[Techtalk] multiple server backup

[Magni Onsoien]

Caitlyn Martin:

> I'll be the third to tout amanda.  We used it when I worked at
> TriNet/Interpath (back in '98) running on Solaris.  We backed up
> Solaris, BSDi, and even Windows boxes (using samba) and I found it to be
> reliable and highly configurable.  It's only gotten better since then. 
> The only drawback to using it with Windows clients is that it has no
> means to backup the registry.  That had to be exported to a file to be
> backed up, which means we didn't have a backup we could simply pop on to
> a new drive and boot to.  For pure *nix environments, though, it's
> excellent.

I am in a "I hate amanda"-phase today. (And yesterday and last week.)
The problem is that I can't get it to work. 
I run amcheck and it seems to work, i.e. no errors reported.
Happily I run amdump to actually perform the backup.
Then I get this error:

These dumps were to tape initio-01.
The next tape Amanda expects to use is: a new tape.

FAILURE AND STRANGE DUMP SUMMARY:
  miranda    /home lev 0 FAILED [disk /home offline on miranda?]
  miranda    /usr/local/ftp lev 0 FAILED [disk /usr/local/ftp offline on miranda?]
  miranda    /usr lev 0 FAILED [disk /usr offline on miranda?]
  miranda    /var lev 0 FAILED [disk /var offline on miranda?]               
  miranda    / lev 0 FAILED [disk / offline on miranda?]

[ snip stuff about how long it took and how big the backup was. (All of
it: 0 MB, minuters, hours, % etc. ]

NOTES:
  planner: Adding new disk miranda:/.
  planner: Adding new disk miranda:/var.
  planner: Adding new disk miranda:/usr.             
  planner: Adding new disk miranda:/usr/local/ftp.    
  planner: Adding new disk miranda:/home.
  driver: WARNING: got empty schedule from planner
  taper: tape initio-01 kb 0 fm 0 [OK] 

[ snip dump summary, which is also zero. ]

I have tried with /dev/hda1 and hda1 (devices and disknames) as disks to
backup, but with the same result.

I have installed amanda-client, amanda-common and amanda-server 
v.2.4.2p2-4 as deb-packages. The server (which is also the client that I
want to backup) runs Debian 3.0/Linux 2.4.18. 

What I think may be the problem is that amanda is compiled to run as the
user backup, while I run it as user amanda (since the backup-user was
used by someone else for something else). The permissions are right,
though, and I have changed dumpuser to amanda (amcheck complained when I
tested with another username there, just to see if that was the
problem). IF this is the problem, i.e. amanda silently denies to work if
run by another user than the one configured at compile-time, I will say
it's...eh... not very nice.

Thanks for any help :)



Magni :)
-- 
sash is very good for you.