive messages are always appreciated.

The offending address that's been relaying these have been blacklisted.

-Todd