--On Wednesday, October 09, 2002 16:53:55 +0200 Toralf Lund <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>> On Wednesday 09 October 2002 10:04, Toralf Lund wrote: >> > I've never been quite able to figure out what value to use for >> > tapecycle. >> > >> > I expect to run backups on first 4 days of week, so I've set >> > runspercycle 4 >> > >> > Tapes are labelled >> > Mon-1 >> > Tue-1 >> > ... >> > Mon-2 >> > ... >> > ... >> > Thu-4 >> > >> > After the fourth "weekly set", the first one is reused, then the >> > 2nd and 3rd. Set 4 is special, however - I don't want to reuse >> > those tapes, but rather store them in a safe place and replace >> > them with new ones. So after sets 1-4 are written, then sets 1-3 >> > once more, I want to be able to do >> > >> > amlabel ... Mon-4 >> > amlabel ... Tue-4 >> > >> > without being told that those tapes are already active. What >> > exactly do I set "tapecycle" to in order to allow this? >> >> You are trying to dictate to amanda, and that tends to be a hassle. >> With the inevitable, often human error generated reruns, >> (forgetting to change the tapes even after amanda sends you an >> email telling you too is a good example:-) that require the next >> tape in the tapecycle which in turn throws your carefully crafted >> schedule out the window, its easier to just let amanda do her >> thing. She is very good at it. > Well, no matter what I do, I need *some* way to label new tapes without too many >'-f's etc. Also, I know some people are using separate configs for permanent backups, >but it seems like this requires a lot of additional work, and also introduces the > risk of not having the same directories backed up on "normal" and "archival" runs >(which is essential.) A separate config for archives is not much extra work at all. Just copy your amanda.conf, make a few changes to fix paths and force fulls, and make the archive disklist a link to your daily disklist so that you will always be archiving the same directories as in your dailies. >> Tapecycle is however many tapes you actually have in the rotation, >> and should be enough that you have at least 2 consequitive fulls of >> each entry in the disklist on hand at all times. Here it runs >> every night, so the dumpcycle is one week or 7 days. runspercycle >> is then 7, and tapecycle is 20. > Well, maybe I should just use 10 or something (4 runspercycle + 1 extra tape * 2), >but what tapes will be used, then? If you do that then your Monday tape will be used on Wednesday the second week. That's why it's usually less confusing to label them something like config-01 to config-10. > > I think the real question is: > > How does Amanda decide what tape to use next, and what tapes are considered active, >when there are more than "tapecycle" different labels? I keep my tapecycle equal to the number of tapes for my dailies, so I'll leave this question for others. Frank -- Frank Smith [EMAIL PROTECTED] Systems Administrator Voice: 512-374-4673 Hoover's Online Fax: 512-374-4501
