Frank and Alex, thanks for replying. Alex, you're right, I believe, GNUtar behaves differently than tar with respect to symbolic links, and I'm using GNUtar: [EMAIL PROTECTED]:/var/lib$ tar --version tar (GNU tar) 1.14
Frank, all my entries look like this one for sda2 (root): [EMAIL PROTECTED]:/var/lib$ amadmin DBackup disklist centernet line 48: host centernet: interface default disk sda2: program "GNUTAR" priority 1 dumpcycle 28 maxdumps 1 maxpromoteday 10000 strategy STANDARD compress CLIENT FAST comprate 0.50 0.50 auth BSD kencrypt NO holdingdisk YES record YES index YES skip-incr NO skip-full NO >From this, it seems there's no exclude lists in the disklist. It also seems that there isn't one on the host, which is both client and server (tapehost, amandahost): [EMAIL PROTECTED]:/var/lib$ locate exclude /home/kevinz/perl-5.8.6/perl-5.8.6/plan9/exclude [EMAIL PROTECTED]:/var/lib$ None were NSF filesystems or links to other filesystems. Your suggestion that the last tapes might be corrupt is an excellent one, and one that I'll begin exploring immediately. Your suggestion to check the restore procedures more than once every six years is also good, and one that I'll also put into practice just as soon as this fire is out. You also caused me to question if I performed the restore correctly. I manually went through the first record on each tape file and copied the filesystem and level. It's possible that I omitted a level 0 and only restored a level 1. Just about all the files missing are very static ones that change infrequently. I'll have to check into this, too. Thanks, again. -Kevin -----Original Message----- From: Frank Smith [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Wednesday, September 13, 2006 1:20 PM To: Zembower, Kevin Cc: amanda-users@amanda.org Subject: Re: Why didn't my backup work (the way I thought it should)? Did you have an exclude list? Were any of those directories symlinks to other filesystems or NFS mounts? A symlink would have still been backed up, just not what it was pointing to, and a mount point would just show up as an empty directory. Did the system have problems before the last backup? Perhaps these files were corrupted/gone before/during the last backup. Since Amanda restores the state at a point in time, you may have most of the data on a previous level that the latest level removed (related to recommendations often given here to restore to a tmp directory and move files into place since otherwise existing new data in the target directory would be deleted by the restore). You might want to try recovering from tapes from a day or two before and see if the data is there, the dpkg data at least probably hadn't changed much from earlier backups. Test restores more than once per 6 years to verify you are backing up what you think you are, since data seems to get shifted around and the excludes you need today eventually end up excluding things you need. Also, backup media (tape and disk) can fail in ways that give no errors during backups but make a restore impossible, and the sooner you are aware of it the better. Frank > > Thanks for your advice and suggestions. > > -Kevin > > Kevin Zembower > Internet Services Group manager > Center for Communication Programs > Bloomberg School of Public Health > Johns Hopkins University > 111 Market Place, Suite 310 > Baltimore, Maryland 21202 > 410-659-6139 > -- Frank Smith [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sr. Systems Administrator Voice: 512-374-4673 Hoover's Online Fax: 512-374-4501