Re: Can AMANDA be configured "per client"?

[Stefan G. Weichinger]

Am 09.11.18 um 06:19 schrieb Nathan Stratton Treadway:

> So, you were following the the instructions found in the "Using the new
> chg-disk:' section of the How_To:Set_Up_Virtual_Tapes wiki page that
> Stefan mentioned earlier in this thread, right?
>
> https://wiki.zmanda.com/index.php/How_To:Set_Up_Virtual_Tapes#Using_the_new_chg-disk:
> 
> As he mentioned that page has been around for a long time, but I've just
> edited the "new chg-disk" section

great. I wasn't aware that anyone still has write access there ;-)

tried to reset my password, failed with smtp error (the wiki can't send
email anymore, office365 login fails ...)

@Ashwin and/or BETSOL: please provide and point us at a working project
wiki/platform.

Re: Can AMANDA be configured "per client"?

[Olivier]

> In your case, though (i.e. with a fixed set of always-available slot
> directories), it certainly makes sense to set up an obvious 1-1 mapping
> between labels and slots, so that you don't have to think about or go
> hunting to figure out which vtape holds a particular label.  Amanda
> won't care about that (it will always look on the vtape and check the
> label found there before doing anything else), but it'll make your life
> slightly easier on those situations where you need to go look at the raw
> dump files or whatever.

Although it seems a good policy to map a one to one slot and label, in
the long run, it may not be so.

For example, I have retired some old disks and replaced them by new
ones. The new disks would endup with the same slot numbers as the disks
they replace. But I have created new labels and marked the previous
labels as "noreuse".

That way, I still have the data on the old disks, and Amanda still keeps
a track of what is in those old labels and I could remount the disk and
access the files if needed.

(BTW, I am using an homemade changer, that splits the virtual tape across
multiple physical disks; I came to that solution many years ago when
vtape could only use one disk/directory.) 

Best regards,

Olivier

Re: Can AMANDA be configured "per client"?

[Nathan Stratton Treadway]

On Thu, Nov 08, 2018 at 11:23:44 -0800, Chris Miller wrote:

> So, now I have a couple of "clean-up" questions to conclude this
> thread: vtape labels: Are these just an artifact of the tape heritage,
> meaning, How is the label any more restrictive/protective than the
> path to and filename of the vtape? It's not like you can inadvertently
> mount the wrong directory, is it?Well, actually, in the case of my NAS
> configuration, I guess that is possible, but unlikely except in the
> case of some sort of NAS failure and recovery. Is there a discussion
> somewhere describing how these are used and what sort of failures they
> can prevent in the vtape world?

As Jon mentioned, there are actually many different ways to set up
vtapes, expecially once you start including external USB drives or other
removable media in your mix of backup destinations.  The existence of
table labels allows Amanda to keep track of all the parts, and make sure
it's writing to the place it thinks it should be (and, therefore, to be
certain that it is *over*-writing the dumps it intended to overwrite).

In any case, table labels are such an important part of Amanda's whole
structure that there's no way to run it without them -- tape labels are
used both in all sorts of interaction with the user but also for
Amanda's internal record keeping, etc.  After a short while I think you
will see how interacting based on the tape label name is actually a lot
clearer than using a directory-path name or something along those
lines...

In your case, though (i.e. with a fixed set of always-available slot
directories), it certainly makes sense to set up an obvious 1-1 mapping
between labels and slots, so that you don't have to think about or go
hunting to figure out which vtape holds a particular label.  Amanda
won't care about that (it will always look on the vtape and check the
label found there before doing anything else), but it'll make your life
slightly easier on those situations where you need to go look at the raw
dump files or whatever.

(For that reason, I don't use a "number 0" in my tape label sequences,
but start my tape numbering with 1 to match the "slotN" directory
numbering.  But you can just as easily use tapes 0-through-(N-1) to go
with slots 1-through-N, or whatever. )


> And back to my original question about "per-clent configuration", I
> recognize that I will effectively be running N copies of AMANDA, and
> none of them will be aware of the others. I think this means that I
> have defeated the scheduler. I don't want to do that. It occurs to me
> that AMANDA does not know what any other copies are doing, which means
> that they could ALL schedule level 0 on the same night! I think I'd
> like to change my design from per-client configs in separate
> directories, to per-client qualified definitions in one amanda.conf. I
> see artifacts in various examples that lead me to believe that this
> can be done, and is probably preferable to my current scheme, because
> I then would have only one copy of AMANDA running and there can be a
> more sensible schedule. I'm most interested -- in fact, I am probably
> only interested -- that each client be able to direct backup storage
> to a location specific to that client.

Well, if in fact you are trying to dump each client to a compmletely
separate destination, then I don't think it matters whether you use
separate Amanda runs for each client, as far as the scheduling goes.

(Usually one of the points of the scheduling is to mix-and-match dump
levels from all the different clients so that when they are all combined
they fit together on that night's tape.  If you are sending each client
to a separate destination, that doesn't apply -- I think it would be
just as likely to end up scheduling all level 0s in the combined run as
separate, since the size of the dumps would be calculated separately for
each client.)

But certainly there are advantages to having just one instance running,
so it makese sense for you to at least try both setups and see which one
works better for you.  (This is exspecially true since you are running
v3.5, which has much better support for this sort of thing than has
historically been true..)

I haven't tried to do this sort of client-based separation of
backup destinations, so I can't give you examples... but a few things to
look at to help point you in the correct direction:

  1) you will need to set up multiple chg-disk: changers, each pointing
 to a client-specific path on your NAS.

  2) for each DLE in the disklist you would set a 'tag' to indicate
 which client that DLE applies to.  (Probably the easiest way to do
 that would be to create a separate dumptype for each client and
 use those dumptypes directly in the disklist.)

  3) Finally, you will need to set up a separate storage for each
 client, each referencing the tpchanger configured in 1) to write to
 the backup location for that client.  Set the 'tapepool "$r"'
 option on 

Re: Can AMANDA be configured "per client"?

[Nathan Stratton Treadway]

On Thu, Nov 08, 2018 at 10:28:06 -0800, Chris Miller wrote:
> Hi Nathan, 
> 
> > A little later I will look for a reference to documentation on this, but
> > in short: I believe the issue is that you are mixing the *name of the
> > subdirectory* and the *amanda label of on the vtape*.
>
> It may look that way, but that is probably not what is happening.
> "Mail.TCLC.org" is a component of the vtape path. "mail.tclc.org" is a
> component of the config path. "Mail.TCLC.org.%%", a reflection of the
> vtape path, is what I think I am trying to use as a label. I have no
> idea of the significance of the label, but it occurs to me that
> matching the tape label to its path is a good idea.

I actually wasn't trying to say anything one way or another about your
config names or vtape labels, but rather was noticing that your amlabel
slot option was not a number, and that you were trying to give
"label-like" names to the vtape subdirectories.

 
> > On the other hand, the subdirectories the chg-disk: changer uses to hold
> > its vtapes are not really designed for direct human interaction... and
> > they have a built-in naming pattern you can't change.

> O.K., now we're getting somewhere, and explains why I couldn't find
> how to change the names of the "slots". It can't be done! I didn't
> expect that, but hearing it confirms my experience and probably
> completely solves my problem. Thanks very much for this tid-bit. I
> interpreted lack of explanation of how to change the names of the
> slots to mean that it is either trivially simple or simply has been
> ignored in the docs. Since it can't be done, the HowTo should probably
> alerts fools like me to that fact. "Not documenting" is not the same
> as "documenting don't". (-:

So, you were following the the instructions found in the "Using the new
chg-disk:' section of the How_To:Set_Up_Virtual_Tapes wiki page that
Stefan mentioned earlier in this thread, right?
   
https://wiki.zmanda.com/index.php/How_To:Set_Up_Virtual_Tapes#Using_the_new_chg-disk:

As he mentioned that page has been around for a long time, but I've just
edited the "new chg-disk" section to spell out the rules for the
slot-directory names and also hopefully clarify the discussion a little
bit and mention some related features available in newer version of
Amanda.

Nathan


Nathan Stratton Treadway  -  natha...@ontko.com  -  Mid-Atlantic region
Ray Ontko & Co.  -  Software consulting services  -   http://www.ontko.com/
 GPG Key: http://www.ontko.com/~nathanst/gpg_key.txt   ID: 1023D/ECFB6239
 Key fingerprint = 6AD8 485E 20B9 5C71 231C  0C32 15F3 ADCD ECFB 6239

Re: Can AMANDA be configured "per client"?

[Gene Heskett]

On Thursday 08 November 2018 14:23:44 Chris Miller wrote:

> Hi Folks,
>
> My thanks to the guys that helped me. You know who you are -- Austin,
> Gene, Stefan, Nathan.
>
> My problem with vtapes was that the name of the slots, "slot..." was
> not arbitrary, or at least not arbitrary on my part. I fixed that, and
> backups are happening as we speak. Beers all 'round. I now have a bit
> of breathing room, and I can review ALL the "HowTo"s, which is a
> pretty good place to start.
>
> So, now I have a couple of "clean-up" questions to conclude this
> thread: vtape labels: Are these just an artifact of the tape heritage,
> meaning, How is the label any more restrictive/protective than the
> path to and filename of the vtape? It's not like you can inadvertently
> mount the wrong directory, is it?Well, actually, in the case of my NAS
> configuration, I guess that is possible, but unlikely except in the
> case of some sort of NAS failure and recovery. Is there a discussion
> somewhere describing how these are used and what sort of failures they
> can prevent in the vtape world?
>
> And back to my original question about "per-clent configuration", I
> recognize that I will effectively be running N copies of AMANDA, and
> none of them will be aware of the others. I think this means that I
> have defeated the scheduler. I don't want to do that. It occurs to me
> that AMANDA does not know what any other copies are doing, which means
> that they could ALL schedule level 0 on the same night! I think I'd
> like to change my design from per-client configs in separate
> directories, to per-client qualified definitions in one amanda.conf. I
> see artifacts in various examples that lead me to believe that this
> can be done, and is probably preferable to my current scheme, because
> I then would have only one copy of AMANDA running and there can be a
> more sensible schedule. I'm most interested -- in fact, I am probably
> only interested -- that each client be able to direct backup storage
> to a location specific to that client.
>
> Can anybody show me an example of several per-client configs in a
> single amanda.conf?
>
> Thanks for the help,

IIRC the multiple spindle problem is addressed in "man disklist". What 
you don't want is 2 or more dumpers attacking the same spindle(drive in 
english). Doing a whole disk backup by different entries in the disklist 
is faster if the drive isn't taking seek beating between two or more 
dumpers If the target machine only has one drive, then the spindle value 
in the disklist is always one.


Copyright 2018 by Maurice E. Heskett
-- 
Cheers, Gene Heskett
--
"There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty:
 soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order."
-Ed Howdershelt (Author)
Genes Web page 

Re: Can AMANDA be configured "per client"?

[Gene Heskett]

On Thursday 08 November 2018 12:40:37 Chris Miller wrote:

> Hi Gene,
>
> > From: "Gene Heskett" 
> > To: "amanda-users" 
> > Sent: Wednesday, November 7, 2018 12:16:36 PM
> > Subject: Re: Can AMANDA be configured "per client"?
> >
> > A few questions here:
> > How did you build amamda? [here, as the user amanda, always
> > configure driven by the same script shown here:]
> > ===
>
> I installed from RPM: amanda-backup_server-3.5.1-1.rhel7.x86_64.rpm
>
> A brief description:
>
> I have NAS storage available to AMANDA as /net/nas1/d0/Mail.TCLC.org.
> In an effort to generalize, this is symlinked as "dst" from the config
> directory, /etc/amanda/mail.tclc.org, vis:
>
> bash-4.2$ ls -al /etc/amanda/mail.tclc.org/
>
> lrwxrwxrwx. 1 root root 26 Nov 6 07:02 dst ->
> /net/nas1/d0/Mail.TCLC.org
>
>
> bash-4.2$ ls -l /net/nas1/d0/Mail.TCLC.org/
>
> -rwxr-xr-x. 1 amandabackup disk 1110 Nov 8 09:12 state
> drwxr-xr-x. 2 amandabackup disk 0 Nov 5 10:17 vtape.00
>
> drwxr-xr-x. 2 amandabackup disk 0 Nov 5 10:17 vtape.62
>
> When I run amlabel: amlabel mail.tclc.org Mail.TCLC.org.00 slot
> vtape.00
>
If there is nothing precious on that NAS now, take a look at the mkvtapes 
script in the GenesAmandaHelper I just made available on my web page. In 
my case the slots directories are the vtapes, and amanda manipulates the 
linkage of "data" to the slot to be used, as in "data" is a soft link to 
the slot-number it is going to use as a vtape for this run.

Grab the file from my site in the sig, out of the Genes-os9-stf link from 
the front page, look at the header will less which will show you how to 
unpack it. Position your shell/terminal at the root of your file system 
and run the line from the header, filling in the blanks between the < > 
with the filename. Then either unpack it which will create the directory 
if you've perms to do it, becomeing root is probably sufficient. Then do 
a chown amanda:disk on the directories contents, then step into the 
created directory and look at mkvtapes to see how I do it. Change the 
path to the NAS, and with a bit of luck it might work, but more than 
likely will need to chown the NAS to amanda:disk to give you permissions 
when su'd to amanda.

I actually have a user amanda, and I build amanda in that home directory 
using the script I posted here a couple or 3 days back. called gh.cf 
here. If you don't have a user amanda, check and see if backup will 
work, but since I build the amanda from source in the /home/amanda 
directory I have a real user amanda but no passwd set.

When working on this I do a sudo -i to get root, then su amanda to do any 
editing, otherwise you may accidentally give something to root, which is 
a no-no.

Adjust the number of vtapes in that script and figure on as many vtapes 
as can be fitted in the NAS at the size stated in your 
$config/amanda.conf. You should wind up with a Dailys/slot-(number) 
array, with "data" being a softlink to slot-00. At that point amanda can 
handle the rest of it.


> Reading label...
> Slot vtape.00 not found
> Slot vtape.00 not found
>
> I apparently do not understand the whole "vtape" thing at all... At a
> minimum, I don't see where the config declares my "slots" as having
> names "vtape.{00..62}"

vtape is essentially nothing but slanguage to indicate your "tape" is a 
directory on a hard drive.  It is not actually used by amanda. Amanda 
expects in my case to always write to $path/to/your/storage/Dailys/data. 
This gets manipulated by this entry in your $config/amanda.conf
TPCHANGER "chg-disk:/amandatapes/Dailys"
the pathname name to the right of the : is arbitrary, as long as the rest 
of the configurtion matches.

There's probably more, in which case yelp at me here.

> Thanks for the help,

NP, so far & thank you!

Copyright 2018 by Maurice E. Heskett
-- 
Cheers, Gene Heskett
--
"There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty:
 soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order."
-Ed Howdershelt (Author)
Genes Web page <http://geneslinuxbox.net:6309/gene>

Re: Can AMANDA be configured "per client"?

[Jon LaBadie]

On Thu, Nov 08, 2018 at 11:23:44AM -0800, Chris Miller wrote:
> Hi Folks, 
> 
> My thanks to the guys that helped me. You know who you are -- Austin, Gene, 
> Stefan, Nathan. 
> 
> My problem with vtapes was that the name of the slots, "slot..." was not 
> arbitrary, or at least not arbitrary on my part. I fixed that, and backups 
> are happening as we speak. Beers all 'round. I now have a bit of breathing 
> room, and I can review ALL the "HowTo"s, which is a pretty good place to 
> start. 
> 
> So, now I have a couple of "clean-up" questions to conclude this thread: 
> vtape labels: Are these just an artifact of the tape heritage, meaning, How 
> is the label any more restrictive/protective than the path to and filename of 
> the vtape? It's not like you can inadvertently mount the wrong directory, is 
> it?Well, actually, in the case of my NAS configuration, I guess that is 
> possible, but unlikely except in the case of some sort of NAS failure and 
> recovery. Is there a discussion somewhere describing how these are used and 
> what sort of failures they can prevent in the vtape world? 
> 

It is more restrictive/specific than a path to the vtape.
Some sites use portable drives and rotate them off-site.
So the same "slots" are used for many different vtapes.

My own setup has /amanda on the root filesystem.
Under /amanda are directories "Holding", "Storage", and
Slots.  A dedicated disk is mounted on "Holding".
Under Storage are six directories "D1" to "D6".  My six
dedicated vtape storage disks are mounted there.

Slots contains mostly symbolic links to the vtapes under
Storage.  230+ vtapes whose naming is DS1-### and matches
the numeric part of the Slot name.  I.e. slot28 is a
symbolic link to /Storage/D1/DS1-028.

-- 
Jon H. LaBadie j...@jgcomp.com
 11226 South Shore Rd.  (703) 787-0688 (H)
 Reston, VA  20190  (703) 935-6720 (C)

Re: Can AMANDA be configured "per client"?

[Chris Miller]

Hi Folks, 

My thanks to the guys that helped me. You know who you are -- Austin, Gene, 
Stefan, Nathan. 

My problem with vtapes was that the name of the slots, "slot..." was not 
arbitrary, or at least not arbitrary on my part. I fixed that, and backups are 
happening as we speak. Beers all 'round. I now have a bit of breathing room, 
and I can review ALL the "HowTo"s, which is a pretty good place to start. 

So, now I have a couple of "clean-up" questions to conclude this thread: vtape 
labels: Are these just an artifact of the tape heritage, meaning, How is the 
label any more restrictive/protective than the path to and filename of the 
vtape? It's not like you can inadvertently mount the wrong directory, is 
it?Well, actually, in the case of my NAS configuration, I guess that is 
possible, but unlikely except in the case of some sort of NAS failure and 
recovery. Is there a discussion somewhere describing how these are used and 
what sort of failures they can prevent in the vtape world? 

And back to my original question about "per-clent configuration", I recognize 
that I will effectively be running N copies of AMANDA, and none of them will be 
aware of the others. I think this means that I have defeated the scheduler. I 
don't want to do that. It occurs to me that AMANDA does not know what any other 
copies are doing, which means that they could ALL schedule level 0 on the same 
night! I think I'd like to change my design from per-client configs in separate 
directories, to per-client qualified definitions in one amanda.conf. I see 
artifacts in various examples that lead me to believe that this can be done, 
and is probably preferable to my current scheme, because I then would have only 
one copy of AMANDA running and there can be a more sensible schedule. I'm most 
interested -- in fact, I am probably only interested -- that each client be 
able to direct backup storage to a location specific to that client. 

Can anybody show me an example of several per-client configs in a single 
amanda.conf? 

Thanks for the help, 
-- 
Chris. 

V:916.974.0424 
F:916.974.0428 

Re: Can AMANDA be configured "per client"?

[Debra S Baddorf]

I’m sure the “cannot change the name of slots”  stems from the original  (and 
still in use here, at least)
design for REAL tape drives.   Tape libraries have slots,  and you don’t get to 
change their names!

But I’ve starred and saved that email for when I eventually want vtapes too.  
Now I know not to try to rename them.  :D

Deb Baddorf
Fermilab

> On Nov 8, 2018, at 12:28 PM, Chris Miller  wrote:
> 
> Hi Nathan,
>  A little later I will look for a reference to documentation on this, but
>  in short: I believe the issue is that you are mixing the *name of the
>  subdirectory* and the *amanda label of on the vtape*.
> It may look that way, but that is probably not what is happening. 
> "Mail.TCLC.org" is a component of the vtape path. "mail.tclc.org" is a 
> component of the config path. "Mail.TCLC.org.%%", a reflection of the vtape 
> path, is what I think I am trying to use as a label. I have no idea of the 
> significance of the label, but it occurs to me that matching the tape label 
> to its path is a good idea.
> 
> 
> 
>  The Amanda label is what shows up in your interactition with Amanda, and
>  is actually a name stored in a little header file on your physical tape
>  or under the vtape subdirectory, to help Amanda keep track of which
>  tape/vtape is which.
>  
>  On the other hand, the subdirectories the chg-disk: changer uses to hold
>  its vtapes are not really designed for direct human interaction... and
>  they have a built-in naming pattern you can't change.
> O.K., now we're getting somewhere, and explains why I couldn't find how to 
> change the names of the "slots". It can't be done! I didn't expect that, but 
> hearing it confirms my experience and probably completely solves my problem. 
> Thanks very much for this tid-bit. I interpreted lack of explanation of how 
> to change the names of the slots to mean that it is either trivially simple 
> or simply has been ignored in the docs. Since it can't be done, the HowTo 
> should probably alerts fools like me to that fact. "Not documenting" is not 
> the same as "documenting don't". (-:
> 
> 
> 
>  So, your first step is going to be to rename your subdirectories to
>  "slot1", "slot2" ... "slot9", "slot10"...  (Note that you can _not_
>  zero-pad the first 9 slot numbers -- "ls -v" may come in handy.)
>  
>  After that, the amlabel command should work (or at least give a new
>  error message) ... but note that the "slot" argument takes a slot
>  number, rather than some sort of name.
>  
>  
> Nathan
>  
>  Nathan Stratton Treadway  -  natha...@ontko.com  -  Mid-Atlantic region
>  Ray Ontko & Co.  -  Software consulting services  -   http://www.ontko.com/
>  GPG Key: http://www.ontko.com/~nathanst/gpg_key.txt   ID: 1023D/ECFB6239
>   Key fingerprint = 6AD8 485E 20B9 5C71 231C  0C32 15F3 ADCD ECFB 6239
> 
> 
> Thanks for the help,
> --
> Chris.
> 
> V:916.974.0424
> F:916.974.0428

Re: Can AMANDA be configured "per client"?

[Chris Miller]

Hi Nathan, 

> A little later I will look for a reference to documentation on this, but
> in short: I believe the issue is that you are mixing the *name of the
> subdirectory* and the *amanda label of on the vtape*.
It may look that way, but that is probably not what is happening. 
"Mail.TCLC.org" is a component of the vtape path. "mail.tclc.org" is a 
component of the config path. "Mail.TCLC.org.%%", a reflection of the vtape 
path, is what I think I am trying to use as a label. I have no idea of the 
significance of the label, but it occurs to me that matching the tape label to 
its path is a good idea. 

> The Amanda label is what shows up in your interactition with Amanda, and
> is actually a name stored in a little header file on your physical tape
> or under the vtape subdirectory, to help Amanda keep track of which
> tape/vtape is which.

> On the other hand, the subdirectories the chg-disk: changer uses to hold
> its vtapes are not really designed for direct human interaction... and
> they have a built-in naming pattern you can't change.
O.K., now we're getting somewhere, and explains why I couldn't find how to 
change the names of the "slots". It can't be done! I didn't expect that, but 
hearing it confirms my experience and probably completely solves my problem. 
Thanks very much for this tid-bit. I interpreted lack of explanation of how to 
change the names of the slots to mean that it is either trivially simple or 
simply has been ignored in the docs. Since it can't be done, the HowTo should 
probably alerts fools like me to that fact. "Not documenting" is not the same 
as "documenting don't". (-: 

> So, your first step is going to be to rename your subdirectories to
> "slot1", "slot2" ... "slot9", "slot10"... (Note that you can _not_
> zero-pad the first 9 slot numbers -- "ls -v" may come in handy.)

> After that, the amlabel command should work (or at least give a new
> error message) ... but note that the "slot" argument takes a slot
> number, rather than some sort of name.

> Nathan
> 
> Nathan Stratton Treadway - natha...@ontko.com - Mid-Atlantic region
> Ray Ontko & Co. - Software consulting services - http://www.ontko.com/
> GPG Key: http://www.ontko.com/~nathanst/gpg_key.txt ID: 1023D/ECFB6239
> Key fingerprint = 6AD8 485E 20B9 5C71 231C 0C32 15F3 ADCD ECFB 6239

Thanks for the help, 
-- 
Chris. 

V:916.974.0424 
F:916.974.0428 

Re: Can AMANDA be configured "per client"?

[Stefan G. Weichinger]

Am 08.11.18 um 18:52 schrieb Chris Miller:
> Hi Stefan,
> 
> 
> 
> *From: *"Stefan G. Weichinger" 
  >  /etc should contain only config

> In my case, I will have a set of config -- probably one for each client,
> so in a first pass at generalization, I symlinked the vtapes as "./dst"
> This may not turn out to be helpful, but I won't know until I have a few
> more hours under my belt.

I would avoid symlinks here ... at least until things work. Just my opinion.

> I distinguish locally attached devices (mounted under "/mnt") from
> network attached devices. I don't know it this is important, but if
> keeps me aware of what I am doing, since putting huge amount of traffic
> on the LAN has performance consequences to the users that copying huge
> amount of data around among locally attached devices does not. This is
> probably just a matter of style.

maybe. As you like, but I recommend following the recommendations until
things work and optionally THEN do your own style ;-)

>  chown these dirs (= mounted fs) to your amandauser to allow amanda
>  rw-access.
>  
>  and then define your chg-disk changer as in:
>  
>  tpchanger "chg-disk:/mnt/externaldisk1"
>  
>  proceed from there ...
> 
> I think I've done that. I suspect my problem is going to be more subtle.
> Like, for example, I named my "slots" "vtape.00 -- vtape.62", but I find
> nowhere to tell AMANDA that. This is, in fact, probably my whole
> problem, which should be trivial to eliminate, once I learn how to tell
> AMANDA of my choice.

See other end of thread and Nathan's posting.

Re: Can AMANDA be configured "per client"?

[Stefan G. Weichinger]

Am 08.11.18 um 19:11 schrieb Nathan Stratton Treadway:
> On Thu, Nov 08, 2018 at 09:40:37 -0800, Chris Miller wrote:
>> bash-4.2$ ls -l /net/nas1/d0/Mail.TCLC.org/ 
>> : 
>> -rwxr-xr-x. 1 amandabackup disk 1110 Nov 8 09:12 state 
>> drwxr-xr-x. 2 amandabackup disk 0 Nov 5 10:17 vtape.00 
>> : 
>> drwxr-xr-x. 2 amandabackup disk 0 Nov 5 10:17 vtape.62 
>>
>> When I run amlabel: amlabel mail.tclc.org Mail.TCLC.org.00 slot vtape.00 
>>
>> Reading label... 
>> Slot vtape.00 not found 
>> Slot vtape.00 not found 
>>
>> I apparently do not understand the whole "vtape" thing at all... At a
>> minimum, I don't see where the config declares my "slots" as having
>> names "vtape.{00..62}"
> 
> A little later I will look for a reference to documentation on this, but
> in short: I believe the issue is that you are mixing the *name of the
> subdirectory* and the *amanda label of on the vtape*.
> 
> The Amanda label is what shows up in your interactition with Amanda, and
> is actually a name stored in a little header file on your physical tape
> or under the vtape subdirectory, to help Amanda keep track of which
> tape/vtape is which.
> 
> On the other hand, the subdirectories the chg-disk: changer uses to hold
> its vtapes are not really designed for direct human interaction... and
> they have a built-in naming pattern you can't change.
> 
> So, your first step is going to be to rename your subdirectories to
> "slot1", "slot2" ... "slot9", "slot10"...  (Note that you can _not_
> zero-pad the first 9 slot numbers -- "ls -v" may come in handy.)
> 
> After that, the amlabel command should work (or at least give a new
> error message) ... but note that the "slot" argument takes a slot
> number, rather than some sort of name.

I agree.
Plus:

amtape  inventory

is your friend here, it should display your virtual tapes as soon as you
get things set up ...

example:

$ amtape vtape inventory

slot 0:1: label vtape-001-001 (vtape-005) [retention-no]
slot 0:2: label vtape-001-002 (vtape-005) [retention-no]
slot 0:3: label vtape-001-003 (vtape-005) [retention-no]
slot 0:4: label vtape-001-004 (vtape-005) [retention-no]
slot 0:5: label vtape-001-005 (vtape-005) [retention-tapes]

(forget my 0:1 slot, you should see 1, 2, 3 ...)

Re: Can AMANDA be configured "per client"?

[Nathan Stratton Treadway]

On Thu, Nov 08, 2018 at 09:40:37 -0800, Chris Miller wrote:
> bash-4.2$ ls -l /net/nas1/d0/Mail.TCLC.org/ 
> : 
> -rwxr-xr-x. 1 amandabackup disk 1110 Nov 8 09:12 state 
> drwxr-xr-x. 2 amandabackup disk 0 Nov 5 10:17 vtape.00 
> : 
> drwxr-xr-x. 2 amandabackup disk 0 Nov 5 10:17 vtape.62 
> 
> When I run amlabel: amlabel mail.tclc.org Mail.TCLC.org.00 slot vtape.00 
> 
> Reading label... 
> Slot vtape.00 not found 
> Slot vtape.00 not found 
> 
> I apparently do not understand the whole "vtape" thing at all... At a
> minimum, I don't see where the config declares my "slots" as having
> names "vtape.{00..62}"

A little later I will look for a reference to documentation on this, but
in short: I believe the issue is that you are mixing the *name of the
subdirectory* and the *amanda label of on the vtape*.

The Amanda label is what shows up in your interactition with Amanda, and
is actually a name stored in a little header file on your physical tape
or under the vtape subdirectory, to help Amanda keep track of which
tape/vtape is which.

On the other hand, the subdirectories the chg-disk: changer uses to hold
its vtapes are not really designed for direct human interaction... and
they have a built-in naming pattern you can't change.

So, your first step is going to be to rename your subdirectories to
"slot1", "slot2" ... "slot9", "slot10"...  (Note that you can _not_
zero-pad the first 9 slot numbers -- "ls -v" may come in handy.)

After that, the amlabel command should work (or at least give a new
error message) ... but note that the "slot" argument takes a slot
number, rather than some sort of name.


Nathan

Nathan Stratton Treadway  -  natha...@ontko.com  -  Mid-Atlantic region
Ray Ontko & Co.  -  Software consulting services  -   http://www.ontko.com/
 GPG Key: http://www.ontko.com/~nathanst/gpg_key.txt   ID: 1023D/ECFB6239
 Key fingerprint = 6AD8 485E 20B9 5C71 231C  0C32 15F3 ADCD ECFB 6239

Re: Can AMANDA be configured "per client"?

[Chris Miller]

Hi Stefan, 

> From: "Stefan G. Weichinger" 
> To: "Chris Miller" , "amanda-users" 
> Sent: Thursday, November 8, 2018 2:01:04 AM
> Subject: Re: Can AMANDA be configured "per client"?

> 
> You are free to do as you like but I recommend the following (my own way
> of doing it, more standard ...)

> /etc should contain only config

> Not vtapes, not data, not logs.
In my case, I will have a set of config -- probably one for each client, so in 
a first pass at generalization, I symlinked the vtapes as "./dst" This may not 
turn out to be helpful, but I won't know until I have a few more hours under my 
belt. 

> I prefer mounted filesystems under /mnt, and logs under /var/log (or in
> systemd journal ... another topic)

> I mount my NAS or external disks under /mnt, like in

> # /etc/fstab

> UUID=5a5a9927-995f-4f0f-98ff-d222561f84ff /mnt/externaldisk1 ext4
> relatime,noauto,user 0 1

I distinguish locally attached devices (mounted under "/mnt") from network 
attached devices. I don't know it this is important, but if keeps me aware of 
what I am doing, since putting huge amount of traffic on the LAN has 
performance consequences to the users that copying huge amount of data around 
among locally attached devices does not. This is probably just a matter of 
style. 

> chown these dirs (= mounted fs) to your amandauser to allow amanda
> rw-access.

> and then define your chg-disk changer as in:

> tpchanger "chg-disk:/mnt/externaldisk1"

> proceed from there ...
I think I've done that. I suspect my problem is going to be more subtle. Like, 
for example, I named my "slots" "vtape.00 -- vtape.62", but I find nowhere to 
tell AMANDA that. This is, in fact, probably my whole problem, which should be 
trivial to eliminate, once I learn how to tell AMANDA of my choice. 

> Did you read:

> https://wiki.zmanda.com/index.php/How_To:Set_Up_Virtual_Tapes#Configuration
Yes -- parts of it many times. To the extent that I understand it, I am 
following it. To the extent that things are not working, I have apparently 
violated its instructions. (-: 

Thanks for the help, 
-- 
Chris. 

V:916.974.0424 
F:916.974.0428 

Re: Can AMANDA be configured "per client"?

[Chris Miller]

Hi Gene, 

> From: "Gene Heskett" 
> To: "amanda-users" 
> Sent: Wednesday, November 7, 2018 12:16:36 PM
> Subject: Re: Can AMANDA be configured "per client"?

> A few questions here: 
> How did you build amamda? [here, as the user amanda, always configure 
> driven by the same script shown here:] 
> === 

I installed from RPM: amanda-backup_server-3.5.1-1.rhel7.x86_64.rpm 

A brief description: 

I have NAS storage available to AMANDA as /net/nas1/d0/Mail.TCLC.org. In an 
effort to generalize, this is symlinked as "dst" from the config directory, 
/etc/amanda/mail.tclc.org, vis: 

bash-4.2$ ls -al /etc/amanda/mail.tclc.org/ 
: 
lrwxrwxrwx. 1 root root 26 Nov 6 07:02 dst -> /net/nas1/d0/Mail.TCLC.org 
: 

bash-4.2$ ls -l /net/nas1/d0/Mail.TCLC.org/ 
: 
-rwxr-xr-x. 1 amandabackup disk 1110 Nov 8 09:12 state 
drwxr-xr-x. 2 amandabackup disk 0 Nov 5 10:17 vtape.00 
: 
drwxr-xr-x. 2 amandabackup disk 0 Nov 5 10:17 vtape.62 

When I run amlabel: amlabel mail.tclc.org Mail.TCLC.org.00 slot vtape.00 

Reading label... 
Slot vtape.00 not found 
Slot vtape.00 not found 

I apparently do not understand the whole "vtape" thing at all... At a minimum, 
I don't see where the config declares my "slots" as having names 
"vtape.{00..62}" 

Thanks for the help, 
-- 
Chris. 

V:916.974.0424 
F:916.974.0428 

Re: Can AMANDA be configured "per client"?

[Gene Heskett]

On Wednesday 07 November 2018 15:16:36 Gene Heskett wrote:

> On Wednesday 07 November 2018 12:25:50 Chris Miller wrote:
> > Hi Austin,
> >
> > Thanks very much. Your comments have been very helpful, and I
> > appreciate the obviously considerable amount of time you spent to
> > help me. I'm much farther along on this project as a result. I have
> > no idea how I'm going to verify that everything is working the way I
> > expect it to work, but I guess I will become much more familiar with
> > how to manage AMANDA as I spend more time. AmCheck tells me that I
> > only have one problem. I think AMANDA can't find the vtapes, so I
> > need to learn much more about vtapes. This is an area that I
> > understand
> > theoretically, but I'm having trouble turning this theory into
> > practice.Is there a good discussion of vtapes somewhere?
> >
> > I have this line in amanda.conf:
> >
> > tapetype "NAS"
> > tpchanger "chg-disk:/etc/amanda/mail.tclc.org/dst"
> > labelstr "vtape.[0-9][0-9]"
> >
> > I am apparently not doing what I want to do, which is point AMANDA
> > to my NAS:
> >
> > bash-4.2$ ls -al /etc/amanda/mail.tclc.org/
> >
> > lrwxrwxrwx. 1 root root 26 Nov 6 07:02 dst ->
> > /net/nas1/d0/Mail.TCLC.org
> >
> >
> > bash-4.2$ ls /net/nas1/d0/Mail.TCLC.org
> > state vtape.04 vtape.09 vtape.14 vtape.19 vtape.24 vtape.29 vtape.34
> > vtape.39 vtape.44 vtape.49 vtape.54 vtape.59 vtape.00 vtape.05
> > vtape.10 vtape.15 vtape.20 vtape.25 vtape.30 vtape.35 vtape.40
> > vtape.45 vtape.50 vtape.55 vtape.60 vtape.01 vtape.06 vtape.11
> > vtape.16 vtape.21 vtape.26 vtape.31 vtape.36 vtape.41 vtape.46
> > vtape.51 vtape.56 vtape.61 vtape.02 vtape.07 vtape.12 vtape.17
> > vtape.22 vtape.27 vtape.32 vtape.37 vtape.42 vtape.47 vtape.52
> > vtape.57 vtape.62 vtape.03 vtape.08 vtape.13 vtape.18 vtape.23
> > vtape.28 vtape.33 vtape.38 vtape.43 vtape.48 vtape.53 vtape.58
> >
> > Thanks for the help,
>
> A few questions here:
> How did you build amamda? [here, as the user amanda, always configure
> driven by the same script shown here:]
> ===
> #!/bin/sh
> # since I'm always forgetting to su amanda...
> if [ `whoami` != 'amanda' ]; then
>   echo
>   echo "!! Warning !!!"
>   echo "Amanda needs to be configured and built by the"
>   echo "user amanda, but must be installed by user root."
>   echo
>   exit 1
> fi
> make clean
> rm -f config.status config.cache
> ./configure --with-user=amanda \
>   --with-group=disk \
>   --with-owner=amanda \
>   --with-gnu-ld \
>   --prefix=/usr/local/ \
>   --with-debugging=/tmp/amanda-dbg/ \
>   --with-tape-server=coyote \
>   --with-bsdtcp-security --with-amandahosts \
>   --with-configdir=/usr/local/etc/amanda \
>   --enable-manpage-build  \
>   --with-readline \
>   --with-gnutar=/bin/tar \
>   --with-security-file=/etc/amanda-security.conf \
>   --with-amandates-file=/etc/amandates
> echo "sleeping for reading configures warnings"
> echo "a make as amanda will continue after 75 seconds..."
> sleep 75
> make
> =
>
> How did you install amanda? [here as root, mandatory I believe]
>
> looking at /usr/local/sbin/am*, [all are owned by root:staff,
> but that may change with the os]
>
> I do not have a NAS, but just a normal big drive mounted at
> /amandatapes in my /etc/fstab.
>
> It is formatted ext4, and the whole thing is owned by amanda:disk, but
> this does change with the OS conventions in use at your site.
>
> gene@coyote:~$ ls -l /amandatapes
> total 20
> drwxr-xr-x 62 amanda disk  4096 Nov  7 03:01 Dailys
> drwx--  2 root   root 16384 Aug 23 16:37 lost+found
>
>
> Inside of /amandatapes/
> gene@coyote:~$ ls -l /amandatapes/*
> /amandatapes/Dailys:
> total 244
> lrwxrwxrwx 1 amanda amanda6 Nov  7 03:01 data -> slot36
> drwxr-x--- 2 amanda amanda 4096 Oct  8 04:32 slot1
> drwxr-x--- 2 amanda amanda 4096 Oct 16 03:25 slot10
> drwxr-x--- 2 amanda amanda 4096 Oct 16 03:37 slot11
> drwxr-x--- 2 amanda amanda 4096 Oct 17 04:15 slot12
> drwxr-x--- 2 amanda amanda 4096 Oct 18 04:04 slot13
> drwxr-x--- 2 amanda amanda 4096 Oct 19 03:43 slot14
> drwxr-x--- 2 amanda amanda 4096 Oct 20 03:43 slot15
> drwxr-x--- 2 amanda amanda 4096 Oct 21 04:00 slot16
> drwxr-x--- 2 amanda amanda 4096 Oct 22 04:06 slot17
> drwxr-x--- 2 amanda amanda 4096 Oct 23 03:33 slot18
> drwxr-x--- 2 amanda amanda 4096 Oct 24 03:59 slot19
> drwxr-x--- 2 amanda amanda 4096 Oct  9 03:24 slot2
> drwxr-x--- 2 amanda amanda 4096 Oct 25 03:30 slot20
> drwxr-x--- 2 amanda amanda 4096 Oct 26 03:24 slot21
> drwxr-x--- 2 amanda amanda 4096 Oct 26 03:38 slot22
> drwxr-x--- 2 amanda amanda 4096 Oct 27 04:16 slot23
> drwxr-x--- 2 amanda amanda 4096 Oct 28 06:04 slot24
> drwxr-x--- 2 amanda amanda 4096 Oct 29 03:51 slot25
> drwxr-x--- 2 amanda amanda 4096 Oct 30 03:43 slot26
> drwxr-x--- 2 amanda amanda 4096 Oct 31 03:45 slot27
> drwxr-x--- 2 amanda amanda 4096 Nov  

Re: Can AMANDA be configured "per client"?

[Nathan Stratton Treadway]

On Wed, Nov 07, 2018 at 09:25:50 -0800, Chris Miller wrote:
> AmCheck tells me that I only have one problem. I think AMANDA can't
> find the vtapes, so I need to learn

What is the error you get from amacheck?

Nathan


Nathan Stratton Treadway  -  natha...@ontko.com  -  Mid-Atlantic region
Ray Ontko & Co.  -  Software consulting services  -   http://www.ontko.com/
 GPG Key: http://www.ontko.com/~nathanst/gpg_key.txt   ID: 1023D/ECFB6239
 Key fingerprint = 6AD8 485E 20B9 5C71 231C  0C32 15F3 ADCD ECFB 6239

Re: Can AMANDA be configured "per client"?

[Gene Heskett]

On Wednesday 07 November 2018 12:25:50 Chris Miller wrote:

> Hi Austin,
>
> Thanks very much. Your comments have been very helpful, and I
> appreciate the obviously considerable amount of time you spent to help
> me. I'm much farther along on this project as a result. I have no idea
> how I'm going to verify that everything is working the way I expect it
> to work, but I guess I will become much more familiar with how to
> manage AMANDA as I spend more time. AmCheck tells me that I only have
> one problem. I think AMANDA can't find the vtapes, so I need to learn
> much more about vtapes. This is an area that I understand
> theoretically, but I'm having trouble turning this theory into
> practice.Is there a good discussion of vtapes somewhere?
>
> I have this line in amanda.conf:
>
> tapetype "NAS"
> tpchanger "chg-disk:/etc/amanda/mail.tclc.org/dst"
> labelstr "vtape.[0-9][0-9]"
>
> I am apparently not doing what I want to do, which is point AMANDA to
> my NAS:
>
> bash-4.2$ ls -al /etc/amanda/mail.tclc.org/
>
> lrwxrwxrwx. 1 root root 26 Nov 6 07:02 dst ->
> /net/nas1/d0/Mail.TCLC.org
>
>
> bash-4.2$ ls /net/nas1/d0/Mail.TCLC.org
> state vtape.04 vtape.09 vtape.14 vtape.19 vtape.24 vtape.29 vtape.34
> vtape.39 vtape.44 vtape.49 vtape.54 vtape.59 vtape.00 vtape.05
> vtape.10 vtape.15 vtape.20 vtape.25 vtape.30 vtape.35 vtape.40
> vtape.45 vtape.50 vtape.55 vtape.60 vtape.01 vtape.06 vtape.11
> vtape.16 vtape.21 vtape.26 vtape.31 vtape.36 vtape.41 vtape.46
> vtape.51 vtape.56 vtape.61 vtape.02 vtape.07 vtape.12 vtape.17
> vtape.22 vtape.27 vtape.32 vtape.37 vtape.42 vtape.47 vtape.52
> vtape.57 vtape.62 vtape.03 vtape.08 vtape.13 vtape.18 vtape.23
> vtape.28 vtape.33 vtape.38 vtape.43 vtape.48 vtape.53 vtape.58
>
> Thanks for the help,

A few questions here:
How did you build amamda? [here, as the user amanda, always configure 
driven by the same script shown here:]
===
#!/bin/sh
# since I'm always forgetting to su amanda...
if [ `whoami` != 'amanda' ]; then
echo
echo "!! Warning !!!"
echo "Amanda needs to be configured and built by the"
echo "user amanda, but must be installed by user root."
echo
exit 1
fi
make clean
rm -f config.status config.cache
./configure --with-user=amanda \
--with-group=disk \
--with-owner=amanda \
--with-gnu-ld \
--prefix=/usr/local/ \
--with-debugging=/tmp/amanda-dbg/ \
--with-tape-server=coyote \
--with-bsdtcp-security --with-amandahosts \
--with-configdir=/usr/local/etc/amanda \
--enable-manpage-build  \
--with-readline \
--with-gnutar=/bin/tar \
--with-security-file=/etc/amanda-security.conf \
--with-amandates-file=/etc/amandates
echo "sleeping for reading configures warnings"
echo "a make as amanda will continue after 75 seconds..."
sleep 75
make
=

How did you install amanda? [here as root, mandatory I believe]

looking at /usr/local/sbin/am*, [all are owned by root:staff, 
but that may change with the os]

I do not have a NAS, but just a normal big drive mounted at 
/amandatapes in my /etc/fstab.

It is formatted ext4, and the whole thing is owned by amanda:disk, but 
this does change with the OS conventions in use at your site.

gene@coyote:~$ ls -l /amandatapes
total 20
drwxr-xr-x 62 amanda disk  4096 Nov  7 03:01 Dailys
drwx--  2 root   root 16384 Aug 23 16:37 lost+found


Inside of /amandatapes/
gene@coyote:~$ ls -l /amandatapes/*
/amandatapes/Dailys:
total 244
lrwxrwxrwx 1 amanda amanda6 Nov  7 03:01 data -> slot36
drwxr-x--- 2 amanda amanda 4096 Oct  8 04:32 slot1
drwxr-x--- 2 amanda amanda 4096 Oct 16 03:25 slot10
drwxr-x--- 2 amanda amanda 4096 Oct 16 03:37 slot11
drwxr-x--- 2 amanda amanda 4096 Oct 17 04:15 slot12
drwxr-x--- 2 amanda amanda 4096 Oct 18 04:04 slot13
drwxr-x--- 2 amanda amanda 4096 Oct 19 03:43 slot14
drwxr-x--- 2 amanda amanda 4096 Oct 20 03:43 slot15
drwxr-x--- 2 amanda amanda 4096 Oct 21 04:00 slot16
drwxr-x--- 2 amanda amanda 4096 Oct 22 04:06 slot17
drwxr-x--- 2 amanda amanda 4096 Oct 23 03:33 slot18
drwxr-x--- 2 amanda amanda 4096 Oct 24 03:59 slot19
drwxr-x--- 2 amanda amanda 4096 Oct  9 03:24 slot2
drwxr-x--- 2 amanda amanda 4096 Oct 25 03:30 slot20
drwxr-x--- 2 amanda amanda 4096 Oct 26 03:24 slot21
drwxr-x--- 2 amanda amanda 4096 Oct 26 03:38 slot22
drwxr-x--- 2 amanda amanda 4096 Oct 27 04:16 slot23
drwxr-x--- 2 amanda amanda 4096 Oct 28 06:04 slot24
drwxr-x--- 2 amanda amanda 4096 Oct 29 03:51 slot25
drwxr-x--- 2 amanda amanda 4096 Oct 30 03:43 slot26
drwxr-x--- 2 amanda amanda 4096 Oct 31 03:45 slot27
drwxr-x--- 2 amanda amanda 4096 Nov  1 04:00 slot28
drwxr-x--- 2 amanda amanda 4096 Nov  2 03:43 slot29
drwxr-x--- 2 amanda amanda 4096 Oct  9 03:38 slot3
drwxr-x--- 2 amanda amanda 4096 Nov  3 03:55 slot30
drwxr-x--- 2 amanda amanda 4096 Nov  4 03:46 slot31
drwxr-x--- 2 amanda amanda 4096 

Re: Can AMANDA be configured "per client"?

[Chris Miller]

Hi Austin, 

Thanks very much. Your comments have been very helpful, and I appreciate the 
obviously considerable amount of time you spent to help me. I'm much farther 
along on this project as a result. I have no idea how I'm going to verify that 
everything is working the way I expect it to work, but I guess I will become 
much more familiar with how to manage AMANDA as I spend more time. AmCheck 
tells me that I only have one problem. I think AMANDA can't find the vtapes, so 
I need to learn much more about vtapes. This is an area that I understand 
theoretically, but I'm having trouble turning this theory into practice.Is 
there a good discussion of vtapes somewhere? 

I have this line in amanda.conf: 

tapetype "NAS" 
tpchanger "chg-disk:/etc/amanda/mail.tclc.org/dst" 
labelstr "vtape.[0-9][0-9]" 

I am apparently not doing what I want to do, which is point AMANDA to my NAS: 

bash-4.2$ ls -al /etc/amanda/mail.tclc.org/ 
: 
lrwxrwxrwx. 1 root root 26 Nov 6 07:02 dst -> /net/nas1/d0/Mail.TCLC.org 
: 

bash-4.2$ ls /net/nas1/d0/Mail.TCLC.org 
state vtape.04 vtape.09 vtape.14 vtape.19 vtape.24 vtape.29 vtape.34 vtape.39 
vtape.44 vtape.49 vtape.54 vtape.59 
vtape.00 vtape.05 vtape.10 vtape.15 vtape.20 vtape.25 vtape.30 vtape.35 
vtape.40 vtape.45 vtape.50 vtape.55 vtape.60 
vtape.01 vtape.06 vtape.11 vtape.16 vtape.21 vtape.26 vtape.31 vtape.36 
vtape.41 vtape.46 vtape.51 vtape.56 vtape.61 
vtape.02 vtape.07 vtape.12 vtape.17 vtape.22 vtape.27 vtape.32 vtape.37 
vtape.42 vtape.47 vtape.52 vtape.57 vtape.62 
vtape.03 vtape.08 vtape.13 vtape.18 vtape.23 vtape.28 vtape.33 vtape.38 
vtape.43 vtape.48 vtape.53 vtape.58 

Thanks for the help, 
-- 
Chris. 

V:916.974.0424 
F:916.974.0428 

Re: Can AMANDA be configured "per client"?

[Austin S. Hemmelgarn]

On 11/5/2018 1:05 PM, Chris Miller wrote:

Hi Folks,

I have four servers, henceforth AMANDA clients, that I need to backup 
and a lot of NAS space available. I'd like to configure AMANDA to treat 
each of the four AMANDA clients as if it were the only client, meaning 
each client should have it's own configuration which includes location 
for backup storage. I have a 3 TB staging disk on the AMANDA server. I 
have reasons for the individual treatment of clients that include 
off-site storage requirements and differing data sensitivity, so the 
simple solution is to be able to configure AMANDA to treat each client 
as a single case, so I can provide for proper security and custody of 
the backups. Can this be done?
Yes, just create a separate configuration for each client on the server 
(that is, a separate amanda.conf and disklist for each client, with each 
pair being in it's own sub-folder of your main amanda configuration 
directory).  This is actually a pretty common practice a lot of places 
(for example, the company I work for has 3 separate configurations that 
run at different times overnight and have slightly different parameters 
for the actual backups).  The only caveat is that you have to explicitly 
run dumps for each configuration, but that's really not that hard.


Please refer to the small table below. I have some basic questions, but 
the volume of documentation is difficult to grasp all at once, so please 
forgive what might seem like trivial questions; they are not yet trivial 
to me.


Using 10.1.1.10 from the table below as an example:

 1. I think I define the length of my tapes to be the maximum for a
given client backup, which is the size of a level 0 dump, which is
135 GB for the example of 10.1.1.10. Since I want to configure
AMANDA to treat each client as an individual and not part of a
collection of backup tasks, I assume AMANDA will use one vtape per
client per night. Can this be done? How do I qualify configuration
settings per client?
The main part of this should be answered by my comment above (if you 
have separate configurations, it's trivial to specify different settings 
for each client).


That said, you probably want the vtape size to be _larger_ than your 
current theoretical max backup size, because it's very hard to change 
the vtape 'size' after the fact, and if you run out of space the whole 
backup may fail.  Keep in mind that vtapes only take up whatever space 
is necessary for the data being stored on them (plus a bit extra for the 
virtual label), so you can set this to an arbitrarily large value.  As 
an example, the vtape configuration where I work specifies 2TB vtapes, 
because that's an amount I know for certain we will never hit in one 
run, even if everything is a level 0 backup.



 2. I have planned for one level 0 and five level 1 backups per week. Do
I call this "a cycle"? I think I need 185 GB storage per "cycle" and
this tells me how many "cycles", in this case, weeks, I can store
before I have to re-use tapes. Does this mean I can plan on a 43
cycle (week) retention of my backups? Will AMANDA append to tapes,
meaning can I put a full week on one vtape?This doesn't _quite_ line up with what Amanda calls a cycle, see my 
comments on your next question for more info on that.  Also, as 
mentioned above, assume you will need more space than you calculated, 
failed backups are a pain to deal with.


As far as taping, Amanda _never_ appends to a tape, it only ever 
rewrites whole tapes.  While it's technically possible to get Amanda to 
pack all the data it can onto one tape across multiple runs, it's 
generally only a good idea to do this if you need to store backups on a 
very limited number of physical tapes because:


* It means that some of your backup data may sit around on the Amanda 
server for an extended period of time before being taped (if you're 
doing a full week's worth of backups on one tape, that level zero backup 
won't get taped until the end of the week).


* Amanda rewrites whole tapes.  This means you will lose all backups on 
a tape when it gets reused.


Because you don't have any wasted storage space using vtapes, it's 
better to just plan on one vtape per run, specify a number appropriate 
for your retention requirements (plus a few extra to allow recovery from 
errors), and then just let Amanda run.  Such a configuration is more 
reliable and significantly more predictable.


As another concrete example from the configuration where I work:  We do 
4 week cycles (so we have at least one level zero backup every 28 days 
for each disk list entry), do daily backups, and retain backups for 16 
weeks.  For our vtape configuration, this translates to requiring 112 
tapes for all the current backups.  We need to be able to access the 
oldest backups during the current cycle, so we have an additional 
cycle's worth of tapes as well (bringing the total up to 130).  We also 
need to guarantee