Jon LaBadie wrote:
On Tue, Jun 24, 2003 at 11:05:00AM -0700, bao wrote:It just happened that our backup system, Tapeware, didn't function properly yesterday.
Jon LaBadie wrote:
On Tue, Jun 24, 2003 at 10:12:01AM -0700, bao wrote:Jon, I am reluctant to try that, although I agree that it is
I forgot to state that this is a tapeless setup to back up to disk. Then the full backup will be transferred to tape, and also is kept on disk for one week.
I am _not_ letting Amanda schedule as to when to do a full backup, as is recommended. What I want (actually, my boss) is to force it to run a full every Monday, then a level 1 every other day for the rest of the week, according to the most recent Monday.
I'm not familiar with the various "strategy" and other related options, but can you set a strategy that always does a "no-full" or "only-incremental" AND can also be forced with amadmin to do full dumps on demand?
a good candidate. This is because we had to do a recover
yesterday, when I didn't think that the system was ready
for it. Such a relief that it worked, because a major part
of the data was deleted accidentally :)
I don't get the reluctance. You don't mean you plan to put this
into effect as the actual one and only live backup system without
some testing do you? :) Besides, my idea, if it works, doesn't
eliminate the ability to have a separate FULL ONLY config. Though
in that case I'd probably us a different set of "file tapes" and
"record no".
It would freeze, but luckily not the whole system. Amanda was still in testing phase,
but had been pulled out for recovery. There is hardly a way out from this mess anymore.
As pointed out. The two paragraphs above have "a bug". I prefer not to mess with those options. :)
Back to my question, if I configure it as you suggested, would
the incrementals have any idea of the previous forced full dump,
and continue on from that point? Or would they go on after the
...very first full backup??
Well I wondered about the possibilities some more, and as I had a file:driver setup for test purposes (good way to check out exclude/include and other small changes) I did a little reading.
Yes Gene, there goes Jon again, reading the docs :)
Lo and Behold, on the amanda man page of all places:
strategy "string"
... nofull Never do full backups, only level 1 incrementals.
... incronly Only do incremental dumps. `amadmin force' should be used to tell Amanda that a full dump has been performed off-line, so that it resets to level 1. It is similar to skip-full, but with incronly full dumps may be scheduled manually. Unfortunately, it appears that Amanda will perform full backups with this configuration, which is probably a bug.
Also, another dumptype option entry was this paragraph:
skip-full "boolean" Default: no. If true and planner has scheduled a full backup, these disks will be skipped, and full backups should be run off-line on these days. It was reported that Amanda only schedules level 1 incrementals in this configuration; this is probably a bug.
I think you're right. I ran a full backup last Thu. The next day, I wanted to run an incrementalNot knowing which set of options had a good chance to work, I set my dumpcycle and runspercycle to 1 day/1 and my strategy to "nofull".
I was very surprised when I ran my first amdump and got a full level 0. As this was the first run for the disk, a level 0 should have been scheduled, but I expected the "nofull" strategy to supercede and cause an error. Six subsequent amdumps were all incrementals.
I then set my dumpcycle to 0 days, normally something that would force a level 0 each run. Each of the next two amdumps each generated level 0's.
If yes, perhaps you can use just a single configuration. The incremental only strategy would only cause incrementals daily except the one following your forced "amadmin full".
To me, it seems a single config would work. But you may have to experiment with the dumptype options skip-full, strategy "nofull", and strategy "incronly" to decide which is the proper approach. Those options seem to be a real muddy area in amanda.
If the answer to the question above is yes, then it would also work with two configurations
No, I don't think so, because in a config, you must do a full before you can do ANY incrementals. Perhaps you can get the ball rolling with one forced level 0, I don't know.
following the full, but it ran as level 0. The subsequent days it ran with level 1.
This Thu, I will run another full. I am worried about the incremental this Fri.
I don't know if it will follow the full this coming Thu, or the last Thu.
Is there any way to check??
(and if the incrementals have an idea about the full). If so, the next question arises is do I need to have "record yes" in the full config,
in order for the incrementals to know??
The setting of record would definitely affect what files the incrementals consider changed. Without a record "yes", the incrementals would still consider the last level 0, the last "recorded" one.