Hi Mike,
AFAIK there is no direct support for SSH/SSL in the current Amanda version. But:
A solution to get host-based authentication working could be to use tcp-wrappers. Tcp-wrappers work 'somehow' like firewalls and allow you to define trusted hosts for which you could enable tcp access. All other hosts won't see open ports on your machine. And it should be totally transparent to amanda.
There seems to be an ssl-patch for sendbackup 2.4.4 - see here http://cns.utoronto.ca/~pkern/stuff/amanda-patch/Readme
I currently have only one machine (webserver) which isn't in my local network. To get it backupped, i currently get its files via ssh/rsync to a local machine and backup from there. Of course it isn't the best solution - but it works if you have enough diskspace.
hope this helps, Kai
