We've got Amanda set up to backup to a Onstream tape driver (SC-30),
Are you aware there are two "generations" of Onstream tape drives?
The first generation had firmware problems, which made it unusable. The company went down since, and you cannot get a firware upgrade. The european part of Onstream continued business, and, it seems, their hardware is much more reliable. (personally I have no experience with any Onstream device -- this is just what I heard.)
If you're unlucky and have the first generation hardware, it could be the cause of your problems.
when we run amdump it reports that it's successully backed up the contents of the disklist. However, when it comes to try and restore something on the disklist using amrecover it reports this error:
EOF, check amidxtapid.debug file on backup. amrecover: short block 0 bytes UNKNOWN file amrecover: Can't read file header
I've gone through the docs and a likely cause seems to be the wrong tape's in the drive and / or the tape needs rewinding. I've tried both these without any joy. In fact, I've got the dumpcycle set to 0 and the number of tapecycle set to 1. I'm under the impression that with this configuration Amanda will dump everything in my disklist daily. I've gone through the docs and tried this to see what's on the disk:
amrestore -p /dev/nosst0 no-such-host > /dev/null
which returns this:
amrestore: 0: skipping start of tape: date 20030703 label nameon1 amrestore: 1: skipping ..backup file1...
Yet if I run it again I get this:
amrestore: WARNING: not at start of tape file numbers will be offset amrestore: 1: skipping ..backup file2...
and so on.
I'm assuming that amrestore invoked in this manner will iterate through each file without having to be manually restarted. Does this mean when I use amrecover I must wind the tape to the correct place? Please excuse me if my knowledge of tape driver is woefully inadequate.
Yes you have to rewind yourself. Before amanda 2.4.4, it was usually faster to rewind and then fsf manually to the correct position on tape, and than start amrecover. If you didn't position the tape, amanda had to read the tape up that position, which is much slower than fsf. Since amanda 2.4.4, amanda can do that for you, if you add the directive "amrecover_do_fsf on" in your amanda.conf.
-- Paul Bijnens, Xplanation Tel +32 16 397.511 Technologielaan 21 bus 2, B-3001 Leuven, BELGIUM Fax +32 16 397.512 http://www.xplanation.com/ email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] *********************************************************************** * I think I've got the hang of it now: exit, ^D, ^C, ^\, ^Z, ^Q, F6, * * quit, ZZ, :q, :q!, M-Z, ^X^C, logoff, logout, close, bye, /bye, * * stop, end, F3, ~., ^]c, +++ ATH, disconnect, halt, abort, hangup, * * PF4, F20, ^X^X, :D::D, KJOB, F14-f-e, F8-e, kill -1 $$, shutdown, * * kill -9 1, Alt-F4, Ctrl-Alt-Del, AltGr-NumLock, Stop-A, ... * * ... "Are you sure?" ... YES ... Phew ... I'm out * ***********************************************************************
