Quoting Bort, Paul on Wed, Dec 12, 2001 at 10:49:31AM -0500:
> You probably don't want to overwrite BUP2. IIRC, "active tape" means that
> the most recent combination of a specific disk and level exists on that
> tape. The amoverview command can show what levels were backed up on which
> days, for starters. 
> 
> You might also want to look at your tapecycle, dumpcycle, and runspercycle
> parameters. I usually try to keep dumpcycle at half (or less) of tapecycle,
> so that I always have a complete set of tapes to restore from, and the set
> I'm currently overwriting. 
> 
> 
Hi-

Thanks for the pointer.  I had neglected to take into account a few
factors about using the settings like dumpcycle, tapecycle,
runspercycle.  My basic need I think is to backup 5 systems 3 times per
week and have a 2 week latency of backups.  This is not a huge network
:) but I really enjoy the way amanda does the scheduling, planning, etc.
Best I have ever found in some years of Linux work.  What I am
considering is how to build the correct settings for this and not
have to buy a lot of very expensive ecrix tapes (almost $100 per tape).
I have sufficient tapes to handle up to a 14 tape tapecycle but some of
them are rather old I think and many are new so I am unsure about the
relative health of the tapes.

If I set the following variables, does this look close to my goal?  BTW,
the goal is to backup systems 3 times per week (Mon, Wed, Fri) and have
two weeks of backups:

dumpcycle 2 weeks
tapecycle 8 tapes
runspercycle 3

I am assuming with this setup that amanda will backup 3 times per week
according to my crontab and check 3 times per week a bit earlier for the
right tape.  If I want 2 weeks of backups this would equal 6 tapes and
then I would toss in a few extra to take care of any issues like
failures, etc.

I am backing up 5 systems here at  home including a bsd firewall box
which is exceedingly important to my sanity.  Perhaps the other question
is how other smaller LAN users schedule weekly backups or two week
backups when doing dumps not every day but perhaps every other day and
excluding weekends.

Thanks for the answers to the questions everyone has sent.  I should
have provided all the information on my goals and approaches using
amanda first time around.

-- 
Michael Perry | "Do or do not; there is no try" Master Yoda
[EMAIL PROTECTED] | http://www.lnxpowered.org 

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