Re: New to Amanda- discouraged by some absurd limitations..
On Tuesday 04 May 2004 10:52, Jon LaBadie wrote: >On Tue, May 04, 2004 at 12:23:01AM -0600, Justin Gombos wrote: >> Mail-Followup-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > >Note where the added header ended up, in the body, not the headers. > I had an X-follow-up line in the header of that message. >> > > OTOH-- if you want to talk about etiquette, you should try not >> > > to ignore the mail-followup-to header on mailing list posts. >> > >> > I just looked back at your original post. I see no header >> > directing followups anywhere. Jonathan knows that many posters, >> > particularly new posters, do not subscribe to the list. It is >> > not a requirement for posting. Thus as a courtesy to you he >> > sent a copy to you as well as to the list. >> >> I just verified that I sent a Mail-Followup-To header. It seems >> the mailing list software is stripping out the Mail-Followup-To >> headers. So you are correct, Jonathan did not fail to honor the >> header, but rather the list software. >> >> I'll have to come up with alternatives. Maybe a mutt hook that >> will automatically append a signature with the Mail-Followup-To >> preferences. As a test, I'm adding a Mail-Followup-To line to the >> body and a X-Mail-Followup-To header to see if the list strips >> that too. -- 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) 99.22% setiathome rank, not too shabby for a WV hillbilly Yahoo.com attorneys please note, additions to this message by Gene Heskett are: Copyright 2004 by Maurice Eugene Heskett, all rights reserved.
Re: New to Amanda- discouraged by some absurd limitations..
On Tue, May 04, 2004 at 12:23:01AM -0600, Justin Gombos wrote: > Mail-Followup-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Note where the added header ended up, in the body, not the headers. > > > OTOH-- if you want to talk about etiquette, you should try not to > > > ignore the mail-followup-to header on mailing list posts. > > > > I just looked back at your original post. I see no header directing > > followups anywhere. Jonathan knows that many posters, particularly > > new posters, do not subscribe to the list. It is not a requirement > > for posting. Thus as a courtesy to you he sent a copy to you as well > > as to the list. > > I just verified that I sent a Mail-Followup-To header. It seems the > mailing list software is stripping out the Mail-Followup-To headers. > So you are correct, Jonathan did not fail to honor the header, but > rather the list software. > > I'll have to come up with alternatives. Maybe a mutt hook that will > automatically append a signature with the Mail-Followup-To > preferences. As a test, I'm adding a Mail-Followup-To line to the > body and a X-Mail-Followup-To header to see if the list strips that > too. -- Jon H. LaBadie [EMAIL PROTECTED] JG Computing 4455 Province Line Road(609) 252-0159 Princeton, NJ 08540-4322 (609) 683-7220 (fax)
Re: New to Amanda- discouraged by some absurd limitations..
On Tue, May 04, 2004 at 06:08:09AM -0700, Stephen Carville wrote: > On Monday May 03 2004 11:05 pm, Justin Gombos wrote: > > * Jonathan Dill <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> [2004-05-02 12:44]: > > > As others have pointed out, 700 MB CD-R is probably not going to be > > > adequate for backing up multiple clients across the network anyway. > > > > I'll have to figure that out. I'm having trouble realizing how Amanda > > behaves. So far it doesn't look like I can reasonably predict when > > each file gets backed up. > > If a file's time stamp changes it will get backed up on teh next run. I find > that pretty simple to predict. > > > It seems it can't do a full backup, and > > then small incrementals that include only changed files. > > That is exactly what it does: A full backup of the data within each dumpcycle > and all changed data is backed up between full dumps. JG may have been refering to another definition of "incremental" that has been asked about on this list a few times. Amanda's incrementals include all files that have changed since the last higher level dump. The other style seems to skip files that have not changed since the last same or higher level dump. (Read "higher" as numerically lower) -- Jon H. LaBadie [EMAIL PROTECTED] JG Computing 4455 Province Line Road(609) 252-0159 Princeton, NJ 08540-4322 (609) 683-7220 (fax)
Re: New to Amanda- discouraged by some absurd limitations..
In a message dated: Tue, 04 May 2004 05:43:42 EDT Gene Heskett said: >But, some have setup two configurations, one that runs weekly and is >forced to do fulls on everything in the disklist, and one that runs >during the week that does the incrementals. I do not do that here, >so I'l let someone that is doing that explain it better than I can. It's rather simplistic actually. I have 3 configurations: daily- runs Mon-Fri, rotates through 12 tapes which remain in the changer at all times. - this is a normal amanda config, running level 0s every so often and incrementals in between. weekly - runs each Saturday, uses the last 4 slots of the changer - forces a full dump every time - tapes get rotated out to be stored off-site. archival - runs once per quarter - is basically the identical as the weekly with no upper bound on the tapes - tapes get stored off-site indefinitely and never come back (or, at some later date, will be determined to be re-usable) Hope that's helpful to someone. -- Seeya, Paul GPG Key fingerprint = 1660 FECC 5D21 D286 F853 E808 BB07 9239 53F1 28EE If you're not having fun, you're not doing it right!
Re: New to Amanda- discouraged by some absurd limitations..
On Monday May 03 2004 11:05 pm, Justin Gombos wrote: > * Jonathan Dill <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> [2004-05-02 12:44]: > > As others have pointed out, 700 MB CD-R is probably not going to be > > adequate for backing up multiple clients across the network anyway. > > I'll have to figure that out. I'm having trouble realizing how Amanda > behaves. So far it doesn't look like I can reasonably predict when > each file gets backed up. If a file's time stamp changes it will get backed up on teh next run. I find that pretty simple to predict. > It seems it can't do a full backup, and > then small incrementals that include only changed files. That is exactly what it does: A full backup of the data within each dumpcycle and all changed data is backed up between full dumps. -- Stephen Carville http://www.heronforge.net/~stephen/gnupgkey.txt -- Right wing socialists hate privacy as much as left wing socialists hate guns.
Re: New to Amanda- discouraged by some absurd limitations..
On Tue, 4 May 2004 at 12:23am, Justin Gombos wrote > Mail-Followup-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > > * Jon LaBadie <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> [2004-05-02 12:44]: > > On Sun, May 02, 2004 at 12:44:16PM -0600, Justin Gombos wrote: > > > > > > > IMHO this was rather rude way to bring up the issue, > > > > > > First of all, I did not know whether this was an issue, that's why I > > > posted here. It was certainly proper to raise an Amanda > > > issue/question to the amanda-users mailing list. > > > > The rude part was not your posting a question about the design of > > amanda to this list. The rudeness came when you described an aspect > > of amanda as "incredibly stupid" in your first posting to a list > > that contains among it membership several people who have > > contributed to amanda's development. Few people like to hear their > > work described as stupid. > > It seemed like an incredibly stupid limitation to me. That is my > opinion. Opinions are often welcome on mailing lists, even if they > are offensive. It was not an ad hominem, or a flame. It was a remark > about the functionality of a tool, and should be accepted. If you > disagree, you are welcome to state your opinion that it would be > stupid for Amanda to support such functionality. *Informed* opinions are particularly welcome on mailing lists. A quick search of the list archives (available in multiple places) would have educated you as to the rationale behind this "limitation". And, even if you disagree with said rationale, insulting language (see: incredibly stupid) is not the way to go about trying to convince people of your point of view. This is beyond basic netiquette, it's basic people skills. -- Joshua Baker-LePain Department of Biomedical Engineering Duke University
Re: New to Amanda- discouraged by some absurd limitations..
On Tuesday 04 May 2004 02:05, Justin Gombos wrote: >* Jonathan Dill <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> [2004-05-02 12:44]: >> As others have pointed out, 700 MB CD-R is probably not going to >> be adequate for backing up multiple clients across the network >> anyway. > >I'll have to figure that out. I'm having trouble realizing how > Amanda behaves. So far it doesn't look like I can reasonably > predict when each file gets backed up. It seems it can't do a full > backup, and then small incrementals that include only changed > files. Generally speaking, thats because amanda is trying to arrive at a balance so equal amounts of tape are used for each regularly scheduled session. But, some have setup two configurations, one that runs weekly and is forced to do fulls on everything in the disklist, and one that runs during the week that does the incrementals. I do not do that here, so I'l let someone that is doing that explain it better than I can. > >> By "GNU" do you mean "covered under the terms of the Gnu Public >> License"? Are you opposed to other free, or "free to use but >> restricted" licensing? Is the point that you want something free >> or very cheap, hence would not consider something like Arkeia? > >I subscribe to the Richard Stallman FSF.org philosophies, and prefer >software that is no only free of charge, but also open source and > with freedom to alter. I don't necessarily need those features in > this case, but I try to support the movement whenever practical. > This is what attracts me to Amanda. Its a good subscription IMO. -- 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) 99.22% setiathome rank, not too shabby for a WV hillbilly Yahoo.com attorneys please note, additions to this message by Gene Heskett are: Copyright 2004 by Maurice Eugene Heskett, all rights reserved.
Re: New to Amanda- discouraged by some absurd limitations..
Justin Gombos wrote: [... a lot of noise about one-amanda-run-equals-one-tape extrapolated to the use of CDR's instead of tapes > and wasting a lot of CDR's ... ] Now that all is said, let's see how we solve the problem. If you use the file driver, there is one directory for each run. Now if you play it the stupid way, and burn that directory on the top level directory of the CD, then indeed, you problably need one CD for each amanda run. But you'll have to figure out anyway how you will burn that amanda file-driver backup directory to disk. I presume you do want a multiple session CD. Then you can put each directory on a suitable named subdirectory (like the date of backup). Or you can collect a few backups on disk, until you have one CDR full, and then burn it, even without multisession, on the CDR. Isn't that workable? -- Paul Bijnens, XplanationTel +32 16 397.511 Technologielaan 21 bus 2, B-3001 Leuven, BELGIUMFax +32 16 397.512 http://www.xplanation.com/ email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] *** * I think I've got the hang of it now: exit, ^D, ^C, ^\, ^Z, ^Q, F6, * * quit, ZZ, :q, :q!, M-Z, ^X^C, logoff, logout, close, bye, /bye, * * stop, end, F3, ~., ^]c, +++ ATH, disconnect, halt, abort, hangup, * * PF4, F20, ^X^X, :D::D, KJOB, F14-f-e, F8-e, kill -1 $$, shutdown, * * kill -9 1, Alt-F4, Ctrl-Alt-Del, AltGr-NumLock, Stop-A, ...* * ... "Are you sure?" ... YES ... Phew ... I'm out * ***
Re: New to Amanda- discouraged by some absurd limitations..
Mail-Followup-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] * Jon LaBadie <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> [2004-05-02 12:44]: > On Sun, May 02, 2004 at 12:44:16PM -0600, Justin Gombos wrote: > > > > > IMHO this was rather rude way to bring up the issue, > > > > First of all, I did not know whether this was an issue, that's why I > > posted here. It was certainly proper to raise an Amanda > > issue/question to the amanda-users mailing list. > > The rude part was not your posting a question about the design of > amanda to this list. The rudeness came when you described an aspect > of amanda as "incredibly stupid" in your first posting to a list > that contains among it membership several people who have > contributed to amanda's development. Few people like to hear their > work described as stupid. It seemed like an incredibly stupid limitation to me. That is my opinion. Opinions are often welcome on mailing lists, even if they are offensive. It was not an ad hominem, or a flame. It was a remark about the functionality of a tool, and should be accepted. If you disagree, you are welcome to state your opinion that it would be stupid for Amanda to support such functionality. > Particularly by someone who doesn't know what they are talking > about. Exactly. For me to state that a certain functionality or lack thereof is "stupid," it's not just a statement about the subject, but it's also (intentionally) a statement about the author. This way, you know where I'm coming from, and what kind of user you're dealing with. Specifically, you're dealing with a user who is accustomed to tools that can put multiple volumes on a single media, and has never encountered this type of limitation. > > OTOH-- if you want to talk about etiquette, you should try not to > > ignore the mail-followup-to header on mailing list posts. > > I just looked back at your original post. I see no header directing > followups anywhere. Jonathan knows that many posters, particularly > new posters, do not subscribe to the list. It is not a requirement > for posting. Thus as a courtesy to you he sent a copy to you as well > as to the list. I just verified that I sent a Mail-Followup-To header. It seems the mailing list software is stripping out the Mail-Followup-To headers. So you are correct, Jonathan did not fail to honor the header, but rather the list software. I'll have to come up with alternatives. Maybe a mutt hook that will automatically append a signature with the Mail-Followup-To preferences. As a test, I'm adding a Mail-Followup-To line to the body and a X-Mail-Followup-To header to see if the list strips that too.
Re: New to Amanda- discouraged by some absurd limitations..
* Jonathan Dill <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> [2004-05-02 12:44]: > As others have pointed out, 700 MB CD-R is probably not going to be > adequate for backing up multiple clients across the network anyway. I'll have to figure that out. I'm having trouble realizing how Amanda behaves. So far it doesn't look like I can reasonably predict when each file gets backed up. It seems it can't do a full backup, and then small incrementals that include only changed files. > By "GNU" do you mean "covered under the terms of the Gnu Public > License"? Are you opposed to other free, or "free to use but > restricted" licensing? Is the point that you want something free or > very cheap, hence would not consider something like Arkeia? I subscribe to the Richard Stallman FSF.org philosophies, and prefer software that is no only free of charge, but also open source and with freedom to alter. I don't necessarily need those features in this case, but I try to support the movement whenever practical. This is what attracts me to Amanda.
Re: New to Amanda- discouraged by some absurd limitations..
* Stephen Carville <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> [2004-05-02 10:11]: > > What does a CD-R cost these days? About 35-40 cents apiece? The price is not the biggest issue here. I have a plastic tub full of hundreds of CDRs that were free after MIR. What I don't like is: 1) the effort of swapping the media daily (automation should reduce interaction) and the constant labelling, 2) the physical management.. having 350 CDs/year taking up physical space, and having more CDs to have to handle and account for in the event of recovery, 3) making unnecessary contributions to my local landfill.
Re: New to Amanda- discouraged by some absurd limitations..
On Monday May 03 2004 09:45 am, Jonathan Dill wrote: > Jon LaBadie wrote: > >One of the concerns I have about disk-only based backup schemes is the > >total loss of data. If you encounter a 2-disk failure you lose not only > >your most recent, but all your backups. If a tape drive fails the data > >can be read on another drive. If a single tape goes bad, that is the > >only set of backups lost. > > If you're using multiple removable hard drives as tapes, I think that > would mitigate the risk somewhat vs. disks that are "online" all the > time, although spin-up seems to be THE most crucial moment in the life > of any disk drive. I think disks still aren't as reliable as tapes in > terms of failure rates, but would expect a removable hard drive solution > to fall somewhere between full-time disk drives and tapes. I've been considering a backup to drive with daily copies made to tapes. I already use BackuoExec to backuop my Windoze boxes to a Samba share and then use Amanda to back those files up to tape. That works well so I don't see how a hybrid setup would be less robust than tapes alone. It means a lt lot of disk space -- in my case about 300 - 400 GB for a weeks worth -- but drives are getting real cheap. -- Stephen Carville http://www.heronforge.net/~stephen/gnupgkey.txt -- Right wing socialists hate privacy as much as left wing socialists hate guns.
Re: New to Amanda- discouraged by some absurd limitations..
Jon LaBadie wrote: One of the concerns I have about disk-only based backup schemes is the total loss of data. If you encounter a 2-disk failure you lose not only your most recent, but all your backups. If a tape drive fails the data can be read on another drive. If a single tape goes bad, that is the only set of backups lost. If you're using multiple removable hard drives as tapes, I think that would mitigate the risk somewhat vs. disks that are "online" all the time, although spin-up seems to be THE most crucial moment in the life of any disk drive. I think disks still aren't as reliable as tapes in terms of failure rates, but would expect a removable hard drive solution to fall somewhere between full-time disk drives and tapes. --jonathan
Re: New to Amanda- discouraged by some absurd limitations..
Hello, and thank you for your email. I shall be out of the office until Tuesday 4th May. Should your email require urgent attention, the please contact David Adams or email [EMAIL PROTECTED] Regards, William Hargrove
Re: New to Amanda- discouraged by some absurd limitations..
On Mon, May 03, 2004 at 10:45:26AM -0400, Jonathan Dill wrote: > Which reminds me...If cost is a factor, now that FILE-DRIVER is an > option, RAID or removable hard drives may give you a better $/GB ratio > than tapes, and much more capacity than CD-R. I think this is a very > good option for a single computer or small network like Justin described > in his original e-mail. If you use removable drives or a RAID-1, you > might not need anything else, though it would be a good idea to still > dump more important files to tape or writable DVD media occasionally. I > haven't investigated it, but I have heard of hot-swap external SATA and > firewire options which would be very good indeed. > > 250 GB removable drives could be a great option if you are backing up > large partitions, say up to 500 GB uncompressed, so that you could get > around dumps not fitting on a single tape without having to use RAIT > with multiple tape drives, or very expensive tape drives and media, or > split up dumps with (IMHO inefficient and CPU/IO intensive) GNUTAR. > > In my case, I am using a 1 TB Snap Server 4500 in a RAID-5 configuration > and flushing mostly just the full dumps to 200/100 GB LTO (Ultrium-1). > Since RAID-5 has less redundancy than RAID-1, I am more concerned about > having at least some dumps on tape since a 2-disk failure would mean > that all of the data on the RAID-5 would be gone. > One of the concerns I have about disk-only based backup schemes is the total loss of data. If you encounter a 2-disk failure you lose not only your most recent, but all your backups. If a tape drive fails the data can be read on another drive. If a single tape goes bad, that is the only set of backups lost. Disk-based schemes seem to violate the amanda principle of never appending to a tape. All that negativity, yet I think I would setup a disk-based scheme for ease and speed of recovery but as Jonathan does, I would do some backups to tape also. That is why I've been wondering about a RAIT scheme where the backup is mirrored to disk and tape. -- Jon H. LaBadie [EMAIL PROTECTED] JG Computing 4455 Province Line Road(609) 252-0159 Princeton, NJ 08540-4322 (609) 683-7220 (fax)
Re: New to Amanda- discouraged by some absurd limitations..
Which reminds me...If cost is a factor, now that FILE-DRIVER is an option, RAID or removable hard drives may give you a better $/GB ratio than tapes, and much more capacity than CD-R. I think this is a very good option for a single computer or small network like Justin described in his original e-mail. If you use removable drives or a RAID-1, you might not need anything else, though it would be a good idea to still dump more important files to tape or writable DVD media occasionally. I haven't investigated it, but I have heard of hot-swap external SATA and firewire options which would be very good indeed. 250 GB removable drives could be a great option if you are backing up large partitions, say up to 500 GB uncompressed, so that you could get around dumps not fitting on a single tape without having to use RAIT with multiple tape drives, or very expensive tape drives and media, or split up dumps with (IMHO inefficient and CPU/IO intensive) GNUTAR. In my case, I am using a 1 TB Snap Server 4500 in a RAID-5 configuration and flushing mostly just the full dumps to 200/100 GB LTO (Ultrium-1). Since RAID-5 has less redundancy than RAID-1, I am more concerned about having at least some dumps on tape since a 2-disk failure would mean that all of the data on the RAID-5 would be gone. On Sun, 2004-05-02 at 20:53, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > In my Amanda experience, I was lucky enough to have a > large holding disk area and a tape drive which failed > spectacularly before even one backup was flushed. It gave > me the opportunity to see how Amanda works. The most > wonderful aspect was how happy "she" was to restore > from the holding disk. --jonathan
Re: New to Amanda- discouraged by some absurd limitations..
I understand your reaction, and I would likely have posted something similar during my first week or so with Amanda, but I'm a lurker by nature. I figured the answer would show itself sooner or later. I've had all of my questions answered and then some. This is one of the most information rich and forgiving lists I've ever seen, and I've been subscribing to mailing lists of all kinds since 1987. Yes, Amanda seems weird at first take, especially to people like me with lots of experience using conventional backup software. I find this very similar to the financial establishment's take on the Google IPO. Amanda is outside the box on many aspects of planning for backups. I was very resistant to it at first, being used to lots of up-front definitions which almost always needed revision later in conventional backup software. That is, most of the commercial backup software forces you to make decisions before you really know what you're doing. My experience has been that of forced failure. Kind of like an enforced first draft, which I've had to throw away once I knew enough about how the software worked to make a working plan. In my Amanda experience, I was lucky enough to have a large holding disk area and a tape drive which failed spectacularly before even one backup was flushed. It gave me the opportunity to see how Amanda works. The most wonderful aspect was how happy "she" was to restore from the holding disk. I still don't totally grok Amanda. I dump by hand about once a week. That totally works for me. I have two servers, one local, one very remote, and both have enough holding disk for two weeks of backups at Amanda's discretion. I noticed that the older backups were conveniently rolled off of the holding disk when I forgot to dump to tape for a while. I root for Amanda for the same reason I'm rooting for Google. Both shrug off convention, and both provide an excellent product to the world for free. I don't totally understand either one, but I believe that neither is evil.
Re: New to Amanda- discouraged by some absurd limitations..
Hello, and thank you for your email. I shall be out of the office until Tuesday 4th May. Should your email require urgent attention, the please contact David Adams or email [EMAIL PROTECTED] Regards, William Hargrove
Re: New to Amanda- discouraged by some absurd limitations..
On Sun, May 02, 2004 at 12:44:16PM -0600, Justin Gombos wrote: > > > IMHO this was rather rude way to bring up the issue, > > First of all, I did not know whether this was an issue, that's why I > posted here. It was certainly proper to raise an Amanda > issue/question to the amanda-users mailing list. The rude part was not your posting a question about the design of amanda to this list. The rudeness came when you described an aspect of amanda as "incredibly stupid" in your first posting to a list that contains among it membership several people who have contributed to amanda's development. Few people like to hear their work described as stupid. Particularly by someone who doesn't know what they are talking about. > OTOH-- if you want to talk about etiquette, you should try not to > ignore the mail-followup-to header on mailing list posts. I just looked back at your original post. I see no header directing followups anywhere. Jonathan knows that many posters, particularly new posters, do not subscribe to the list. It is not a requirement for posting. Thus as a courtesy to you he sent a copy to you as well as to the list. -- Jon H. LaBadie [EMAIL PROTECTED] JG Computing 4455 Province Line Road(609) 252-0159 Princeton, NJ 08540-4322 (609) 683-7220 (fax)
Re: New to Amanda- discouraged by some absurd limitations..
Justin Gombos wrote: First of all, I did not know whether this was an issue, that's why I posted here. It was certainly proper to raise an Amanda issue/question to the amanda-users mailing list. Asking, "Can amanda do X?" is one thing, but to complain of "an absurd limitation" is, frankly, insulting, unless that was a bad translation of something from another language. OTOH-- if you want to talk about etiquette, you should try not to ignore the mail-followup-to header on mailing list posts. I don't see how the use of insulting language is equal to whether my e-mail client correctly handles "mail-followup-to" headers. If you know of a multi-client GNU backup tool that both works over the network and is also uses the target media intelligently, please advise. Otherwise, someone might as well be holding a gun to my head forcing me to use Amanda, because it seems to be the closest tool for meeting this requirement. The other tools I've studied lack the automated across network ability. As others have pointed out, 700 MB CD-R is probably not going to be adequate for backing up multiple clients across the network anyway. By "GNU" do you mean "covered under the terms of the Gnu Public License"? Are you opposed to other free, or "free to use but restricted" licensing? Is the point that you want something free or very cheap, hence would not consider something like Arkeia? --jonathan
Re: New to Amanda- discouraged by some absurd limitations..
* Jonathan Dill <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> [2004-05-02 10:27]: > Use FILE-DRIVER and wait until you have enough files to fill up the > CD-R. Or use CD-RW as your "tapes" and keep several that you can rotate > and re-use. Maybe the file-driver will suffice.. I'll have to look into that. > IMHO this was rather rude way to bring up the issue, First of all, I did not know whether this was an issue, that's why I posted here. It was certainly proper to raise an Amanda issue/question to the amanda-users mailing list. OTOH-- if you want to talk about etiquette, you should try not to ignore the mail-followup-to header on mailing list posts. > Why not just look for some other software if you didn't like it? No > one held a gun to your head and made you use amanda. freshmeat.net > lists several other packages specifically geared to making backups > to CD-R as you describe. amanda is geared to backing up large > networks, like Veritas or Legato without the very expensive > licenses. You can get it to work for a small, single computer, but > it was not designed to do that, hence it may well not be the best > tool for that job, nor does it promise to be. If you know of a multi-client GNU backup tool that both works over the network and is also uses the target media intelligently, please advise. Otherwise, someone might as well be holding a gun to my head forcing me to use Amanda, because it seems to be the closest tool for meeting this requirement. The other tools I've studied lack the automated across network ability.
Re: New to Amanda- discouraged by some absurd limitations..
Use FILE-DRIVER and wait until you have enough files to fill up the CD-R. Or use CD-RW as your "tapes" and keep several that you can rotate and re-use. Oh yes, we have designed amanda specifically to satisfy your personal whims, pretty please don't reject it, it will so much hurt my feelings. IMHO this was rather rude way to bring up the issue, Why not just look for some other software if you didn't like it? No one held a gun to your head and made you use amanda. freshmeat.net lists several other packages specifically geared to making backups to CD-R as you describe. amanda is geared to backing up large networks, like Veritas or Legato without the very expensive licenses. You can get it to work for a small, single computer, but it was not designed to do that, hence it may well not be the best tool for that job, nor does it promise to be. Justin Gombos wrote: I was looking forward to using Amanda to backup 4-5 machines on my LAN and one over the Internet, but something seems incredibly stupid about the way Amanda forces the user to operate. Please tell me I'm wrong; maybe I'm misunderstanding the documentation. If I want to perform daily backups to CDRs, and I expect to have around 10 megs of data change per day, do I really have to waste an entire CDR every day? --jonathan
Re: New to Amanda- discouraged by some absurd limitations..
On Saturday May 01 2004 08:51 pm, Justin Gombos wrote: > I was looking forward to using Amanda to backup 4-5 machines on my LAN > and one over the Internet, but something seems incredibly stupid about > the way Amanda forces the user to operate. Please tell me I'm wrong; > maybe I'm misunderstanding the documentation. If I want to perform > daily backups to CDRs, and I expect to have around 10 megs of data > change per day, do I really have to waste an entire CDR every day? AFAIK, you are not wrong. At least with regard to tapes: Amanda does not put multiple backups on the same tape. However it also distributes the fulls over the tapecycle so add at least / to your estimate of space required. What does a CD-R cost these days? About 35-40 cents apiece? -- Stephen Carville http://www.heronforge.net/~stephen/gnupgkey.txt -- Right wing socialists hate privacy as much as left wing socialists hate guns.
Re: New to Amanda- discouraged by some absurd limitations..
On Saturday 01 May 2004 23:51, Justin Gombos wrote: >I was looking forward to using Amanda to backup 4-5 machines on my > LAN and one over the Internet, but something seems incredibly > stupid about the way Amanda forces the user to operate. Please > tell me I'm wrong; maybe I'm misunderstanding the documentation. > If I want to perform daily backups to CDRs, and I expect to have > around 10 megs of data change per day, do I really have to waste an > entire CDR every day? In order to do an incremental, there must be a full level 0 of that same disklist entry to be used to determine whats been changed and needs the incremental to be recorded. That means that your relatively small 700Mb cd-r is probably going to be too small to be really usefull. There are both dependability and security reasons why amanda must use a different media each day, and they are not what one could call "open for discussion". Much of this came about because of the lack of random access to a tapes contents, and because the tape itself may be ejected (which will rewind it) in between sessions by someone unknown to the operator or to the crontab entry that runs amanda. These individual media may be re-used according to the tapecycle setting in the file amanda.conf when their "time on the shelf" has expired by having used up all other "tapes" in the tapelist, at which point the oldest one becomes todays media. There is another name in this amanda.conf, "dumpcycle", which tells amanda how many days she has to do a full backup of every entry in the disklist, typically set for 7 days. And yet another, "runspercycle" which you would set to 5 if no backups are done over the weekends, and amanda uses this to tell her that even though 7 days is the time limit, she only has 5 actual runs in those 7 days to get it all done in. Amanda will, given enough time, work out her own schedule that will achieve this AND attempt to balance the amount of media used so about the same amount is used on each run. Breaking the disklist up into many smaller subdir entrys and using tar, not dump, allows amanda to do a much better job of balanceing the media usage. To demo how well that can work, I have about 65Gb of data on 2 machines here, and I'm using a 4Gb (DDS2) tape in a 4 tape changer, one tape a nightly run. dumpcycle is 7, runspercycle is 7, and tapecycle is 28. Typically amanda will do about 3.6 gigs of mixed fulls and incrementals per nightly run, so it all fits on the one tape I allow her to use. Having a changer, I could let amand use 2 or even 4 tapes a night, but the write time for 4 tapes would be well into the next day with these slow tapes. Also be reminded that amanda cannot span a single disklist entry across 2 tapes, but will restart the failed entry on a fresh tape if allowed to use the changer, another argument in favor of smaller disklist entrys. I use compression only on those disklist entries that will compress, no use wasting cpu time to do the compression on a directory full of tar.gz stuffs. Amanda is now learning how to use media other than tape, read the docs for details on that. Amanda can do one heck of a job safeguarding your data, but amanda doesn't always take well to being bossed around. Most of us don't try once we understand how amanda works. -- 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) 99.22% setiathome rank, not too shabby for a WV hillbilly Yahoo.com attorneys please note, additions to this message by Gene Heskett are: Copyright 2004 by Maurice Eugene Heskett, all rights reserved.
New to Amanda- discouraged by some absurd limitations..
I was looking forward to using Amanda to backup 4-5 machines on my LAN and one over the Internet, but something seems incredibly stupid about the way Amanda forces the user to operate. Please tell me I'm wrong; maybe I'm misunderstanding the documentation. If I want to perform daily backups to CDRs, and I expect to have around 10 megs of data change per day, do I really have to waste an entire CDR every day?
