I had some questions regarding tapecycle, and after reading the man page and the doc (old and new), I think that they fall short on describing what tapecycle should be set to. The minimum value of tapecycle is well covered, but not the maximum value, and how tapecycle should relate to the number of tapes that have been labeled.
>From the man page: tapecycle int Default: 15 tapes. The number of tapes in the active tape cycle. This must be at least one larger than the number of Amanda runs done during a dump cycle (see the dumpcycle parameter) times the number of tapes used per run (see the runtapes parameter). For instance, if dumpcycle is set to 14 days, one Amanda run is done every day (Sunday through Satur- day), and runtapes is set to one, then tapecycle must be at least 15 (14 days * one run/day * one tape/run + one tape). In practice, there should be several extra tapes to allow for schedule adjustments or disaster recov- ery. So what is an "active tape cycle"? That is never defined anywhere. Although the last sentence is correct and it makes sense, it does not explain how tapecycle should relate to the actual number of labeled tapes. Here is my bad attempt at an improvement, please do not use it verbatim: You must have at least tapecycle tapes labeled, but you can have more. By labeling extra tapes, you can allow for schedule adjustments or disaster recovery. For example, lets say that your tapecycle is set to 20 and you have 20 labeled tapes. If you discover that tape #5 that you are about to put in the drive is bad, your only alternative is to immediately label a new replacement tape. If tapecycle was 20 and you had 25 labeled tapes, then you could put tape #6 in the drive and deal with the problem later. On the other hand, if the number of labeled tapes greatly exceeds tapecycle, then AMANDA (insert inefficiency issue here). -- Tom Schutter (mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]) Platte River Associates, Inc. (http://www.platte.com)