Re: question (if tape server crash)
Gene Heskett wrote: On Wednesday 12 February 2003 21:22, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: If the tape server is crashed, and I reinstall Amanda, can the NEW tape server recognize previous backup tapes and retrive the files? It looks unlikely. As Martin Hepworth aludes to, one must have a backup of the indices available. No, only if you want to use amrecover, to recover individual files with the nice userinterface. But if the server crashed you probably want to restore hole disks, which works fine with dd, and dump or gnutar (and gzip!). Even with dump or gnutar you could restore individual files or directories, if needed. However, when I needed to recover from an hd dying last fall, I found that those files, which most certainly were included in the disklists DLE entries, were not on the tape, on any of the 20 tapes I had. Neither were the amanda executables that were running, or any other executable that was running on the system at the time of the backup. But in my case, the system stuff that wasn't, would Strange! I just verified mine and all is on tape, programs, index-files (even some .gz.tmp files indicating it was just active at that time, of course, I would not rely on those just-being-rebuild-index files.) already have been installed as part of the cd's re-install on the new hard drive, so thats pretty well a moot point. I'd restore the /home dir first in my case as thats where I'd find the latest build of amanda, and a simple make install from that recovered dir would fix that. I came to the conclusion that because I was generating indices, that there must have been an exclusive lock on the files causing tar to skip them. I do not know if this problem is unique to my setup, unique to just linux, or a general one. It must be something else, because there exist no such thing as an exclusive lock used or honoured by tar, afaik. For a while I did a delay of those two DLE,s till the rest was long since done, and then did the backups of those two DLE's using a no index dumptype. Could it be that in that time you had an old version of gnutar and/or amanda that exited with an errorcode instead of giving just a warning, when a file was removed between the time it found the name, and it tried to read its contents. Because the wrong error exitcode of tar, amanda trew the complete backupimage away (did it? I'm not sure anymore). One of my overcafeineted memory cells tells me there once, long time ago, existed such bug, but I could be wrong. Anyway, it works in my setup now (2.4.3), without problems. As proof, I just restored the complete index-files and all of the configuration of my amanda setup of 4 weeks ago. And if I consult those files, I can see the index-files of tapes from 7 weeks ago (which in reality are already overwritten). -- Paul Bijnens, XplanationTel +32 16 397.511 Technologielaan 21 bus 2, B-3001 Leuven, BELGIUMFax +32 16 397.512 http://www.xplanation.com/ email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] *** * I think I've got the hang of it now: exit, ^D, ^C, ^\, ^Z, ^Q, F6, * * quit, ZZ, :q, :q!, M-Z, ^X^C, logoff, logout, close, bye, /bye, * * stop, end, F3, ~., ^]c, +++ ATH, disconnect, halt, abort, hangup, * * PF4, F20, ^X^X, :D::D, KJOB, F14-f-e, F8-e, kill -1 $$, shutdown, * * kill -9 1, Alt-F4, Ctrl-Alt-Del, AltGr-NumLock, Stop-A, ...* * ... "Are you sure?" ... YES ... Phew ... I'm out * ***
Re: question (if tape server crash)
On Wednesday 12 February 2003 21:22, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: >If the tape server is crashed, and I reinstall Amanda, can the > NEW tape server >recognize previous backup tapes and retrive the files? >It looks unlikely. >How solve this problem? > >Thanks advanced! > >David As Martin Hepworth aludes to, one must have a backup of the indices available. However, when I needed to recover from an hd dying last fall, I found that those files, which most certainly were included in the disklists DLE entries, were not on the tape, on any of the 20 tapes I had. Neither were the amanda executables that were running, or any other executable that was running on the system at the time of the backup. But in my case, the system stuff that wasn't, would already have been installed as part of the cd's re-install on the new hard drive, so thats pretty well a moot point. I'd restore the /home dir first in my case as thats where I'd find the latest build of amanda, and a simple make install from that recovered dir would fix that. I came to the conclusion that because I was generating indices, that there must have been an exclusive lock on the files causing tar to skip them. I do not know if this problem is unique to my setup, unique to just linux, or a general one. For a while I did a delay of those two DLE,s till the rest was long since done, and then did the backups of those two DLE's using a no index dumptype. I believe this will work, but as the backup time needed is a variable, and the delay one can program into a DLE entry is fixed, I now have a couple of scripts that are run as soon as amdump is done, and which append that particular 50 megabyte pair of files (indices and configs dirs) to the tape if there is room left on the tape. And I've reduced the tapetype size by about 100 megs so that when balance has been restored, there will always be room on the tape for them. So now I have hopefully last nights indices and such on tonights tape as a regular DLE, and if I can recall how many fm's there are on a tape, I can search with mt, and immediately recover the indices that actually made that tape from the end of it. In my case it would be an "mt -f /dev/nst0 fsf 36" which should park the tape ready to read those last two files with dd as I have 35 DLE's. Others may also have different methods of doing file lock workarounds, this is just my personal, and not well tested solution to a not too well discussed problem. -- Cheers, Gene AMD K6-III@500mhz 320M Athlon1600XP@1400mhz 512M 99.23% setiathome rank, not too shabby for a WV hillbilly
Re: question (if tape server crash)
Hi! > If the tape server is crashed, and I reinstall Amanda, can the NEW tape > server > recognize previous backup tapes and retrive the files? > It looks unlikely. Why do you think it looks unlikely? The backups done by Amanda are in dump or tar format, and I don't see why you couldn't read the tapes with restore or tar, respectively. The only thing you lose in tape server crash are the index files. But that just means you can't use amrecover and must use amrestore. -- Toomas Aas | [EMAIL PROTECTED] | http://www.raad.tartu.ee/~toomas/ * If you cannot change your mind, are you sure you have one?
Re: question (if tape server crash)
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: If the tape server is crashed, and I reinstall Amanda, can the NEW tape server recognize previous backup tapes and retrive the files? It looks unlikely. This is just one of the strengths of Amanda. You don't need Amanda software to do a restore. A shell, dd, and dump or gnutar (depending on how you created them) is enough. And access to a tapedrive (local or remote) of course. See docs/RESTORE to the different scenario's to follow. On Linux you have enough with a bootable floppy, and a minimal root filesystem, or a bootable cd. (Don't forget to run lilo when done.) On Solaris, you need a little more expertise to boot from cd and access a tape device (but it is possible!), and you have to make the disk bootable afterwards (very badly documented if you ask me). You could also just install a minimal system and then do your full restore. I have no experience with restoring Amanda on other OS'es. (O, yes, on Windows, you need to reinstall Windows, and then you can restore the data files that you backed up with amanda. Restoring programs or registry is much more complicated if useful at all; but then again, Windows is not used as the tape server). How solve this problem? -- Paul Bijnens, XplanationTel +32 16 397.511 Technologielaan 21 bus 2, B-3001 Leuven, BELGIUMFax +32 16 397.512 http://www.xplanation.com/ email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] *** * I think I've got the hang of it now: exit, ^D, ^C, ^\, ^Z, ^Q, F6, * * quit, ZZ, :q, :q!, M-Z, ^X^C, logoff, logout, close, bye, /bye, * * stop, end, F3, ~., ^]c, +++ ATH, disconnect, halt, abort, hangup, * * PF4, F20, ^X^X, :D::D, KJOB, F14-f-e, F8-e, kill -1 $$, shutdown, * * kill -9 1, Alt-F4, Ctrl-Alt-Del, AltGr-NumLock, Stop-A, ...* * ... "Are you sure?" ... YES ... Phew ... I'm out * ***
Re: question (if tape server crash)
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: If the tape server is crashed, and I reinstall Amanda, can the NEW tape server recognize previous backup tapes and retrive the files? It looks unlikely. How solve this problem? Thanks advanced! David David Hopefully you're backing up the tape server and specifically the area where all the indexes etc are kept. Then all you need to do is restore the amanda indexes, conf files etc to the new server. -- Martin Hepworth Senior Systems Administrator Solid State Logic Ltd +44 (0)1865 842300 ** This email and any files transmitted with it are confidential and intended solely for the use of the individual or entity to whom they are addressed. If you have received this email in error please notify the system manager. This footnote also confirms that this email message has been swept by MIMEsweeper for the presence of computer viruses. www.mimesweeper.com **
question (if tape server crash)
If the tape server is crashed, and I reinstall Amanda, can the NEW tape server recognize previous backup tapes and retrive the files? It looks unlikely. How solve this problem? Thanks advanced! David
