On Wednesday 13 September 2006 14:47, Zembower, Kevin wrote: >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 > 1.14 is busted. Use 1.13-19, 1.13-25, or 1.15-1.
>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 -- Cheers, Gene "There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order." -Ed Howdershelt (Author) Yahoo.com and AOL/TW attorneys please note, additions to the above message by Gene Heskett are: Copyright 2006 by Maurice Eugene Heskett, all rights reserved.