On Mon, Jul 31, 2006 at 06:56:22PM +0100, Anne Wilson wrote: > It seems to me that once vtapes are free for overwriting the corresponding > index will be lost too. Can either amrestore or amrecover actually access > these files?
Barring defects in the file/media, amrestore can *always* be used to recover an amanda backup. The procedure isn't quite as automated as amrecover. Here's an outline of what you might need to do: 1) Determine what tape you actually need. You might not know this for real the first time! Trial and error may be required. 2) Mount the DVD, say at /mnt. 3) To figure out what backups are on the tape, run something like this: # amrestore -f 0 -p file:/mnt/tapeX invalid-host > /dev/null This says to start at block 0, of the tape file:/mnt/tapeX (path depends on how you named tapes/burned them), search for "invalid-host" and throw the data to /dev/null. This command will give you a printout of the contents of the tape like this: amrestore: 0: skipping start of tape: date 20050128 label DailySet117 amrestore: 1: skipping blah.sda1.20050128.2 ... This output is formatted like "hostname.device.date.dumplevel". Find the dump that you are looking for. Let's assume we want to restore from "blah.sda1.20050128.2". 4) Now we run a valid amrestore command to get data: # amrestore -f 1 -p file:/mnt/tapeX blah sda1 | restore -if - This pulls data for blah:/sda1 from file:/mnt/tapeX starting at block 1. You'll get a shell very much like amrecover that you can navigate the filesystem dump, add files, and extract them. If you use tar, you'll want to do something like: # amrestore -f 1 -p file:/mnt/tapeX blah sda1 | tar xpvf - to untar the tarball into your current directory. -- Ross Vandegrift [EMAIL PROTECTED] "The good Christian should beware of mathematicians, and all those who make empty prophecies. The danger already exists that the mathematicians have made a covenant with the devil to darken the spirit and to confine man in the bonds of Hell." --St. Augustine, De Genesi ad Litteram, Book II, xviii, 37