>Were I amanda's designer, I don't think I would have selected for
>an unspecified dumpcycle, a number from the ether (is 10 another
>of amanda's infamous compiled in values?). ...
It's not "from the ether". The amanda(8) man page clearly states that
the default value for dumpcycle is 10 days. There is a default for
every amanda.conf value.
>It seems more appropriate
>(to me at least) to determine the "current" dumpcycle at dump time.
>Unless specified in the dumptype definition of course.
That was the "it's probably not too hard to fix" comment I made.
I've added it to the TODO list.
> define dumptype B {
> # gets default dumpcycle of 10
> }
> ...
> dumpcycle 6
> ...
> define dumptype A {
> inherit B
> # what is dumpcycle, 10 or 6?
> # what if B had an explicit dumpcycle directive?
> }
Sigh. I was sure A would be 10 because it inherits from B, but that
does not appear to be the case (using the "conffile" test program):
DUMPTYPE A:
...
DUMPCYCLE 6
...
DUMPTYPE B:
...
DUMPCYCLE 10
...
I'm not sure why this is happening.
If you explicitly set dumpcycle in B (e.g. to 13) it does get inherited
(as expected):
DUMPTYPE A:
...
DUMPCYCLE 13
...
DUMPTYPE B:
...
DUMPCYCLE 13
...
>I did a quick scan of docs and man pages. I did not notice anything
>that indicated certain parameters were actually saved with the
>dumptypes and could not be reset. ...
I updated the man page yesterday because of this and was surprised to
find it actually does (sort of) tell you to behave yourself :-):
Some of the options in a dumptype section are the same as
those in the main part of amanda.conf. The main option
value is used to set the default for all dumptype sections.
For instance, setting dumpcycle to 50 in the main part of
the config file causes all the dumptype sections to start
with that value, but may be changed on a section by section
basis.
I added this sentence:
Changes to variables in the main part of the config file must be
done before (earlier in the file) any dumptypes are defined.
I also updated the dumpcycle and maxdumps text in the main part:
Note that this parameter may also be set in a specific
dumptype (see below). This value sets the default for
all dumptypes so must appear in amanda.conf before any
dumptypes are defined.
>jl
John R. Jackson, Technical Software Specialist, [EMAIL PROTECTED]
