Michael, You may have noticed my answer to question 2a was not complete. I answered for a not parted DLE. On a second thought, as each part is exactly the size you configure (exact to the byte), I assume that each file cannot be an independent tar, so the DLE must be tar'ed into a big file first, that is then cut into chunks.
I never had to manually restore a parted DLE (I would manually restore / and maybe /usr, that would give me a running Amanda and then use Amanda to restore the data; my / or /usr are smaller that the size of parts); manually restoring a DLE is easy, even with a live-cd, you really only need dd and tar (or dump/restore). It takes some precautions, but is pretty doable. Best regards, Olivier On Fri, Oct 11, 2013 at 4:16 AM, Michael Stauffer <mgsta...@gmail.com> wrote: > Olivier and Jon, thanks for the helpful answers. > I'm going to setup my redeployed backup system with Amanda. It seems enough > easier than Bacula to make it worth while to make the switch, and I > especially like the simple format of the dump files and the simple text > indecies for cataloging backups. > > I'm sure you'll hear from me more while I get things going! > > -M > > > On Thu, Oct 10, 2013 at 12:45 AM, Jon LaBadie <j...@jgcomp.com> wrote: >> >> On Wed, Oct 09, 2013 at 06:27:48PM -0400, Michael Stauffer wrote: >> > Hi again, >> > >> > I've got another batch of questions while I consider switching to >> > Amanda: >> > >> > 1) catalog (indecies) >> > It seems the main catalog/database is stored in the index files. Is it >> > straightforward to back these up? >> > This doc (http://www.zmanda.com/protecting-amanda-server.html) sugests >> > backing up these dirs/files to be able to restore an amanda >> > configuration (and presumably the backup catalog): /etc/amandates, >> > /etc/dumpdates, /etc/amanda, /var/lib/amanda. >> >> There is no built-in way to do this in amanda. The problems are they >> are not complete, and changing, until the backup is done. Several >> members of this list have described their home-grown techniques. >> > >> > 2) Spanning and parts >> > Say I split my 32TB of data into DLE's of 2-3TB. >> > >> > a) If I set a 'part' size of 150GB (10% of native tape capacity is >> > what I saw recommended), what is the format of each part as it's >> > written? Is each part its own tarfile? Seems that would make it easier >> > to restore things manually. >> >> Traditional amanda tape files, holding the complete tar or dump archive, >> are a 32KB header followed by the archive. Manual restoration is done >> with dd to skip the header and pipe the rest to the appropriate command >> line to restore the data. >> >> The header contains information identifying the contents, how they >> were created, and when. >> >> Parts alter this scheme only slightly. Each part still has a header. >> The header now includes info on which sequential part it is. The part >> name also identifies it location in the sequence. The data is simply >> a chunk of the complete archive. Manual restoration again is strip >> the headers and pipe to the restore command. >> >> > >> > b) If a part spans two volumes, what's the format of that? Is it a >> > single tarfile that's split in two? >> >> A part will NOT span two volumes. If the end of the media is reached, >> the part is restarted on the next volume. >> >> > >> > c) What's the manual restore process for such a spanned part? cat the >> > two parts together and pipe to tar for extraction? >> > >> > 3) Restoring w/out Amanda >> > I thought data was written to tape as tar files. But this page >> > suggests a dumpfile is only readable by Amanda apps. Is a dumpfile >> > something else? >> > http://wiki.zmanda.com/index.php/Dumpfile >> >> I think the author meant there are no "standard unix/linux" commands >> that know the header + data layout. The dumpfiles can be handled >> with amanda commands or as described above, the operator can use >> standard commands when armed with knowledge of the layout. >> >> > >> > 4) holding disk and flushing >> > I see how flushing can be forced when the holding disk has a certain % >> > of tape size. >> > Can a flush be forced every N days? The idea here would be to get data >> > to tape at a min of every week or so, should successive incrementals >> > be small. >> >> Dumping to holding disk without taping can be done. Then have a >> crontable entry to flush when you want. This can done with a >> separate amflush command, or by varying amdump options. >> > >> > 5) alerting >> > Is there a provision for email and/or other alerts on job completion >> > or error, etc? >> > >> Most amanda admins have an amreport emailed to them at amdump or amflush >> completion. As the cron entry can be a shell script, you could >> customize greatly. >> >> Jon >> -- >> Jon H. LaBadie j...@jgcomp.com >> 11226 South Shore Rd. (703) 787-0688 (H) >> Reston, VA 20190 (609) 477-8330 (C) > >
