The reality check point of the poster who started this thread is very
valuable for the amanda community. It is true: amanda *is*
complicated. Given that it does not cost anything, there is no point
in complaining of course and that is not what I intend to do. However
in my opinion the awareness of this problem is too low.
I find it hard to believe that most "standard" amanda using unix
system operators suggest ways to install amanda this way (quote is
meant as an example for the "common sense" of list members / amanda
operators):
> 1. REBDA (Read Everything Before Doing Anything)
This hint is so vague that it really does not help much. You should
read some files from the amanda source distribution, I agree, but
where is the starting point *which* files to read, given you have a
certain amount of backup technology knowledge? And what will you
learn? What will you have to learn?
In fact, there are only hints for reading. There is no "official"
guide how to install amanda in a standard environment although of
course standard environments exist or at least can be described.
> 2. Be prepared to run the configure/install process a few times until you
> get it the way you want.
Inacceptable. Why the hell should OS software installs work the "try
and error" way only? After reading the right documents (1.) I should
be able to run configure, make and make install the correct way, maybe
with a few options to configure, but not more.
> [...]
> 8. Build your own. Whoever made the RPM or DEB didn't have your network in
> mind.
Most of the knowledge put into RPM spec files by for example RedHat is
exactly what is missing for amanda newbies. No "you can call your
amanda user amanda and the group amanda, or use group disk, but make
sure the permissions for the block devices, or let the amanda user be
operator, but this is not recommended, and ...", where you *will* get
messages like "must be run as amanda"; instead decisions which are
unnecessary for the end user done by the RPM packager ("we use
amanda/disk and it works"), the correct list of chown and chmod
commands in the install script and so on. It is all defined by the
vendor (RedHat here), and there is basically no reason to ever change
these definitions. If the RPMs do not work the way they should, fix
them and provide the fix to RedHat, but saying "do not use RPMs" is
the hard way.
We use both the amanda server and client RPMs from RH 7.1 and are
happy with them.
Moritz
