Cripes, there were two entries for amanda in /etc/passwd (with different home dirs - and, of course, mine was listed last) - something from a forgotten era.
Thanks for your help. Jenn John R. Jackson wrote: >>ERROR: girdwood: [access as amanda not allowed from amanda@server] >> > > In addition to what Joshua asked, what is the ownership and mode on > ~amanda/.amandahosts on this client? It should be owned by "amanda" > and mode 0400 or 0600 > > You should also make sure "amanda" owns its own home directory and has > rwx rights through it. > > For instance, does this work: > > su - amanda -c "cat ~amanda/.amandahosts" > > Also, the message tells you almost exactly what Amanda used during the > lookup. The "amanda@server" text says it looked for: > > server amanda > > And if that's still confusing, take a look at the amandad*debug file. > If you're running a recent enough version of Amanda, it should say > something like this: > > bsd security: remote host clerk.cc.purdue.edu user backup local user backup > > This says the remote host (from the client point of view) was > "clerk.cc.purdue.edu" and the remote user was "backup". So the entry > in the .amandahosts file needs to be: > > clerk.cc.purdue.edu backup > > The last part ("local user") says amandad is running as "backup" on the > client, so that's the home directory it's going to look at. > > Finally, I seem to recall some silly syntax restrictions (ummm, errr, > OK, they were bugs :-) in .amandahosts in the distant past. Make sure > you don't have any leading or trailing whitespace in the file. > > >>... Is it possible that >>sometimes this authorization mechanism just won't work? ... >> > > Unlikely. The code to use .amandahosts is completely built in to > Amanda itself. It's "our" code so we can make it work. > > This is a fairly common startup problem, so don't despair. It's almost > always a permissions, ownership or path problem of some type. > > >>Jenn >> > > John R. Jackson, Technical Software Specialist, [EMAIL PROTECTED] > >