tapecycle
Hi everybody: I am using amanda since one year ago and at the beginning I used to have a single tape drive and run amanda only 5 days per week, now I have an autoloader because I use two tapes per run and I would like to include on day more to the runpercycle. So I would like run amanda 6 days per week. then using the rule that i found in amanda chapter I have dumcycle 4 weeks runspercycle 24 (4weeks * 6 days) extras in just in case an any error 1 tapecycle 50 (24+1 * two tapes) . Now I am using only 25 tapes so I would like to know If it is possible include 25 tapes more and if it does How could I use amlabel to label them ? Please if somebody can help I really appreciate. Thanks a lot Sandra
Re: tapecycle
On Wed, 26 Sep 2001 at 1:23pm, Sandra Panesso wrote > dumcycle 4 weeks > runspercycle 24 (4weeks * 6 days) > extras in just in case an any error 1 > tapecycle 50 (24+1 * two tapes) . > > Now I am using only 25 tapes so I would like to know If it is possible > include 25 tapes more and if it does How could I use amlabel to label > them ? Actually, now that you've defined a larger tapecycle, amanda will ask for new tapes until you've amlabelled and used 50 tapes. You amlabel the new ones just like you originally did: amlabel 'config' 'label' Be sure to set runtapes to 2, so that it will actually use 2 tapes per run when it needs them. -- Joshua Baker-LePain Department of Biomedical Engineering Duke University
tapecycle question
Hello Everyone, I'm new to amanda. I have succesfully compiled and installed the latest version from amanda.org onto a RH7.2 machine. I have a Quantum DLT4000 tape drive with 5 tapes. I would like to run amanda every weekend to do a full weekly backup (no incrementals) of about 12 networked machines, but I don't quiet understand how to set the dumpcycle, runcycle and tapecycyle to do this. Could someone give me a brief example of how to setup these cycles? Thanks for your time, Brad
Expanding tapecycle
Hello again all, Now that I have amanda running in a somewhat reliable manner, its time to make her a part of the disaster revovery plan. I run about 8 tapes a week and this config: dumpcycle 1 week runspercycle 5 days tapecycle 10 tapes So, I need to get my tapes offsite for 6 weeks at a time. This seems simple enough to do by increasing the number of tapes in my tapecycle and amlabeling some new tapes. Here's where the problem is (unless you see one above that I have overlooked). I send the tapes from the last week of every month offsite for 1 year. Can I arrange the tapecycle in such a way that I can get amanda to recognize a tape as being eligible to overwrite even though it is not in chronological order (that is, tape 8 may still be offsite for a year, but tape 24 has come back from a 6 week offsite cycle and I want to use it again)? What should I expect to happen when I try this method? Will I have to set up a second config (ex: DailySet2) and run this second config with its own set of tapes and run it during the last week of every month? Thanks again, Brandon Moro Systems Administration, Unify Corporation [EMAIL PROTECTED] - >From meanness first this Portsmouth Yankey rose, And still to meanness all his conduct flows.--Oppression, A poem by an American (Boston, 1765).
Tapecycle question
What exactly does tapecycle do ? I have in my config dumpcycle 2 weeks # the number of days in the normal dump cycle runspercycle 10 # the number of amdump runs in dumpcycle days # (2 weeks * 5 amdump runs per week -- just weekdays) tapecycle 14 tapes # the number of tapes in rotation I have 22 tapes labelled and in my tapelist - last night's backup used #14 and asked for #15 for tonight. From what I've read before, amdump will use the last tape in the tapelist marked reuse (incidentally, every tape in my tapelist is marked reuse - is that correct ?) so what exactly does the tapecycle parameter do ? If there are less than tapecycle tape in the tapelist will it force amdump to ask for a new one ? A second (actually, third) before I lick the envelope :-) I've got a large holding disk so I may well change runspercycle to 14 and run amdump every day and then run amflush on Monday in order to have as many backups as possible (and people may sometimes do some work at weekends). If I do that and the amount of data in the two holding directories on Monday is small enough, is it OK to amflush ALL to one tape or am I better off flushing each day to a separate tape, which would give the same nett result as if the tapes had been put in the drive over the weekend ? Regards, Niall O Broin
tapecycle <= runspercycle
Hello, using Amanda 2.4.4p2, I'd like to do daily full backups, no matter what happens. I.e.: There are about 20 tapes, and humans (as opposed to Amanda) are responsible for the correct tape beeing loaded before each amdump run. If one forgets to change tapes the next run should overwrite the tape which is still inserted. To achieve this I set dumpcycle and runspercycle to 0, and tapecycle and runtapes to 1. This seems to work so far, except for the planner being discontent: NOTES: planner: tapecycle (1) <= runspercycle (1) Does my setup make sense? I'm quite new to Amanda. Should I just ignore the planner note? Hints are appreciated! TIA, Jukka -- bashian roulette: $ ((RANDOM%6)) || rm -rf ~
Amanda tapecycle
Hi @ all! I have a general question about amanda-tapecycles: How does that cycling work? I.e. if i tell amanda that I want a 10 days backup-cycle with incremental backup every day, using 20 tapes - when does amanda use which tape? Does it cycle until all the tapes have been used one time and then start again or does it start again at the end of the backup-cycle? Or what? Please help me! Greetings, Volker
RE: tapecycle
Title: RE: tapecycle How are you getting amanda to use two tapes? We've been trying to do that for weeks and it fails. -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]On Behalf Of Sandra Panesso Sent: Wednesday, September 26, 2001 12:23 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: tapecycle Hi everybody: I am using amanda since one year ago and at the beginning I used to have a single tape drive and run amanda only 5 days per week, now I have an autoloader because I use two tapes per run and I would like to include on day more to the runpercycle. So I would like run amanda 6 days per week. then using the rule that i found in amanda chapter I have dumcycle 4 weeks runspercycle 24 (4weeks * 6 days) extras in just in case an any error 1 tapecycle 50 (24+1 * two tapes) . Now I am using only 25 tapes so I would like to know If it is possible include 25 tapes more and if it does How could I use amlabel to label them ? Please if somebody can help I really appreciate. Thanks a lot Sandra
Re: tapecycle question
On Wed, 12 Dec 2001 at 9:22am, Richard B. Tilley (Brad) wrote > I'm new to amanda. I have succesfully compiled and installed the latest > version from amanda.org onto a RH7.2 machine. I have a Quantum DLT4000 > tape drive with 5 tapes. I would like to run amanda every weekend to do a > full weekly backup (no incrementals) of about 12 networked machines, but I > don't quiet understand how to set the dumpcycle, runcycle and tapecycyle > to do this. Could someone give me a brief example of how to setup these > cycles? dumpcycle 0 (forces full everytime) runspercycle 1 (doesn't really matter) tapecycle (you have 5 tapes) -- Joshua Baker-LePain Department of Biomedical Engineering Duke University
Re: Expanding tapecycle
On Thu, May 02, 2002 at 04:08:26PM -0700, Brandon Moro wrote: > Hello again all, > > Now that I have amanda running in a somewhat reliable manner, its time to > make her a part of the disaster revovery plan. I run about 8 tapes a week > and this config: > > dumpcycle 1 week > runspercycle 5 days > tapecycle 10 tapes > > So, I need to get my tapes offsite for 6 weeks at a time. This seems simple > enough to do by increasing the number of tapes in my tapecycle and > amlabeling some new tapes. > > Here's where the problem is (unless you see one above that I have > overlooked). I send the tapes from the last week of every month offsite for > 1 year. Can I arrange the tapecycle in such a way that I can get amanda to > recognize a tape as being eligible to overwrite even though it is not in > chronological order (that is, tape 8 may still be offsite for a year, but > tape 24 has come back from a 6 week offsite cycle and I want to use it > again)? What should I expect to happen when I try this method? Will I have > to set up a second config (ex: DailySet2) and run this second config with > its own set of tapes and run it during the last week of every month? Related questions for those in the know. - What happens if I keep introducing "new" tapes beyond the quantity specified by tapecycle? I would expect amanda will happily use the additional tapes. - Once I have lots of tapes beyond tapecycle, will amanda then accept any "out of order" tape as long as it is has not been used in tapecycle number of tapes? I'm hoping yes. Or must they continue to be used in the same order they were initially used? If the answers are those I "expect and hope", then you might try a scheme like this. Assuming 8 tapes per dumpcycle. 13 sets in yearly storage (13 x 4 wks = 52 wks, not 12 months), 1 set in use, 1 most recent held locally, and 6 sets in 8 wk storage (I up'ed it to account for yearly storage). That is 21 total sets of tapes, or 168. But only 8 sets are really cycling. So set the tapecycle to 64. (maybe lower) For three out of every 4 weeks, take one set to and retreive one set from 8 week storage. The retreived tapes will fall naturally within the 64 tape tapecycle. One of every 4 weeks, take one set to and retreive one set from yearly storage. They will certainly be beyond the most recent 64 and will "I hope" be accepted. Now, what happens to the index during all this I haven't a clue. Do people do all these weird things with commercial backup software? -- Jon H. LaBadie [EMAIL PROTECTED] JG Computing 4455 Province Line Road(609) 252-0159 Princeton, NJ 08540-4322 (609) 683-7220 (fax)
Re: Expanding tapecycle
On Thu, 2002-05-02 at 18:08, Brandon Moro wrote: > Here's where the problem is (unless you see one above that I have > overlooked). I send the tapes from the last week of every month offsite for > 1 year. Can I arrange the tapecycle in such a way that I can get amanda to > recognize a tape as being eligible to overwrite even though it is not in > chronological order (that is, tape 8 may still be offsite for a year, but > tape 24 has come back from a 6 week offsite cycle and I want to use it > again)? What should I expect to happen when I try this method? Will I have > to set up a second config (ex: DailySet2) and run this second config with > its own set of tapes and run it during the last week of every month? Amanda doesn't care about tape order. You can add new tapes any time (as long as their label matches the regexp you've specified) and any tape which doesn't have a dump on it we're supposed to be keeping is eligible to be used anytime.
Re: Expanding tapecycle
Be careful - this is more complicated than it seems. If Amanda always put exactly one full of each filesystem on every week, and nothing were ever delayed (because no nightly dumps were ever missed due to tape problems, and no clients were ever down), then this might work. You might want to consider taking 2 dumpcyle's worth of tapes offsite, or write some code to see if your candidate 5 tapes actually do have a full dump of everything. So it might make sense to have a regular rotation and then 6 sets of offsite tapes, with different sequence numbers, and interpose the offsite tapes during 'offsite snapshot weeks'. Another approach is to run separate offsite dumps that skip incrementals. Greg Troxel <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Re: Tapecycle question
On Tue, May 14, 2002 at 09:59:45AM +0100, Niall O Broin wrote: > and asked for #15 for tonight. From what I've read before, amdump will use > the last tape in the tapelist marked reuse (incidentally, every tape in my > tapelist is marked reuse - is that correct ?) so what exactly does the > tapecycle parameter do ? If there are less than tapecycle tape in the > tapelist will it force amdump to ask for a new one ? Yep. A tape must be at least tapes old before amanda will agree to reuse it. So for you, with tapecycle set to 14, amanda will refuse to overwrite the last 14 tapes that have been used. > I've got a large holding disk so I may well change runspercycle to 14 and > run amdump every day and then run amflush on Monday in order to have as many > backups as possible (and people may sometimes do some work at weekends). If > I do that and the amount of data in the two holding directories on Monday is > small enough, is it OK to amflush ALL to one tape or am I better off > flushing each day to a separate tape, which would give the same nett result > as if the tapes had been put in the drive over the weekend ? I always amflush everything to a single tape. AFAIK, the only disadvantage to doing it that way is that, if that one tape goes bad, you're losing more backups. (And, similarly, if you do what you're talking about and your holding drive dies on Sunday night...)
Re: Tapecycle question
On Tue, May 14, 2002 at 11:37:51AM -0500, Dave Sherohman wrote: > > tapecycle parameter do ? If there are less than tapecycle tape in the > > tapelist will it force amdump to ask for a new one ? > > Yep. A tape must be at least tapes old before amanda will > agree to reuse it. So for you, with tapecycle set to 14, amanda will > refuse to overwrite the last 14 tapes that have been used. Why then does my tapelist have reuse at the end of every single tape's entry ? > I always amflush everything to a single tape. AFAIK, the only > disadvantage to doing it that way is that, if that one tape goes bad, > you're losing more backups. (And, similarly, if you do what you're > talking about and your holding drive dies on Sunday night...) OK - both caveats understood. If there are people working they can change the tape. Otherwise, it's just some extra backups and if a tape or the holding disk goes bad, it's not a big loss. Thanks, Niall O Broin
Re: Tapecycle question
On Tue, May 14, 2002 at 10:12:14PM +0100, Niall O Broin wrote: > On Tue, May 14, 2002 at 11:37:51AM -0500, Dave Sherohman wrote: > > Yep. A tape must be at least tapes old before amanda will > > agree to reuse it. So for you, with tapecycle set to 14, amanda will > > refuse to overwrite the last 14 tapes that have been used. > > Why then does my tapelist have reuse at the end of every single tape's > entry ? Presumably (i.e., I'm guessing here) because the tape will, eventually, be reused. This doesn't necessarily mean that it's valid for reuse right now - put yesterday's tape back in the drive, run amcheck, and you'll be told something like ERROR: cannot overwrite active tape Daily14.
Re: Tapecycle question
>> Why then does my tapelist have reuse at the end of every single tape's >> entry ? > >Presumably (i.e., I'm guessing here) because the tape will, eventually, >be reused. ... Correct. Or, possibly more accurately, because the tape "may" be eventually reused. The amadmin command allows you to mark specific tapes as "no-reuse". You might do this, for instance, if they have been taken off site for protected storage and you want Amanda to skip over them if they happen to come up in the cycle again. John R. Jackson, Technical Software Specialist, [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Expanding tapecycle
Be careful - this is more complicated than it seems. If Amanda always put exactly one full of each filesystem on every week, and nothing were ever delayed (because no nightly dumps were ever missed due to tape problems, and no clients were ever down), then this might work. You might want to consider taking 2 dumpcyle's worth of tapes offsite, or write some code to see if your candidate 5 tapes actually do have a full dump of everything. So it might make sense to have a regular rotation and then 6 sets of offsite tapes, with different sequence numbers, and interpose the offsite tapes during 'offsite snapshot weeks'. Another approach is to run separate offsite dumps that skip incrementals. Greg Troxel <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
dumpcycle-runspercycle-tapecycle
Hi all When I set the following in amanda.conf dumpcycle 1 weeks runspercycle 7 tapecycle 7 tapes Does that mean I will get a full dump once a week and encrementals everey day(7 days) What will be the formula to work on here? dumpcycle= period between full dumps? runspercycle= number of times backups will be done(divided into dumpcylce) tapecycle=number of tapes used in dumpcycle. If I have dumpcycle=1 week and runspercycle=5 and tapecycle=5 Will I then get 1 full dump per week and incrementals monday to friday ? Sorry for this all but I am writing a newbie howto and need to get my facts straight. Mozzi
Re: tapecycle <= runspercycle
Jukka Salmi wrote: To achieve this I set dumpcycle and runspercycle to 0, and tapecycle and runtapes to 1. This seems to work so far, except for the planner being discontent: NOTES: planner: tapecycle (1) <= runspercycle (1) If I try this in amanda 2.4.4p3, then planner does not warn. Have you really set runspercycle=0 and not 1, as the errors message suggests? -- 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: tapecycle <= runspercycle
Paul Bijnens --> amanda-users (2004-06-23 13:14:45 +0200): > Jukka Salmi wrote: > > >To achieve this I set dumpcycle and runspercycle to 0, and tapecycle > >and runtapes to 1. > > > >This seems to work so far, except for the planner being discontent: > > > >NOTES: > > planner: tapecycle (1) <= runspercycle (1) > > If I try this in amanda 2.4.4p3, then planner does not warn. Strange. I had a short look at planner.c, seems that part was not changed between 2.4.4p2 and p3 (see line 336 ff.). > Have you really set runspercycle=0 and not 1, as the errors message > suggests? Yes. "runspercycle 0" means "same as dumpcycle"; dumpcycle is 0 which means "full backup each run". At least that's how I understand amanda(8). Cheers, Jukka -- bashian roulette: $ ((RANDOM%6)) || rm -rf ~
Re: tapecycle <= runspercycle
Jukka Salmi wrote: Paul Bijnens --> amanda-users (2004-06-23 13:14:45 +0200): Jukka Salmi wrote: To achieve this I set dumpcycle and runspercycle to 0, and tapecycle and runtapes to 1. This seems to work so far, except for the planner being discontent: NOTES: planner: tapecycle (1) <= runspercycle (1) If I try this in amanda 2.4.4p3, then planner does not warn. Strange. I had a short look at planner.c, seems that part was not changed between 2.4.4p2 and p3 (see line 336 ff.). Oops. I was wrong. The note is there indeed. (why didn't I see that this morning?) In that case, yes, just ignore the note. -- 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: tapecycle <= runspercycle
Paul Bijnens --> amanda-users (2004-06-23 14:53:04 +0200): > In that case, yes, just ignore the note. OK, I'll try that... But hmm, why does one get warned if tapecycle <= runspercycle? How could that be a problem? > Oops. I was wrong. The note is there indeed. > (why didn't I see that this morning?) You probably tried out the advice you gave me ;-) Regards, Jukka -- bashian roulette: $ ((RANDOM%6)) || rm -rf ~
Re: tapecycle <= runspercycle
Jukka Salmi wrote: OK, I'll try that... But hmm, why does one get warned if tapecycle <= runspercycle? How could that be a problem? Because in a sane backup scheme you avoid to overwrite the last good backup. Actually, that is what's happening in your case when you don't change the tape, and instruct amanda to use that tape anyway, by specifying tapecycle 1. If anything happens while creating the new backup, you don't have a good current backup, AND you don't have the previous anymore either. With 20 tapes, hopefully you do have still some older backups, but the last good one (usually the most important) just got trashed. Amanda warns you about this. (The above is also true for numbers > 1 ). (why didn't I see that this morning?) You probably tried out the advice you gave me ;-) I had a coffee or two, actually. -- 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 * ***
tapecycle in amanda.conf
Is the tapecycle variable in amanda.conf used for anything? What happens if tapecycle != `cat tapelist | wc -l`?
Re: Amanda tapecycle
>... Does it cycle until all the tapes have been used one time >and then start again ... Yes. It's a simple least recently used algorith (the oldest tape is the one that will be used next). >Volker John R. Jackson, Technical Software Specialist, [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Reducing the tapecycle
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 Over time, the overall size of my backups has increased a bit and, in lieu of getting additional space, I decided to lower the number of backups we keep. As it ends up, we didn't really need quite that much... I edited the amanda.conf file and updated it with the new number of tapes in rotation. My config looks like this now : dumpcycle 7 runspercycle 5 tapecycle 20 tapes I also nuked the directories on disk for slots 21+. It appears that things are backing up properly using this new cycle, but there also seems to be some residual data in the indices. What else should I update to resolve this? Also, amcheck seems to be complaining about labels and active tapes now. Is this a problem? [r...@example DailySet1]$ sudo -u amanda /usr/sbin/amcheck DailySet1 Amanda Tape Server Host Check - - Holding disk /var/amanda: 9361724 KB disk space available, using 9259324 KB slot 17: read label `DailySet1-17', date `20100428004501' cannot overwrite active tape DailySet1-17 slot 18: read label `DailySet1-18', date `20100429004501' cannot overwrite active tape DailySet1-18 slot 19: read label `DailySet1-19', date `20100430004502' cannot overwrite active tape DailySet1-19 slot 20: read label `DailySet1-20', date `20100501004502' cannot overwrite active tape DailySet1-20 slot 1: read label `DailySet1-01', date `20100502004501' cannot overwrite active tape DailySet1-01 slot 2: read label `DailySet1-02', date `20100503004501' cannot overwrite active tape DailySet1-02 slot 3: read label `DailySet1-03', date `20100504004502' cannot overwrite active tape DailySet1-03 slot 4: read label `DailySet1-04', date `20100505004501' cannot overwrite active tape DailySet1-04 slot 5: read label `DailySet1-05', date `20100506004501' cannot overwrite active tape DailySet1-05 slot 6: read label `DailySet1-06', date `20100507004501' cannot overwrite active tape DailySet1-06 slot 7: read label `DailySet1-07', date `20100508004502' cannot overwrite active tape DailySet1-07 slot 8: read label `DailySet1-08', date `20100509004502' cannot overwrite active tape DailySet1-08 slot 9: read label `DailySet1-09', date `20100510004501' cannot overwrite active tape DailySet1-09 slot 10: read label `DailySet1-10', date `20100511004502' cannot overwrite active tape DailySet1-10 slot 11: read label `DailySet1-11', date `20100512004501' cannot overwrite active tape DailySet1-11 slot 12: read label `DailySet1-12', date `20100423004502' slot 13: read label `DailySet1-13', date `20100424004501' cannot overwrite active tape DailySet1-13 slot 14: read label `DailySet1-14', date `20100425004501' cannot overwrite active tape DailySet1-14 slot 15: read label `DailySet1-15', date `20100426004501' cannot overwrite active tape DailySet1-15 slot 16: read label `DailySet1-16', date `20100427004502' cannot overwrite active tape DailySet1-16 read label `DailySet1-12', date `20100423004502' NOTE: skipping tape-writable test Tape DailySet1-12 label ok Server check took 6.050 seconds Amanda Backup Client Hosts Check - Client check: 18 hosts checked in 4.062 seconds, 0 problems found (brought to you by Amanda 2.5.1p3) Thanks, - --- Jason 'XenoPhage' Frisvold Engine / Technology Programmer f...@godshell.com RedHat Certified - RHCE # 803004140609871 MySQL Pro Certified - ID# 207171862 MySQL Core Certified - ID# 205982910 - --- "Something mysterious is formed, born in the silent void. Waiting alone and unmoving, it is at once still and yet in constant motion. It is the source of all programs. I do not know its name, so I will call it the Tao of Programming." -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: GnuPG/MacGPG2 v2.0.14 (Darwin) iEYEARECAAYFAkvq3A8ACgkQhR5xme3cl77VvACeL2FfbhLR/SOCbBLxCtKSXlKm tiQAn0+JfNI7ZqVjgdFDGNdBEXqOZmjf =40Tq -END PGP SIGNATURE-
tapecycle and the doc
I had some questions regarding tapecycle, and after reading the man page and the doc (old and new), I think that they fall short on describing what tapecycle should be set to. The minimum value of tapecycle is well covered, but not the maximum value, and how tapecycle should relate to the number of tapes that have been labeled. >From the man page: tapecycle int Default: 15 tapes. The number of tapes in the active tape cycle. This must be at least one larger than the number of Amanda runs done during a dump cycle (see the dumpcycle parameter) times the number of tapes used per run (see the runtapes parameter). For instance, if dumpcycle is set to 14 days, one Amanda run is done every day (Sunday through Satur- day), and runtapes is set to one, then tapecycle must be at least 15 (14 days * one run/day * one tape/run + one tape). In practice, there should be several extra tapes to allow for schedule adjustments or disaster recov- ery. So what is an "active tape cycle"? That is never defined anywhere. Although the last sentence is correct and it makes sense, it does not explain how tapecycle should relate to the actual number of labeled tapes. Here is my bad attempt at an improvement, please do not use it verbatim: You must have at least tapecycle tapes labeled, but you can have more. By labeling extra tapes, you can allow for schedule adjustments or disaster recovery. For example, lets say that your tapecycle is set to 20 and you have 20 labeled tapes. If you discover that tape #5 that you are about to put in the drive is bad, your only alternative is to immediately label a new replacement tape. If tapecycle was 20 and you had 25 labeled tapes, then you could put tape #6 in the drive and deal with the problem later. On the other hand, if the number of labeled tapes greatly exceeds tapecycle, then AMANDA (insert inefficiency issue here). -- Tom Schutter (mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]) Platte River Associates, Inc. (http://www.platte.com)
tapecycle off by 1?
Hi everyone, I'm running 2.4.2 from the CVS tree from about two months ago on a FreeBSD 4.3-STABLE machine with an HP SureStore 12000e DDS-2 changer. In my amanda.conf, I have the following: tapecycle 135 tapes I've been waiting to reach the 135th tape. For weeks and weeks now, I see "The next 6 tapes Amanda expects to used are: a new tape, a new tape, a new tape, a new tape, a new tape, a new tape". I've been waiting for it to say it expects tape #1 again. Today was suppose to be the big day. But here's what the report said: "These dumps were to tapes love129, love130, love131. The next 6 tapes Amanda expects to used are: a new tape, love132, love133, love134, love1, love2. My question is how come it's not expecting love135, after all that's what I have specified in amanda.conf. Kinda looks like a "x-1" error. But I'm sure I'm just missing something, and hoping the list can help me... TIA, Sean Noonan
Re: dumpcycle-runspercycle-tapecycle
On Wednesday 11 September 2002 06:09, Mozzi wrote: >Hi all >When I set the following in amanda.conf > >dumpcycle 1 weeks >runspercycle 7 >tapecycle 7 tapes > >Does that mean I will get a full dump once a week and encrementals >everey day(7 days) > You will get a full dump of each entry in the disklist at least once a week, mixed in with incrementals in a schedule that try's to equalize the tape useage per day. But with only 7 tapes, there is a possibility of over-writing the last full of that disklist entry with only an incremental as amanda gets the scheduling adjusted. No one here would recommend only 7 tapes, the murphy style disaster is inevitable... You need at least 14, and I have 20 in my own rotation, so I'm always assured that there are at least 2 fulls available in the unlikely event a disk goes belly up on me. >What will be the formula to work on here? >dumpcycle= period between full dumps? >runspercycle= number of times backups will be done(divided into > dumpcylce) tapecycle=number of tapes used in dumpcycle. > >If I have dumpcycle=1 week and runspercycle=5 and tapecycle=5 >Will I then get 1 full dump per week and incrementals monday to > friday ? Not without manually forceing the schedule, which is, generally speaking, not always a good thing(tm). >Sorry for this all but I am writing a newbie howto and need to get > my facts straight. > > >Mozzi -- Cheers, Gene AMD K6-III@500mhz 320M Athlon1600XP@1400mhz 512M 99.14% setiathome rank, not too shabby for a WV hillbilly
Re: dumpcycle-runspercycle-tapecycle
On Wed Sep 11, 6:52am Gene Heskett wrote: >But with only 7 tapes, there is a possibility of over-writing the >last full of that disklist entry with only an incremental as >amanda gets the scheduling adjusted. No one here would >recommend only 7 tapes, the murphy style disaster is >inevitable... > >You need at least 14, and I have 20 in my own rotation, so I'm >always assured that there are at least 2 fulls available in the >unlikely event a disk goes belly up on me. I asked Gene for hise amanda.conf entries, which are: dumpcycle 1 week runspercycle 7 tapecycle 20 Using this configuration, I understand amanda will schedule a level 0 each week (dumpcycle). At any one time, you would have 3 level 0 dumps (in case of tape error, or a dump could not be restored). So tapecycle does not need to be a multiple of dumpcycle or runspercycle? It's not quite clear what amanda.conf recommends the "extra" tapes in the tapecycle are for--after amanda has been through one cycle of the tapes, there are really no more "extra" tapes?? amanda.conf: tapecycle 19 tapes # the number of tapes in rotation # 4 weeks (dumpcycle) times 5 tapes per week (just # the weekdays) plus a few to handle errors that # need amflush and so we do not overwrite the full # backups performed at the beginning of the previous # cycle TIA
Re: dumpcycle-runspercycle-tapecycle
On Wednesday 11 September 2002 13:17, Anne M. Hammond wrote: >On Wed Sep 11, 6:52am Gene Heskett wrote: >>But with only 7 tapes, there is a possibility of over-writing the >>last full of that disklist entry with only an incremental as >>amanda gets the scheduling adjusted. No one here would >>recommend only 7 tapes, the murphy style disaster is >>inevitable... >> >>You need at least 14, and I have 20 in my own rotation, so I'm >>always assured that there are at least 2 fulls available in the >>unlikely event a disk goes belly up on me. > >I asked Gene for hise amanda.conf entries, which are: > >dumpcycle 1 week >runspercycle 7 >tapecycle 20 > >Using this configuration, I understand amanda will schedule >a level 0 each week (dumpcycle). At any one time, you would >have 3 level 0 dumps (in case of tape error, or a dump could >not be restored). > >So tapecycle does not need to be a multiple of dumpcycle or >runspercycle? > >It's not quite clear what amanda.conf recommends the "extra" >tapes in the tapecycle are for--after amanda has been through >one cycle of the tapes, there are really no more "extra" tapes?? > >amanda.conf: >tapecycle 19 tapes # the number of tapes in rotation ># 4 weeks (dumpcycle) times 5 tapes per > week (just # the weekdays) plus a few to handle errors that # > need amflush and so we do not overwrite the full # backups > performed at the beginning of the previous # cycle > Amanda will use ALL labeled tapes in the rotation, in order, unless WE mess it up, and then start over at the top of the list reusing them in the same order.\ -- Cheers, Gene AMD K6-III@500mhz 320M Athlon1600XP@1400mhz 512M 99.15% setiathome rank, not too shabby for a WV hillbilly
Re: tapecycle in amanda.conf
>Is the tapecycle variable in amanda.conf used for anything? ... Yes. Amanda will ask for new tapes until tapelist has tapecycle "reuse" entries in it. >What happens if >tapecycle != `cat tapelist | wc -l`? If tapecycle is less than the number of tapes marked "reuse" in tapelist, Amanda will ask for new tapes. If it is greater, Amanda will use any tape marked "reuse" beyond the most recent "tapecycle" ones (that last tidbit compliments of Jean-Louis Martineau in this list just a few days ago). John R. Jackson, Technical Software Specialist, [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Endless tapecycle for vtapes
Hello everyone! I'm going to backup some data and store it for many years. The dumpcycle will be 1 week with 5 runs per cycle. Amanda requires positive tapecycle. But I don't really know how long the data will be stored. What is the best way to resolve this problem? I thought about setting tapecycle something like 2, but this isn't the best solution. Also I'm planning to use vtapes. I don't know how many slots and vtapes will be necessary in future. So is it possible to automate slots and vtapes creation and labeling? As far as I know it is possible to use autolabel directive for labeling. But does it create new slots? Best Regards, Artem Konvalyuk
Re: Reducing the tapecycle
On Wednesday 12 May 2010, Jason Frisvold wrote: >Over time, the overall size of my backups has increased a bit and, in lieu > of getting additional space, I decided to lower the number of backups we > keep. As it ends up, we didn't really need quite that much... I edited > the amanda.conf file and updated it with the new number of tapes in > rotation. My config looks like this now : > >dumpcycle 7 >runspercycle 5 >tapecycle 20 tapes > >I also nuked the directories on disk for slots 21+. It appears that things > are backing up properly using this new cycle, but there also seems to be > some residual data in the indices. What else should I update to resolve > this? > This is doing it both the hard way, and the leave nagging garbage laying around way. IIRC, and its been yonks since I last played with it, the proper command is amrmtape, see the manpage for exact syntax. This not only removes the tape from the active list, but also removes all the indice etc references to it, leaving you with a clean system. With all the rewrites amanda is getting in the last 2-3 years, I would hope that it will not complain when it doesn't find something it should nuke, but will go ahead and remove that which still exists, therefore cleaning up the system for you. >Also, amcheck seems to be complaining about labels and active tapes now. > Is this a problem? See above, amrmtape should clean that up too. >[r...@example DailySet1]$ sudo -u amanda /usr/sbin/amcheck DailySet1 >Amanda Tape Server Host Check >- >Holding disk /var/amanda: 9361724 KB disk space available, using 9259324 KB >slot 17: read label `DailySet1-17', date `20100428004501' >cannot overwrite active tape DailySet1-17 >slot 18: read label `DailySet1-18', date `20100429004501' >cannot overwrite active tape DailySet1-18 >slot 19: read label `DailySet1-19', date `20100430004502' >cannot overwrite active tape DailySet1-19 >slot 20: read label `DailySet1-20', date `20100501004502' >cannot overwrite active tape DailySet1-20 >slot 1: read label `DailySet1-01', date `20100502004501' >cannot overwrite active tape DailySet1-01 >slot 2: read label `DailySet1-02', date `20100503004501' >cannot overwrite active tape DailySet1-02 >slot 3: read label `DailySet1-03', date `20100504004502' >cannot overwrite active tape DailySet1-03 >slot 4: read label `DailySet1-04', date `20100505004501' >cannot overwrite active tape DailySet1-04 >slot 5: read label `DailySet1-05', date `20100506004501' >cannot overwrite active tape DailySet1-05 >slot 6: read label `DailySet1-06', date `20100507004501' >cannot overwrite active tape DailySet1-06 >slot 7: read label `DailySet1-07', date `20100508004502' >cannot overwrite active tape DailySet1-07 >slot 8: read label `DailySet1-08', date `20100509004502' >cannot overwrite active tape DailySet1-08 >slot 9: read label `DailySet1-09', date `20100510004501' >cannot overwrite active tape DailySet1-09 >slot 10: read label `DailySet1-10', date `20100511004502' >cannot overwrite active tape DailySet1-10 >slot 11: read label `DailySet1-11', date `20100512004501' >cannot overwrite active tape DailySet1-11 >slot 12: read label `DailySet1-12', date `20100423004502' >slot 13: read label `DailySet1-13', date `20100424004501' >cannot overwrite active tape DailySet1-13 >slot 14: read label `DailySet1-14', date `20100425004501' >cannot overwrite active tape DailySet1-14 >slot 15: read label `DailySet1-15', date `20100426004501' >cannot overwrite active tape DailySet1-15 >slot 16: read label `DailySet1-16', date `20100427004502' >cannot overwrite active tape DailySet1-16 >read label `DailySet1-12', date `20100423004502' >NOTE: skipping tape-writable test >Tape DailySet1-12 label ok >Server check took 6.050 seconds Humm, I have never seen it continue after looking at -12 and finding it can use it. Strange. OTOH, tape drive problems have made me wish that it would actually check tapecycle+1, effectively rechecking the desired and correct tape. I have had it fail to read the next tape, find no usable tape and report the failure. But cycling the mechanism with a repeat of amcheck always worked. 100% of the time. >Amanda Backup Client Hosts Check > >Client check: 18 hosts checked in 4.062 seconds, 0 problems found > >(brought to you by Amanda 2.5.1p3) Your elapsed times there indicate you may be using vtapes? When I was using a changer, it was often over a minute per tape inspected. Slow, cheap, seacrate DDS2 changer. For me, vtapes on a terrabyte HD hav
Re: Reducing the tapecycle
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 On May 12, 2010, at 1:47 PM, Gene Heskett wrote: > This is doing it both the hard way, and the leave nagging garbage laying > around way. Of course. Why do it the easy way? :) > IIRC, and its been yonks since I last played with it, the proper command is > amrmtape, see the manpage for exact syntax. This not only removes the tape > from the active list, but also removes all the indice etc references to it, > leaving you with a clean system. Excellent, this appears to have done it. >> Also, amcheck seems to be complaining about labels and active tapes now. >> Is this a problem? > > See above, amrmtape should clean that up too. Though perhaps not this.. I'll let it run through a cycle tonight before I pass final judgement, though. > Your elapsed times there indicate you may be using vtapes? When I was using > a changer, it was often over a minute per tape inspected. Slow, cheap, > seacrate DDS2 changer. For me, vtapes on a terrabyte HD have been dozens of > times more dependable, and since its random access, about 50 times faster > when doing a recovery. One drive failure in about 5 years now, and smartd > warned me about it in plenty of time to take corrective replacement action > which included rsync'ing the failing drive to the new one. Amanda never got > a hint there was a problem. Yes, vtapes. Best thing since .. well, since tapes? :) > -- > 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) > Great American Axiom: > Some is good, more is better, too much is just right. - --- Jason 'XenoPhage' Frisvold Engine / Technology Programmer f...@godshell.com RedHat Certified - RHCE # 803004140609871 MySQL Pro Certified - ID# 207171862 MySQL Core Certified - ID# 205982910 - --- "Something mysterious is formed, born in the silent void. Waiting alone and unmoving, it is at once still and yet in constant motion. It is the source of all programs. I do not know its name, so I will call it the Tao of Programming." -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: GnuPG/MacGPG2 v2.0.14 (Darwin) iEYEARECAAYFAkvrDMcACgkQhR5xme3cl74WegCgl1HCTmTm9owmpbNalPyG/33i dXUAoLdyQhnTka74qVWJFlTs8angdPhA =01ZE -END PGP SIGNATURE-
Re: Reducing the tapecycle
On Wednesday 12 May 2010, Jason Frisvold wrote: >On May 12, 2010, at 1:47 PM, Gene Heskett wrote: >> This is doing it both the hard way, and the leave nagging garbage laying >> around way. > >Of course. Why do it the easy way? :) Only until we actually learn the easy way, Jason. Been there, done that, even bought and wore out the cheap T-shirt. ;-) >> IIRC, and its been yonks since I last played with it, the proper command >> is amrmtape, see the manpage for exact syntax. This not only removes the >> tape from the active list, but also removes all the indice etc references >> to it, leaving you with a clean system. > >Excellent, this appears to have done it. > >>> Also, amcheck seems to be complaining about labels and active tapes now. >>> Is this a problem? >> >> See above, amrmtape should clean that up too. > >Though perhaps not this.. I'll let it run through a cycle tonight before I > pass final judgement, though. > >> Your elapsed times there indicate you may be using vtapes? When I was >> using a changer, it was often over a minute per tape inspected. Slow, >> cheap, seacrate DDS2 changer. For me, vtapes on a terrabyte HD have been >> dozens of times more dependable, and since its random access, about 50 >> times faster when doing a recovery. One drive failure in about 5 years >> now, and smartd warned me about it in plenty of time to take corrective >> replacement action which included rsync'ing the failing drive to the new >> one. Amanda never got a hint there was a problem. > >Yes, vtapes. Best thing since .. well, since tapes? :) Gee, around my camp site the comparison tends to run a bit more graphic, compared to sliced bread or bottled beer, and of course instant favors from the fairer sex usually tops the list. ;) -- 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) The one item you need is always in short supply -- Murphy's Military Laws n�87
tapecycle and tape order
if I have a theoretical tapecycle of 20, and the obvious 20 tapes, but a small changer with only 2-5 slots, which I intend to load daily with the required tapes for the night's run, is it safe to assume that amanda will *ALWAYS* request tapes in the same numerical order, or can it at any point pick an arbitrary tape from the list?
tuning dumpcycle, runspercycle, and tapecycle
Greetings. For backups to a server with one DLT-IV drive, I would like to change the tape once per week. During the week, I would like to do one full backup on day 1, and incremental backups on days 2-5. To do this, I set "dumpcycle 1 week" and "runspercycle 5" and "tapecycle 1 tapes". However, in the dump reports, I get this message every dump, even on the incremental days: planner: tapecycle (1) <= runspercycle (5) planner: Full dump of hostname.networktest.com:/ promoted from 6 days ahead. This sounds like amanda does a full dump each time. True? If so, what is the correct config for one full dump plus four incremental dumps? This is for 2.4.4p4_2 on FreeBSD 4.10. Thanks! dn
Re: tapecycle and the doc
On Mon, Mar 14, 2005 at 09:14:43AM -0700, Tom Schutter wrote: > I had some questions regarding tapecycle, and after reading the man > page and the doc (old and new), I think that they fall short on > describing what tapecycle should be set to. The minimum value of > tapecycle is well covered, but not the maximum value, and how > tapecycle should relate to the number of tapes that have been > labeled. > > >From the man page: >tapecycle int > Default: 15 tapes. The number of tapes in the Gee, I did not realize there was a default :) > active tape cycle. This must be at least one > larger than the number of Amanda runs done during a > dump cycle (see the dumpcycle parameter) times the > number of tapes used per run (see the runtapes > parameter). > > For instance, if dumpcycle is set to 14 days, one > Amanda run is done every day (Sunday through Satur- > day), and runtapes is set to one, then tapecycle > must be at least 15 (14 days * one run/day * one > tape/run + one tape). > > In practice, there should be several extra tapes to > allow for schedule adjustments or disaster recov- > ery. > > So what is an "active tape cycle"? That is never defined anywhere. Bad wording. And it is seldom good practice to use a term (eg tapecycle) in the definition of the term. > > Although the last sentence is correct and it makes sense, it does not > explain how tapecycle should relate to the actual number of labeled > tapes. > > Here is my bad attempt at an improvement, please do not use it verbatim: > > You must have at least tapecycle tapes labeled, but you can have > more. By labeling extra tapes, you can allow for schedule > adjustments or disaster recovery. For example, lets say that your > tapecycle is set to 20 and you have 20 labeled tapes. If you > discover that tape #5 that you are about to put in the drive is bad, > your only alternative is to immediately label a new replacement > tape. If tapecycle was 20 and you had 25 labeled tapes, then you > could put tape #6 in the drive and deal with the problem later. > > On the other hand, if the number of labeled tapes greatly exceeds > tapecycle, then AMANDA (insert inefficiency issue here). Two things; I know of no inefficiency issues related to exceedingly large numbers of tapes in rotation. Or other problems, except cost, even in using fresh tapes every run. And as to your suggested revision, in writing man page documentation one must judge how much example, description, and definition should go into a document that is intended to be terse and quickly readable as reference, not how-to. Here is my attempt at a revision: tapecycle int Default: 15 tapes. Typically tapes are used by amanda in an ordered rotation. The tapecycle parameter defines the size of that rotation. The number of tapes in rotation must be larger than the number of tapes required for a complete dump cycle (see the dumpcycle parameter). This is calculated by multiplying the number of amdump runs per dump cycle (runspercycle parameter) times the number of tapes used per run (runtapes parameter). Typically two to four times this calculated number of tapes are in rotation. While amanda is always willing to use a new tape in its rotation, it refuses to reuse a tape until at least 'tapecycle' number of other tapes have been used. It is considered good administrative practice to set the tapecycle parameter slightly lower than the actual number of tapes in rotation. This allows the administrator to more easily cope with damaged or misplaced tapes or schedule adjustments that call for slight adjustments in the rotation order. -- Jon H. LaBadie [EMAIL PROTECTED] JG Computing 4455 Province Line Road(609) 252-0159 Princeton, NJ 08540-4322 (609) 683-7220 (fax)
Re: tapecycle and the doc
We have found that a shorter dumpcycle simplifies restores. We have also found that a shorter tape cycle simplified managerial issues... We need to investigate XYZ user please bring back all copies of their Lotus Notes mailbox. We find 20-25 tapes ample for most situations, gives a month plus restore period (we have dumps 5x/week) with a few of the older amanda configs on sight having a shorter period (we have intranet source for the external web server, we really only need to recover the OS and that is current at least once per designated dumpcycle). On Tue, Mar 15, 2005 at 01:03:31AM -0500, Jon LaBadie wrote: > On Mon, Mar 14, 2005 at 09:14:43AM -0700, Tom Schutter wrote: > > I had some questions regarding tapecycle, and after reading the man > > page and the doc (old and new), I think that they fall short on > > describing what tapecycle should be set to. The minimum value of > > tapecycle is well covered, but not the maximum value, and how > > tapecycle should relate to the number of tapes that have been > > labeled. > > > > >From the man page: > >tapecycle int > > Default: 15 tapes. The number of tapes in the > > Gee, I did not realize there was a default :) > > > active tape cycle. This must be at least one > > larger than the number of Amanda runs done during a > > dump cycle (see the dumpcycle parameter) times the > > number of tapes used per run (see the runtapes > > parameter). > > > > For instance, if dumpcycle is set to 14 days, one > > Amanda run is done every day (Sunday through Satur- > > day), and runtapes is set to one, then tapecycle > > must be at least 15 (14 days * one run/day * one > > tape/run + one tape). > > > > In practice, there should be several extra tapes to > > allow for schedule adjustments or disaster recov- > > ery. > > > > So what is an "active tape cycle"? That is never defined anywhere. > > Bad wording. And it is seldom good practice to use a term (eg tapecycle) > in the definition of the term. > > > > Although the last sentence is correct and it makes sense, it does not > > explain how tapecycle should relate to the actual number of labeled > > tapes. > > > > Here is my bad attempt at an improvement, please do not use it verbatim: > > > > You must have at least tapecycle tapes labeled, but you can have > > more. By labeling extra tapes, you can allow for schedule > > adjustments or disaster recovery. For example, lets say that your > > tapecycle is set to 20 and you have 20 labeled tapes. If you > > discover that tape #5 that you are about to put in the drive is bad, > > your only alternative is to immediately label a new replacement > > tape. If tapecycle was 20 and you had 25 labeled tapes, then you > > could put tape #6 in the drive and deal with the problem later. > > > > On the other hand, if the number of labeled tapes greatly exceeds > > tapecycle, then AMANDA (insert inefficiency issue here). > > Two things; I know of no inefficiency issues related to exceedingly > large numbers of tapes in rotation. Or other problems, except cost, > even in using fresh tapes every run. And as to your suggested > revision, in writing man page documentation one must judge how much > example, description, and definition should go into a document that > is intended to be terse and quickly readable as reference, not how-to. > > Here is my attempt at a revision: > > tapecycle int > Default: 15 tapes. Typically tapes are used by amanda in > an ordered rotation. The tapecycle parameter defines the > size of that rotation. The number of tapes in rotation must > be larger than the number of tapes required for a complete > dump cycle (see the dumpcycle parameter). This is calculated > by multiplying the number of amdump runs per dump cycle > (runspercycle parameter) times the number of tapes used per > run (runtapes parameter). Typically two to four times this > calculated number of tapes are in rotation. > > While amanda is always willing to use a new tape in its rotation, > it refuses to reuse a tape until at least 'tapecycle' number of > other tapes have been used. It is considered good administrative > practice to set the tapecycle parameter slightly lower than the > actual number of tapes in rotation. This allows the admini
Re: tapecycle and the doc
On Tue, 2005-03-15 at 01:03 -0500, Jon LaBadie wrote: > On Mon, Mar 14, 2005 at 09:14:43AM -0700, Tom Schutter wrote: > > Here is my bad attempt at an improvement, please do not use it verbatim: > > Here is my attempt at a revision: > > tapecycle int > Default: 15 tapes. Typically tapes are used by amanda in > an ordered rotation. The tapecycle parameter defines the > size of that rotation. The number of tapes in rotation must > be larger than the number of tapes required for a complete > dump cycle (see the dumpcycle parameter). This is calculated > by multiplying the number of amdump runs per dump cycle > (runspercycle parameter) times the number of tapes used per > run (runtapes parameter). Typically two to four times this > calculated number of tapes are in rotation. > > While amanda is always willing to use a new tape in its rotation, > it refuses to reuse a tape until at least 'tapecycle' number of > other tapes have been used. It is considered good administrative > practice to set the tapecycle parameter slightly lower than the > actual number of tapes in rotation. This allows the administrator > to more easily cope with damaged or misplaced tapes or schedule > adjustments that call for slight adjustments in the rotation order. Your attempt is far better than mine, and it says what I meant. -- Tom Schutter (mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]) Platte River Associates, Inc. (http://www.platte.com)
Re: tapecycle and the doc
On Tue, 2005-03-15 at 10:25 -0700, Tom Schutter wrote: > On Tue, 2005-03-15 at 01:03 -0500, Jon LaBadie wrote: > > While amanda is always willing to use a new tape in its rotation, > > it refuses to reuse a tape until at least 'tapecycle' number of > > other tapes have been used. Ooops. I think that should be: While amanda is always willing to use a new tape in its rotation, it refuses to reuse a tape until at least 'tapecycle-1' number of other tapes have been used. -- Tom Schutter (mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]) Platte River Associates, Inc. (http://www.platte.com)
Re: tapecycle and the doc
Hi, Tom, on Dienstag, 15. März 2005 at 23:32 you wrote to amanda-users: TS> On Tue, 2005-03-15 at 10:25 -0700, Tom Schutter wrote: >> On Tue, 2005-03-15 at 01:03 -0500, Jon LaBadie wrote: >> > While amanda is always willing to use a new tape in its rotation, >> > it refuses to reuse a tape until at least 'tapecycle' number of >> > other tapes have been used. TS> Ooops. I think that should be: TS> While amanda is always willing to use a new tape in its rotation, TS> it refuses to reuse a tape until at least 'tapecycle-1' number of TS> other tapes have been used. 10 points for that. -- best regards, Stefan Stefan G. Weichinger mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: tapecycle and the doc
Will Amanda use any tape that is more than tapecycle entries down the list or only the one of the bottom ? On Tue, Mar 15, 2005 at 11:52:01PM +0100, Stefan G. Weichinger wrote: > Hi, Tom, > > on Dienstag, 15. März 2005 at 23:32 you wrote to amanda-users: > > TS> On Tue, 2005-03-15 at 10:25 -0700, Tom Schutter wrote: > >> On Tue, 2005-03-15 at 01:03 -0500, Jon LaBadie wrote: > >> > While amanda is always willing to use a new tape in its rotation, > >> > it refuses to reuse a tape until at least 'tapecycle' number of > >> > other tapes have been used. > > TS> Ooops. I think that should be: > TS> While amanda is always willing to use a new tape in its rotation, > TS> it refuses to reuse a tape until at least 'tapecycle-1' number of > TS> other tapes have been used. > > 10 points for that. > -- > best regards, > Stefan > > Stefan G. Weichinger > mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] > > > > --- Brian R Cuttler [EMAIL PROTECTED] Computer Systems Support(v) 518 486-1697 Wadsworth Center(f) 518 473-6384 NYS Department of HealthHelp Desk 518 473-0773
Re: tapecycle and the doc
On Wed, Mar 16, 2005 at 08:27:51AM -0500, Brian Cuttler wrote: > > Will Amanda use any tape that is more than tapecycle entries down > the list or only the one of the bottom ? > > On Tue, Mar 15, 2005 at 11:52:01PM +0100, Stefan G. Weichinger wrote: > > Hi, Tom, > > > > on Dienstag, 15. März 2005 at 23:32 you wrote to amanda-users: > > > > TS> On Tue, 2005-03-15 at 10:25 -0700, Tom Schutter wrote: > > >> On Tue, 2005-03-15 at 01:03 -0500, Jon LaBadie wrote: > > >> > While amanda is always willing to use a new tape in its rotation, > > >> > it refuses to reuse a tape until at least 'tapecycle' number of > > >> > other tapes have been used. > > > > TS> Ooops. I think that should be: > > TS> While amanda is always willing to use a new tape in its rotation, > > TS> it refuses to reuse a tape until at least 'tapecycle-1' number of > > TS> other tapes have been used. > > > > 10 points for that. > > -- > > best regards, > > Stefan Any, with the appropriate label, new or previously used, if not in the tapecycle-1 group. Hmm, as I write that, I'm not sure on a point. Suppose I have a tape with a proper label, but it does not appear in the tapelist file (perhaps due to hand editing or some other cosmic malady). Will amanda use that properly labeled, improperly listed tape? And maybe add it to the tapelist? -- Jon H. LaBadie [EMAIL PROTECTED] JG Computing 4455 Province Line Road(609) 252-0159 Princeton, NJ 08540-4322 (609) 683-7220 (fax)
Re: tapecycle and the doc
On Tue, 2005-03-15 at 23:52 +0100, Stefan G. Weichinger wrote: > Hi, Tom, > > on Dienstag, 15. März 2005 at 23:32 you wrote to amanda-users: > > TS> On Tue, 2005-03-15 at 10:25 -0700, Tom Schutter wrote: > >> On Tue, 2005-03-15 at 01:03 -0500, Jon LaBadie wrote: > >> > While amanda is always willing to use a new tape in its rotation, > >> > it refuses to reuse a tape until at least 'tapecycle' number of > >> > other tapes have been used. > > TS> Ooops. I think that should be: > TS> While amanda is always willing to use a new tape in its rotation, > TS> it refuses to reuse a tape until at least 'tapecycle-1' number of > TS> other tapes have been used. > > 10 points for that. In case you forgot, it does not appear to be fixed here yet: http://www.amanda.org/docs/amanda.8.html -- Tom Schutter (mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]) Platte River Associates, Inc. (http://www.platte.com)
Re: tapecycle and the doc
Hi, Tom, on Donnerstag, 17. März 2005 at 17:27 you wrote to amanda-users: TS> In case you forgot, it does not appear to be fixed here yet: TS> http://www.amanda.org/docs/amanda.8.html Thanks. Had fixed it in the source, but forgot to publish. It's html-only so far, the pdf doesn't get updated that often ... -- Stefan.
WARNING: tapecycle (6) <= runspercycle (6).
Since I upgraded amanda, whenever I run amverify, I get the message WARNING: tapecycle (6) <= runspercycle (6). What does this mean, what is its significance, should I be concerned? I have 6 tapes which are rotated daily for runs on Mon-Sat. Cheers, Tony -- Tony van der Hoff| mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Buckinghamshire, England
Re: tapecycle off by 1?
> I've been waiting to reach the 135th tape. For weeks and weeks now, I see > "The next 6 tapes Amanda expects to used are: a new tape, a new tape, a new > tape, a new tape, a new tape, a new tape". I've been waiting for it to say > it expects tape #1 again. > > Today was suppose to be the big day. > > But here's what the report said: "These dumps were to tapes love129, > love130, love131. The next 6 tapes Amanda expects to used are: a new tape, > love132, love133, love134, love1, love2. > > My question is how come it's not expecting love135, after all that's what I > have specified in amanda.conf. Kinda looks like a "x-1" error. But I'm > sure I'm just missing something, and hoping the list can help me... Probably you missed (skipped) a tape someday. Check your tapelist if every tape love1-love131 was used.
Re: tapecycle off by 1?
Sean Noonan wrote: > > In my amanda.conf, I have the following: > > tapecycle 135 tapes > > But here's what the report said: "These dumps were to tapes love129, > love130, love131. The next 6 tapes Amanda expects to used are: a new tape, > love132, love133, love134, love1, love2. Did you give it love132, love133, love134, love135, love1 and love2? Did it like those 6 tapes? -- [EMAIL PROTECTED] - HMC UNIX Systems Manager
Confused, irritated. Small dumpcycle+tapecycle.
Howdy, Have been running amanda for a while now, but I'm really battling to get it configured right. Almost every day now I have to manually run amflush because amanda is generating dumps that are too big. I have a very small (relatively speaking) tapecycle: 7 tapes. I understand that my dumpcycle should be such that I end up with two full dumps of each disk per tapecycle. But amanda plans according to days, not runs. Am I being unreasonable here. I have Travan 4/8 GB tapes and am backing up around 20GB of data, but each disk is less than 2GB compressed. Should I be splitting the config? Arrrgggh! Regards, Brian Jonnes -- Init Systems - Linux consulting 031 767-0139082 769-2320[EMAIL PROTECTED]
recommended dumpcycle, runspercycle and tapecycle
(I have a few questions and figured I would split them up as opposed to asking all in one email) To be very honest, I have no idea what these values should be for my setup, I have the Adic VLS DLT7000 with 7 tapes in it and I would like to have the ideal setup, I have a couple spare tapes but I don’t really have the resources to buy any more tapes so I would like to rotate between these 7 (or 6, see below) tapes. dumpcycle 6 days runspercycle 6 tapecycle 7 tapes Side note: I am keen on placing a cleaning tape in to the final slot but wouldn’t know how to setup Amanda to know about and take advantage of the cleaning tape. As it stands now I clean the drive once a week manually. Any suggestions about this would be greatly appreciated. TIA Jay
dumpcycle / runspercycle / tapecycle best practices?
Greetings - I'm just starting to get Amanda set up. I have a 5-tape DLT7000 changer. I've been going back and forth about how to structure my backup policies. The amount of data that will be being backed up is around 10 gigs. The DLTIV tapes I'm using should hold around 30 gigs, according to amtapetype. I have a ton of tapes to work with - approximately 80 tapes. Because of the relatively small amount of data I'm working with and the large number of tapes, I figure that I might as well do a full backup every night. Would this make sense? That's my first question. My second question is how to implement this in my amanda.conf. I believe the following should be correct, but I wanted to run it by the list to see if there are any improvements: ... dumpcycle 1 day runspercycle 1 day tapecycle 28 days ... If I'm thinking correctly, this will force Amanda to do a full backup every night, and I'll have 28 days worth of full backups in the cycle. Correct? Any suggestions? Thanks!
amanda dumpcycle and tapecycle config
How would you configure the dumpcycle and tapecyle parameter in amanda.conf to perform full backups for everything in the disklist file every Sunday and differential incrementals on weekdays. By differential incrementals I mean that only cumulative files changed from the last full backup are backed up which would be Sunday in my case. If file "a" was changed on Monday and file "b" was changed on Tuesday, then the backups on Tuesday should contain files a and b. I think I need two separate amanda.conf files running in cron for the different times. I would prefer that all the differential incrementals take place on one tape and the full backup on another set of tapes. Therefore, two tapes will be used per week. One for diff incrementals and one for the full backups. By the way, I am using gnutar instead of dump since my backup server is a linux box and I have Solaris clients. Thanks. end Free, secure Web-based email, now OpenPGP compliant - www.hushmail.com
Re: Endless tapecycle for vtapes
On 06/11/2014 09:53 AM, Artem Konvalyuk wrote: Hello everyone! I'm going to backup some data and store it for many years. The dumpcycle will be 1 week with 5 runs per cycle. Amanda requires positive tapecycle. But I don't really know how long the data will be stored. What is the best way to resolve this problem? I thought about setting tapecycle something like 2, but this isn't the best solution. Why not? You can also mark them as not reusable with 'amadmin CONFIG no-reuse LABEL' Also I'm planning to use vtapes. I don't know how many slots and vtapes will be necessary in future. So is it possible to automate slots and vtapes creation and labeling? As far as I know it is possible to use autolabel directive for labeling. But does it create new slots? man amanda-changers Jean-Louis
Re: Endless tapecycle for vtapes
Thank you for the answer and sorry for the delay in response. I think that
it is better if a user does not think about number of vtapes like in Cobian
Backup. However, I've configured several thousands of vtapes.
Also I used some advice from amanda-changers man page and defined the
changer:
define changer vtapes-auto {
tpchanger "chg-disk:/mnt/amanda-backup/1c-backup/vtapes"
property "num-slot" "11000"
property "auto-create-slot" "yes"
}
Though I thought amanda would create slots as needed, it created them all
at once.
If there won't be any new advice and improvements, I think the problem can
be considered as closed.
Thank you.
Best Regards,
Artem Konvalyuk
2014-06-11 18:09 GMT+04:00 Jean-Louis Martineau :
> On 06/11/2014 09:53 AM, Artem Konvalyuk wrote:
>
>> Hello everyone!
>>
>> I'm going to backup some data and store it for many years. The dumpcycle
>> will be 1 week with 5 runs per cycle. Amanda requires positive tapecycle.
>> But I don't really know how long the data will be stored. What is the best
>> way to resolve this problem? I thought about setting tapecycle something
>> like 2, but this isn't the best solution.
>>
>
> Why not?
> You can also mark them as not reusable with 'amadmin CONFIG no-reuse LABEL'
>
>
>
>> Also I'm planning to use vtapes. I don't know how many slots and vtapes
>> will be necessary in future. So is it possible to automate slots and vtapes
>> creation and labeling?
>>
>> As far as I know it is possible to use autolabel directive for labeling.
>> But does it create new slots?
>>
> man amanda-changers
>
> Jean-Louis
>
>
What tapecycle value to use?
I've never been quite able to figure out what value to use for tapecycle. I expect to run backups on first 4 days of week, so I've set runspercycle 4 Tapes are labelled Mon-1 Tue-1 ... Mon-2 ... ... Thu-4 After the fourth "weekly set", the first one is reused, then the 2nd and 3rd. Set 4 is special, however - I don't want to reuse those tapes, but rather store them in a safe place and replace them with new ones. So after sets 1-4 are written, then sets 1-3 once more, I want to be able to do amlabel ... Mon-4 amlabel ... Tue-4 without being told that those tapes are already active. What exactly do I set "tapecycle" to in order to allow this? -- - Toralf
Re: tapecycle and tape order
On Thu, 21 Oct 2010 22:36:07 -0700 Christ Schlacta wrote: > if I have a theoretical tapecycle of 20, and the obvious 20 tapes, > but a small changer with only 2-5 slots, which I intend to load daily > with the required tapes for the night's run, is it safe to assume > that amanda will *ALWAYS* request tapes in the same numerical order, > or can it at any point pick an arbitrary tape from the list? It is not safe. If you start removing and creating tapes (for example as they wear out, as you need more capacity, etc.) they will get out of numeric sequence. "amadmin tape" is your friend. E.g.: bac...@chaffee:~$ amadmin DailySet1 tape The next Amanda run should go onto tape DailySet1_24 or a new tape. tape DailySet1_25 or a new tape. bac...@chaffee:~$ Your report for each dump will indicate which tape it wants next: These dumps were to tape DailySet1_22. The next 2 tapes Amanda expects to use are: DailySet1_23, DailySet1_24. Unless you muck with the tapes in the interval. (The two reports probably differ because I had a backup going on while I ran amadmin.) Also, you can predict the next several tapes by looking at the file "tapelist". Tapes at the bottom are up next. -- Charles Curley /"\ASCII Ribbon Campaign Looking for fine software \ /Respect for open standards and/or writing? X No HTML/RTF in email http://www.charlescurley.com/ \No M$ Word docs in email Key fingerprint = CE5C 6645 A45A 64E4 94C0 809C FFF6 4C48 4ECD DFDB
Re: tapecycle and tape order
On 10/22/10 1:36 AM, Christ Schlacta wrote: if I have a theoretical tapecycle of 20, and the obvious 20 tapes, but a small changer with only 2-5 slots, which I intend to load daily with the required tapes for the night's run, is it safe to assume that amanda will *ALWAYS* request tapes in the same numerical order, or can it at any point pick an arbitrary tape from the list? See http://wiki.zmanda.com/man/amanda-taperscan.7.html I have around 35 tapes and a library that holds 16. I change out a weeks worth of tapes at a time. It's always worked nicely and sequentially for me, with the one odd caveat that the traditional taper algorithm will skip over a new tape in preference for an already written tape that is eligible for reuse. That only happened when I had a tapecycle that was less than the capacity of the library (otherwise I wouldn't have those tapes cycled back in to the library), and I got around it by temporarily bumping the size of the tapecycle so that it had to use a new tape. -- --- Chris Hoogendyk - O__ Systems Administrator c/ /'_ --- Biology& Geology Departments (*) \(*) -- 140 Morrill Science Center ~~ - University of Massachusetts, Amherst --- Erdös 4
Re: tapecycle and tape order
I'll add to that. We have been fouling up our tape order because the magazine in the jukebox doesn't always get switched or we replace a tape or... I know there must be a better mechanism but I'm not above editing the tapelist file directly. I put the tapes in the order I want, as Charles said, bottom tape is usually taken next, first in the list was most recently used, but there is now a selection issue where amanda is tending towards re-use of available tapes before selecting new tapes. So I also tend to alter the use date for the tape when I move on around in the list. YMMV On Fri, Oct 22, 2010 at 12:42:00AM -0600, Charles Curley wrote: > On Thu, 21 Oct 2010 22:36:07 -0700 > Christ Schlacta wrote: > > > if I have a theoretical tapecycle of 20, and the obvious 20 tapes, > > but a small changer with only 2-5 slots, which I intend to load daily > > with the required tapes for the night's run, is it safe to assume > > that amanda will *ALWAYS* request tapes in the same numerical order, > > or can it at any point pick an arbitrary tape from the list? > > It is not safe. If you start removing and creating tapes (for example > as they wear out, as you need more capacity, etc.) they will get out of > numeric sequence. > > "amadmin tape" is your friend. E.g.: > > bac...@chaffee:~$ amadmin DailySet1 tape > The next Amanda run should go onto tape DailySet1_24 or a new tape. >tape DailySet1_25 or a new tape. > bac...@chaffee:~$ > > Your report for each dump will indicate which tape it wants next: > > These dumps were to tape DailySet1_22. > The next 2 tapes Amanda expects to use are: DailySet1_23, DailySet1_24. > > Unless you muck with the tapes in the interval. > > (The two reports probably differ because I had a backup going on while > I ran amadmin.) > > Also, you can predict the next several tapes by looking at the file > "tapelist". Tapes at the bottom are up next. > > > -- > > Charles Curley /"\ASCII Ribbon Campaign > Looking for fine software \ /Respect for open standards > and/or writing? X No HTML/RTF in email > http://www.charlescurley.com/ \No M$ Word docs in email > > Key fingerprint = CE5C 6645 A45A 64E4 94C0 809C FFF6 4C48 4ECD DFDB --- Brian R Cuttler brian.cutt...@wadsworth.org Computer Systems Support(v) 518 486-1697 Wadsworth Center(f) 518 473-6384 NYS Department of HealthHelp Desk 518 473-0773 IMPORTANT NOTICE: This e-mail and any attachments may contain confidential or sensitive information which is, or may be, legally privileged or otherwise protected by law from further disclosure. It is intended only for the addressee. If you received this in error or from someone who was not authorized to send it to you, please do not distribute, copy or use it or any attachments. Please notify the sender immediately by reply e-mail and delete this from your system. Thank you for your cooperation.
Re: tuning dumpcycle, runspercycle, and tapecycle
On Sunday 13 February 2005 12:02, David Newman wrote: >Greetings. For backups to a server with one DLT-IV drive, I would > like to change the tape once per week. During the week, I would > like to do one full backup on day 1, and incremental backups on > days 2-5. > >To do this, I set "dumpcycle 1 week" and "runspercycle 5" and > "tapecycle 1 tapes". However, in the dump reports, I get this > message every dump, even on the incremental days: Tapecycle is the number of tapes in the inventory that can be re-used. For you, the minimum would be at least 10. >planner: tapecycle (1) <= runspercycle (5) > planner: Full dump of hostname.networktest.com:/ promoted from 6 > days ahead. > >This sounds like amanda does a full dump each time. True? Yes, because it thinks its over-writing the last full level 0 with each new backup. >If so, what is the correct config for one full dump plus four > incremental dumps? > >This is for 2.4.4p4_2 on FreeBSD 4.10. > >Thanks! > >dn -- 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) 99.33% setiathome rank, not too shabby for a WV hillbilly Yahoo.com attorneys please note, additions to this message by Gene Heskett are: Copyright 2005 by Maurice Eugene Heskett, all rights reserved.
Re: tuning dumpcycle, runspercycle, and tapecycle
On Sun, 13 Feb 2005, Gene Heskett wrote: On Sunday 13 February 2005 12:02, David Newman wrote: Greetings. For backups to a server with one DLT-IV drive, I would like to change the tape once per week. During the week, I would like to do one full backup on day 1, and incremental backups on days 2-5. To do this, I set "dumpcycle 1 week" and "runspercycle 5" and "tapecycle 1 tapes". However, in the dump reports, I get this message every dump, even on the incremental days: Tapecycle is the number of tapes in the inventory that can be re-used. For you, the minimum would be at least 10. planner: tapecycle (1) <= runspercycle (5) planner: Full dump of hostname.networktest.com:/ promoted from 6 days ahead. This sounds like amanda does a full dump each time. True? Yes, because it thinks its over-writing the last full level 0 with each new backup. This isn't so good; again, I'm looking for one full dump and four incremental dumps on each tape. (FWIW, the server in question is at a remote location and we can't get to it every day.) Jon LaBadie's post on the Amanda top 10 list suggests that Amanda is not the right tool for this. Is there some way to do this using Amanda? If not, any recommendations for alternatives? thanks dn
Re: tuning dumpcycle, runspercycle, and tapecycle
On Sun, Feb 13, 2005 at 03:20:14PM -0800, David Newman wrote: > On Sun, 13 Feb 2005, Gene Heskett wrote: > > >On Sunday 13 February 2005 12:02, David Newman wrote: > > This isn't so good; again, I'm looking for one full dump and four > incremental dumps on each tape. (FWIW, the server in question is at a > remote location and we can't get to it every day.) > > Jon LaBadie's post on the Amanda top 10 list suggests that Amanda is not > the right tool for this. Is there some way to do this using Amanda? > > If not, any recommendations for alternatives? > Jon LaBadie's post on the top 10 list also discusses the most common alternative. -- Jon H. LaBadie [EMAIL PROTECTED] JG Computing 4455 Province Line Road(609) 252-0159 Princeton, NJ 08540-4322 (609) 683-7220 (fax)
Re: tuning dumpcycle, runspercycle, and tapecycle
On Sunday 13 February 2005 18:20, David Newman wrote: >On Sun, 13 Feb 2005, Gene Heskett wrote: >> On Sunday 13 February 2005 12:02, David Newman wrote: >>> Greetings. For backups to a server with one DLT-IV drive, I would >>> like to change the tape once per week. During the week, I would >>> like to do one full backup on day 1, and incremental backups on >>> days 2-5. >>> >>> To do this, I set "dumpcycle 1 week" and "runspercycle 5" and >>> "tapecycle 1 tapes". However, in the dump reports, I get this >>> message every dump, even on the incremental days: >> >> Tapecycle is the number of tapes in the inventory that can be >> re-used. For you, the minimum would be at least 10. >> >>> planner: tapecycle (1) <= runspercycle (5) >>> planner: Full dump of hostname.networktest.com:/ promoted from >>> 6 days ahead. >>> >>> This sounds like amanda does a full dump each time. True? >> >> Yes, because it thinks its over-writing the last full level 0 with >> each new backup. > >This isn't so good; again, I'm looking for one full dump and four >incremental dumps on each tape. (FWIW, the server in question is at > a remote location and we can't get to it every day.) The only way you are gong to do that is with a big holding disk, which you then dump weekly by putting a tape in the drive and doing a amflush. How many tapes do you actually have, and are they being stored off-site should the worst happen? Anyway for that, dumpcycle=7 runspercycle=5, tapecycle=how many you have. Put a tape in the drive monday morning and do an amflush. Note that the reserve value for the holding disk will need to be reduced considerably in order for amanda to be able to do level 0's to it. The default is that 100% of it is reserved for incrementals. Set that up on that machines crontab that belongs to the operator you configured amanda to be run as. Monday thru friday evenings for exec times. >Jon LaBadie's post on the Amanda top 10 list suggests that Amanda is > not the right tool for this. Is there some way to do this using > Amanda? >If not, any recommendations for alternatives? Most are more costly, often by large amounts. If the tape server itself isn't part of the facilities daily operations, the monday morning flush should be ok.yxt^JYVa Just call that dept, have someone put the tape in that you mailed back to them the previous week, monitor the dumps progress and when its done, have them eject the tape and mail it back to you, provided that you are the offsite storage site. You could even put the tape in and out instructions in the machines crontab by having it send the email to the responsible person. Better yet in a wrapper script but I'll leave the writing of that to you since I'm not privy to enough to even think about it. >thanks > >dn -- 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) 99.33% setiathome rank, not too shabby for a WV hillbilly Yahoo.com attorneys please note, additions to this message by Gene Heskett are: Copyright 2005 by Maurice Eugene Heskett, all rights reserved.
Re: tuning dumpcycle, runspercycle, and tapecycle
David Newman wrote: On Sun, 13 Feb 2005, Gene Heskett wrote: On Sunday 13 February 2005 12:02, David Newman wrote: Greetings. For backups to a server with one DLT-IV drive, I would like to change the tape once per week. During the week, I would like to do one full backup on day 1, and incremental backups on days 2-5. [snip] Yes, because it thinks its over-writing the last full level 0 with each new backup. This isn't so good; again, I'm looking for one full dump and four incremental dumps on each tape. (FWIW, the server in question is at a remote location and we can't get to it every day.) Jon LaBadie's post on the Amanda top 10 list suggests that Amanda is not the right tool for this. Is there some way to do this using Amanda? If not, any recommendations for alternatives? Not exactly an answer to your question, but its a familiar problem; I know 'stuff' about the backups and the machines that are being backed up. I know 'stuff' about rate of file changes and filesystem growth. How do I explain this to amanda? Eg; Cases where zero-level backups are virtually guaranteed to fit onto a tape... I've been experimenting with 'stratecy noinc' (IIRC the spelling of that). Unfortunately, I've found that when, in rare cases, the zero-level won't fit I sometimes see messages like 'cannot switch to incremental' and knock me down with a feather but it doesn't back anything up at all for that DLE. What I'd like to know is how to tell it "always do a full dump except when theres not enough room and then -- and *only* then -- revert to an incremental"
Re: tuning dumpcycle, runspercycle, and tapecycle
On Sunday 13 February 2005 20:27, Steve Wray wrote: >David Newman wrote: >> On Sun, 13 Feb 2005, Gene Heskett wrote: >>> On Sunday 13 February 2005 12:02, David Newman wrote: Greetings. For backups to a server with one DLT-IV drive, I would like to change the tape once per week. During the week, I would like to do one full backup on day 1, and incremental backups on days 2-5. > >[snip] > >>> Yes, because it thinks its over-writing the last full level 0 >>> with each new backup. >> >> This isn't so good; again, I'm looking for one full dump and four >> incremental dumps on each tape. (FWIW, the server in question is >> at a remote location and we can't get to it every day.) >> >> Jon LaBadie's post on the Amanda top 10 list suggests that Amanda >> is not the right tool for this. Is there some way to do this using >> Amanda? >> >> If not, any recommendations for alternatives? > >Not exactly an answer to your question, but its a familiar problem; > I know 'stuff' about the backups and the machines that are being > backed up. I know 'stuff' about rate of file changes and filesystem > growth. How do I explain this to amanda? > >Eg; > >Cases where zero-level backups are virtually guaranteed to fit onto > a tape... I've been experimenting with 'stratecy noinc' (IIRC the > spelling of that). > >Unfortunately, I've found that when, in rare cases, the zero-level > won't fit I sometimes see messages like 'cannot switch to > incremental' and knock me down with a feather but it doesn't back > anything up at all for that DLE. That is by default, the holding area is 100% reserved for incrementals. Add a line in your amanda.conf that says reserved = 30% Make sure that the holding disk is big enough, but drive space is peanuts these days. > >What I'd like to know is how to tell it "always do a full dump > except when theres not enough room and then -- and *only* then -- > revert to an incremental" You are trying to housebreak amanda, which can be done. But it then ignores the smarts built into amanda in the form of amanda collecting its own history data, and reacting to that. Once you start a regular scheduled backup strategy, amanda will typically take around 2 dumpcycles before the individual nites scheduled work will settle down. Subject to modifications if amanda can see that a huge anount of a disklist entry is new every night, which will cause that entry to remain at a level 1 for incrementals. Her targets are: 1) to use about the same amount of media every run in order to make the best use of the facilities it has, and it can be quite good at that, putting 3.9GB on a 4GB tape night after night without hitting an EOT error. 2) to make sure that at any one time, there will have been a full level 0 backup of everything in the disklist at some point in the last "dumpcycle" days worth of tapes. -- 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) 99.33% setiathome rank, not too shabby for a WV hillbilly Yahoo.com attorneys please note, additions to this message by Gene Heskett are: Copyright 2005 by Maurice Eugene Heskett, all rights reserved.
Re: WARNING: tapecycle (6) <= runspercycle (6).
On Saturday 07 January 2006 12:38 pm, Tony van der Hoff wrote: > WARNING: tapecycle (6) <= runspercycle (6). What this means, is that if a dump ever fails (bad tape, network problems, etc.), there is a chance that you will have no backup at all. If tapecycle == dumpcycle, then you are overwriting your very last dump each time, which is not very safe. Better to have tapecycle be at least double dumpcycle, so that you have a spare backup if the one you are erasing has any problem. Cheers, --Ian -- Zmanda: Open Source Data Protection and Archiving. http://www.zmanda.com
Re: WARNING: tapecycle (6) <= runspercycle (6).
Ian Turner <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> On Saturday 07 January 2006 12:38 pm, Tony van der Hoff wrote:
> > WARNING: tapecycle (6) <= runspercycle (6).
>
> What this means, is that if a dump ever fails (bad tape, network problems,
> etc.), there is a chance that you will have no backup at all.
>
> If tapecycle == dumpcycle, then you are overwriting your very last dump
> each time, which is not very safe. Better to have tapecycle be at least
> double dumpcycle, so that you have a spare backup if the one you are
> erasing has any problem.
>
Thanks, Ian, that makes sense. Something's evidently awry.
I have 6 tapes, HomeDumps_01 -> HomeDumps_06. Each day, Mon-Sat, I run
HomeDumps with a different tape, repeating that the following week. amverify
correctly asks me for the appropriate tape each day, before coming out with
the warning.
My amanda.conf includes:
dumpcycle 1 weeks
runspercycle 6 # each weekday
tapecycle 6 tapes # one for each day
Which of these should I change?
I am certainly not overwriting my last dump; in fact I have 5 generations of
dump :)
Oh, and don't bother to post both to me AND to the list; just one will do :)
--
Tony van der Hoff| mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Buckinghamshire, England
Re: WARNING: tapecycle (6) <= runspercycle (6).
Tony van der Hoff wrote:
I have 6 tapes, HomeDumps_01 -> HomeDumps_06. Each day, Mon-Sat, I run
HomeDumps with a different tape, repeating that the following week. amverify
correctly asks me for the appropriate tape each day, before coming out with
the warning.
My amanda.conf includes:
dumpcycle 1 weeks
runspercycle 6 # each weekday
tapecycle 6 tapes # one for each day
Which of these should I change?
I would recommend to add some tapes to your cycle ( = amlabel them) and
adjust the parameter "tapecycle" accordingly.
Stefan
Re: WARNING: tapecycle (6) <= runspercycle (6).
On Saturday 07 January 2006 01:17 pm, Tony van der Hoff wrote: > I am certainly not overwriting my last dump; in fact I have 5 generations > of dump :) If you are doing a full dump everyday, then set your dumpcycle to 1 day, and your runspercycle to 1. If you are doing a full dump once a week (your configuration allows this as a possibility), then you should add more tapes and increase tapecycle accordingly. Cheers, --Ian -- Zmanda: Open Source Data Protection and Archiving. http://www.zmanda.com
Re: WARNING: tapecycle (6) <= runspercycle (6).
Ian Turner <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > On Saturday 07 January 2006 01:17 pm, Tony van der Hoff wrote: > > I am certainly not overwriting my last dump; in fact I have 5 generations > > of dump :) > > If you are doing a full dump everyday, then set your dumpcycle to 1 day, > and your runspercycle to 1. > Ahh, right, now I get it; thanks. [snip] > -- Tony van der Hoff | mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Buckinghamshire, England
Re: Confused, irritated. Small dumpcycle+tapecycle.
On Fri, Aug 16, 2002 at 07:59:52PM +0200, Brian Jonnes wrote: > Howdy, > > Have been running amanda for a while now, but I'm really battling to get it > configured right. Almost every day now I have to manually run amflush because > amanda is generating dumps that are too big. > > I have a very small (relatively speaking) tapecycle: 7 tapes. I understand > that my dumpcycle should be such that I end up with two full dumps of each Well the optimum is 40 full dumps per tapecycle -- JOKE!! No, it is not that you should have 2, but it is recommended that you have at least 2. My config happens to have a minimum of 4 in 24 tapes. > disk per tapecycle. But amanda plans according to days, not runs. Have you seen the parameter runspercycle. It is unitless, not days or weeks. > Am I being unreasonable here. I have Travan 4/8 GB tapes and am backing up > around 20GB of data, but each disk is less than 2GB compressed. Should I be > splitting the config? Some info about your config would eliminate guess work. 2 dumpcycles in 7 tapes, looks like 3 runs per dumpcycle plus 1 extra safety tape. OK, your dumpcycle could be 1 week, 3 runs MWF? Or 3 days, dump every day, but in each case 3 runs per dumpcycle. That gives us 3 tapes @ about 3.8GB/tape, about 11.4GB to work with for a set of full dumps plus incrementals. After compression, is there any possibility of your 20GB reliably fitting in this amount of tape along with the incrementals? Only you know your data, but it does not seem likely to me. -- Jon H. LaBadie [EMAIL PROTECTED] JG Computing 4455 Province Line Road(609) 252-0159 Princeton, NJ 08540-4322 (609) 683-7220 (fax)
Question about dumbcycle, tapecycle and runspercycle
Hi! A short question. I would like to have the possibility to recover a backup thats 14 Days old. I want to use virtuel tapes and a tape-changer for this. Every 7 Days Amanda should do a full-backup. Am i right that i need a tapecycle of 14 a runspercycle of 13 and a dumpcycle of 7? If not, what must i set at tapecycle, runspercycle and dumpcycle to get this work? Thank you very much! Kind regards Sebastian
tapecycle: Are "no-reuse" tapes counted?
It looks like Amanda will count *all* tapes written after the tape in question, even the ones marked as "no-reuse", when comparing count with tapecycle to determine if a tape may be overwritten. Is this observation correct? Should "no-reuse" tapes be included like that? -- Toralf
Re: recommended dumpcycle, runspercycle and tapecycle
--On Monday, November 03, 2003 15:13:44 -0500 Jason Lavigne <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > (I have a few questions and figured I would split them up as opposed to > asking all in one email) > > > > To be very honest, I have no idea what these values should be for my > setup, I have the Adic VLS DLT7000 with 7 tapes in it and I would like > to have the ideal setup, I have a couple spare tapes but I don't really > have the resources to buy any more tapes so I would like to rotate > between these 7 (or 6, see below) tapes. > > > > dumpcycle 6 days > > runspercycle 6 > > tapecycle 7 tapes If you're running 6 days per week and not running it 1 day, I would suggest changing dumpcycle to 7. If you run it 7 days a week then what you have is fine. > > Side note: I am keen on placing a cleaning tape in to the final slot but > wouldn't know how to setup Amanda to know about and take advantage of > the cleaning tape. As it stands now I clean the drive once a week > manually. Any suggestions about this would be greatly appreciated. The answer to 'the best values' would be 'it depends'. How much data do you want backed up, how long is your backup window, how old can the data be on a restore and still be acceptable, will you ever need to restore data previous to the last backup, etc. If you aren't currently using much of your tape, you could shorten your dumpcycle and runspercycle to 3 days and give yourself two fulls per week instead of one. Frank > > > TIA > > > > Jay > -- Frank Smith [EMAIL PROTECTED] Systems Administrator Voice: 512-374-4673 Hoover's Online Fax: 512-374-4501
RE: recommended dumpcycle, runspercycle and tapecycle
> If you run it 7 days a week then what you have is fine. Cool, I am running it every night. To answer your questions, > How much data do you want backed up currently I would like to plan for 35GB, one full tape, but it is under 10GB (I think, could be a little more) > how long is your backup window as long as I need, currently I run at midnight and an hour or two is just fine > how old can the data be on a restore and still be acceptable one week is fine by me, I am more concerned about getting last nights backup than last weeks (I am sure this will bite me later) > will you ever need to restore data previous to the last backup, etc. not at the moment, not from tape. I do have a RAID 5 system that I backup to as well (and this is included in the Amanda tape backups) It would be great if each tape is one days worth of backups, I have a ton to read now that I know about "the chapter" so I may change my mind on this later, but as it stands now a full backup each day is what I am looking at doing. Thanks for your time, Jay -Original Message- From: Frank Smith [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Monday, November 03, 2003 3:54 PM To: Jason Lavigne; [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: recommended dumpcycle, runspercycle and tapecycle --On Monday, November 03, 2003 15:13:44 -0500 Jason Lavigne <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > (I have a few questions and figured I would split them up as opposed to > asking all in one email) > > > > To be very honest, I have no idea what these values should be for my > setup, I have the Adic VLS DLT7000 with 7 tapes in it and I would like > to have the ideal setup, I have a couple spare tapes but I don't really > have the resources to buy any more tapes so I would like to rotate > between these 7 (or 6, see below) tapes. > > > > dumpcycle 6 days > > runspercycle 6 > > tapecycle 7 tapes If you're running 6 days per week and not running it 1 day, I would suggest changing dumpcycle to 7. If you run it 7 days a week then what you have is fine. > > Side note: I am keen on placing a cleaning tape in to the final slot but > wouldn't know how to setup Amanda to know about and take advantage of > the cleaning tape. As it stands now I clean the drive once a week > manually. Any suggestions about this would be greatly appreciated. The answer to 'the best values' would be 'it depends'. How much data do you want backed up, how long is your backup window, how old can the data be on a restore and still be acceptable, will you ever need to restore data previous to the last backup, etc. If you aren't currently using much of your tape, you could shorten your dumpcycle and runspercycle to 3 days and give yourself two fulls per week instead of one. Frank > > > TIA > > > > Jay > -- Frank Smith [EMAIL PROTECTED] Systems Administrator Voice: 512-374-4673 Hoover's Online Fax: 512-374-4501
RE: recommended dumpcycle, runspercycle and tapecycle
--On Monday, November 03, 2003 16:05:06 -0500 Jason Lavigne <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: >> If you run it 7 days a week then what you have is fine. > Cool, I am running it every night. > > To answer your questions, >> How much data do you want backed up > currently I would like to plan for 35GB, one full tape, but it is under > 10GB (I think, could be a little more) >> how long is your backup window > as long as I need, currently I run at midnight and an hour or two is > just fine >> how old can the data be on a restore and still be acceptable > one week is fine by me, I am more concerned about getting last nights > backup than last weeks (I am sure this will bite me later) >> will you ever need to restore data previous to the last backup, etc. > not at the moment, not from tape. I do have a RAID 5 system that I > backup to as well (and this is included in the Amanda tape backups) > > It would be great if each tape is one days worth of backups, I have a > ton to read now that I know about "the chapter" so I may change my mind > on this later, but as it stands now a full backup each day is what I am > looking at doing. If a full backup of all your data fits on one tape and you aren't time constrained, I would recommend doing a full on everything every night. Set dumpcycle to 0 and runspercycle to 1. It will make restores easier (you'll only need one tape) and you'll have multple tapes to recover from if one should fail. When your data gets bigger and no longer fits on a tape, you can change dumpcycle and runspercycle to 2 and you'll still have at least 3 full backups of everything on tape, or change runtapes to 2 and only have 3 days of historical backups. Frank > > Thanks for your time, > > Jay > > > -- Frank Smith [EMAIL PROTECTED] Systems Administrator Voice: 512-374-4673 Hoover's Online Fax: 512-374-4501
RE: recommended dumpcycle, runspercycle and tapecycle
Cool, thanks :) Jay -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Frank Smith Sent: Monday, November 03, 2003 4:19 PM To: Jason Lavigne; [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: RE: recommended dumpcycle, runspercycle and tapecycle --On Monday, November 03, 2003 16:05:06 -0500 Jason Lavigne <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: >> If you run it 7 days a week then what you have is fine. > Cool, I am running it every night. > > To answer your questions, >> How much data do you want backed up > currently I would like to plan for 35GB, one full tape, but it is under > 10GB (I think, could be a little more) >> how long is your backup window > as long as I need, currently I run at midnight and an hour or two is > just fine >> how old can the data be on a restore and still be acceptable > one week is fine by me, I am more concerned about getting last nights > backup than last weeks (I am sure this will bite me later) >> will you ever need to restore data previous to the last backup, etc. > not at the moment, not from tape. I do have a RAID 5 system that I > backup to as well (and this is included in the Amanda tape backups) > > It would be great if each tape is one days worth of backups, I have a > ton to read now that I know about "the chapter" so I may change my mind > on this later, but as it stands now a full backup each day is what I am > looking at doing. If a full backup of all your data fits on one tape and you aren't time constrained, I would recommend doing a full on everything every night. Set dumpcycle to 0 and runspercycle to 1. It will make restores easier (you'll only need one tape) and you'll have multple tapes to recover from if one should fail. When your data gets bigger and no longer fits on a tape, you can change dumpcycle and runspercycle to 2 and you'll still have at least 3 full backups of everything on tape, or change runtapes to 2 and only have 3 days of historical backups. Frank > > Thanks for your time, > > Jay > > > -- Frank Smith [EMAIL PROTECTED] Systems Administrator Voice: 512-374-4673 Hoover's Online Fax: 512-374-4501
Re: dumpcycle / runspercycle / tapecycle best practices?
On Wed, Nov 03, 2004 at 02:44:55PM -0600, Erik Anderson wrote: > Greetings - I'm just starting to get Amanda set up. I have a 5-tape > DLT7000 changer. I've been going back and forth about how to > structure my backup policies. > > The amount of data that will be being backed up is around 10 gigs. > The DLTIV tapes I'm using should hold around 30 gigs, according to > amtapetype. I have a ton of tapes to work with - approximately 80 > tapes. Because of the relatively small amount of data I'm working > with and the large number of tapes, I figure that I might as well do a > full backup every night. Would this make sense? > > That's my first question. My second question is how to implement this > in my amanda.conf. I believe the following should be correct, but I > wanted to run it by the list to see if there are any improvements: > > ... > dumpcycle 1 day > runspercycle 1 day > tapecycle 28 days > ... > > If I'm thinking correctly, this will force Amanda to do a full backup > every night, and I'll have 28 days worth of full backups in the cycle. > Correct? Not quite. The tapecycle means amanda will not overwrite a tape until 27 others in the tapelist have been used. You could actually cycle 40 or 80 tapes and leave the tapecycle at 28 or reduce it to 7. Tape- cycle is how soon can a tape be reused. And, get that "day" and "days" off of the runspercycle and tapecycle lines. They are unit-less integers. One run per day. Twenty eight tapes minimum in the cycle. Same with runspercycle. -- Jon H. LaBadie [EMAIL PROTECTED] JG Computing 4455 Province Line Road(609) 252-0159 Princeton, NJ 08540-4322 (609) 683-7220 (fax)
Re: dumpcycle / runspercycle / tapecycle best practices?
--On Wednesday, November 03, 2004 14:44:55 -0600 Erik Anderson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Greetings - I'm just starting to get Amanda set up. I have a 5-tape > DLT7000 changer. I've been going back and forth about how to > structure my backup policies. > > The amount of data that will be being backed up is around 10 gigs. > The DLTIV tapes I'm using should hold around 30 gigs, according to > amtapetype. I have a ton of tapes to work with - approximately 80 > tapes. Because of the relatively small amount of data I'm working > with and the large number of tapes, I figure that I might as well do a > full backup every night. Would this make sense? It wil make restores simpler. The only reason I can think of to consider not doing it would be if you had a very short backup window or very slow network link between clients and server. Otherwise I'd go for the fulls every day. > > That's my first question. My second question is how to implement this > in my amanda.conf. I believe the following should be correct, but I > wanted to run it by the list to see if there are any improvements: > > ... > dumpcycle 1 day > runspercycle 1 day runspercycle has no units, it just the number of runs per dumpcycle, so just make it 1. > tapecycle 28 days > ... > > If I'm thinking correctly, this will force Amanda to do a full backup > every night, and I'll have 28 days worth of full backups in the cycle. > Correct? To make doubly sure, you could define allways-full in your dumptype. Frank > > Any suggestions? Thanks! -- Frank Smith [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sr. Systems Administrator Voice: 512-374-4673 Hoover's Online Fax: 512-374-4501
Re: dumpcycle / runspercycle / tapecycle best practices?
On Wed, 3 Nov 2004 16:20:18 -0500, Jon LaBadie <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Not quite. The tapecycle means amanda will not overwrite a tape until > 27 others in the tapelist have been used. You could actually cycle > 40 or 80 tapes and leave the tapecycle at 28 or reduce it to 7. Tape- > cycle is how soon can a tape be reused. That makes tapecycle much easier to understand. Thanks! Yeah I know that I could cycle a bunch more tapes, but frankly, I don't really want (nor have the need) for that much retention. > And, get that "day" and "days" off of the runspercycle and tapecycle lines. > They are unit-less integers. One run per day. Twenty eight tapes minimum > in the cycle. > Same with runspercycle. Yeah - that was a typo on my part...thanks for pointing it out, though.
Re: dumpcycle / runspercycle / tapecycle best practices?
On Wed, 03 Nov 2004 15:24:43 -0600, Frank Smith <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > It wil make restores simpler. The only reason I can think of to > consider not doing it would be if you had a very short backup window or > very slow network link between clients and server. Otherwise I'd go > for the fulls every day. Sounds like fulls are the way to go...my backup window is not a problem, and the systems are all connected via switched 10/100 ethernet, so that shouldn't be an issue either. > runspercycle has no units, it just the number of runs per dumpcycle, > so just make it 1. Sweet - thanks. > To make doubly sure, you could define allways-full in your dumptype. That's good to know - I'll put that into my dumptype.
Re: dumpcycle / runspercycle / tapecycle best practices?
Hi,
Erik Anderson --> amanda-users (2004-11-03 14:44:55 -0600):
[...]
> full backup every night.
[...]
> dumpcycle 1 day
According to the amanda man page you should set dumpcycle to zero to
get full dumps each run.
Hmm, when setting dumpcycle to zero, to what value should runspercycle
be set if amdump runs once a day? Zero ("same as dumpcycle") or one?
Does it matter at all?
TIA, Jukka
--
bashian roulette:
$ ((RANDOM%6)) || rm -rf ~
Re: dumpcycle / runspercycle / tapecycle best practices?
On Wed, Nov 03, 2004 at 10:53:59PM +0100, Jukka Salmi wrote:
> Hi,
>
> Erik Anderson --> amanda-users (2004-11-03 14:44:55 -0600):
> [...]
> > full backup every night.
> [...]
> > dumpcycle 1 day
>
> According to the amanda man page you should set dumpcycle to zero to
> get full dumps each run.
>
> Hmm, when setting dumpcycle to zero, to what value should runspercycle
> be set if amdump runs once a day? Zero ("same as dumpcycle") or one?
> Does it matter at all?
Good point, one advantage the minor situation that you run a second
amdump in the same day. With dumpcycle 0 days you are certain to be
due for full dumps again.
BTW on the tapecycle, an advantage of having more tapes in cycle than
the number listed in amanda.conf is the occasional need to take a tape
out of rotation. Bad or damaged tape, temporary or permanent archiving,
or whatever. Having more tapes in rotation than the tapecycle count
means you do not have to amlabel a new tape right then and there.
--
Jon H. LaBadie [EMAIL PROTECTED]
JG Computing
4455 Province Line Road(609) 252-0159
Princeton, NJ 08540-4322 (609) 683-7220 (fax)
Re: dumpcycle / runspercycle / tapecycle best practices?
On Wed, 3 Nov 2004 17:02:02 -0500, Jon LaBadie <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > BTW on the tapecycle, an advantage of having more tapes in cycle than > the number listed in amanda.conf is the occasional need to take a tape > out of rotation. Bad or damaged tape, temporary or permanent archiving, > or whatever. Having more tapes in rotation than the tapecycle count > means you do not have to amlabel a new tape right then and there. That's a great idea. On a different note, I just attempted to do my first "amlabel" operation, and this is what I got: [EMAIL PROTECTED] amanda $ amlabel LPD LPD000 slot 0 amlabel: could not load slot "0": could not read result from "/usr/libexec/chg-scsi" Ideas? Google didn't seem to have any suggestions.
Re: dumpcycle / runspercycle / tapecycle best practices?
On Wed, Nov 03, 2004 at 04:05:56PM -0600, Erik Anderson wrote: > > On a different note, I just attempted to do my first "amlabel" > operation, and this is what I got: > > [EMAIL PROTECTED] amanda $ amlabel LPD LPD000 slot 0 > amlabel: could not load slot "0": could not read result from > "/usr/libexec/chg-scsi" > > Ideas? Google didn't seem to have any suggestions. > Don't amlabel until you can use amtape and amcheck. -- Jon H. LaBadie [EMAIL PROTECTED] JG Computing 4455 Province Line Road(609) 252-0159 Princeton, NJ 08540-4322 (609) 683-7220 (fax)
Re: dumpcycle / runspercycle / tapecycle best practices?
On Wed, 3 Nov 2004 17:22:14 -0500, Jon LaBadie <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Don't amlabel until you can use amtape and amcheck. I get a similar result from amtape: [EMAIL PROTECTED] amanda $ amtape LPD show amtape: could not get changer info: could not read result from "/usr/libexec/chg-scsi"
Re: dumpcycle / runspercycle / tapecycle best practices?
On Wed, Nov 03, 2004 at 04:25:37PM -0600, Erik Anderson wrote: > On Wed, 3 Nov 2004 17:22:14 -0500, Jon LaBadie <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > Don't amlabel until you can use amtape and amcheck. > > I get a similar result from amtape: > > [EMAIL PROTECTED] amanda $ amtape LPD show > amtape: could not get changer info: could not read result from > "/usr/libexec/chg-scsi" I've not used the scsi chg script/program. Have you read and done what it says in the documentation and example files to set up config files for chg-scsi ... -- Jon H. LaBadie [EMAIL PROTECTED] JG Computing 4455 Province Line Road(609) 252-0159 Princeton, NJ 08540-4322 (609) 683-7220 (fax)
Re: dumpcycle / runspercycle / tapecycle best practices?
On Wed, 3 Nov 2004 17:46:19 -0500, Jon LaBadie <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > I've not used the scsi chg script/program. > Have you read and done what it says in the documentation > and example files to set up config files for chg-scsi ... Yes, indeed I have. Here's my chg-scsi.conf: number_configs 1 eject 1 # Tapedrives need an eject command sleep 5 # Seconds to wait until the tape gets ready cleanmax10 # How many times could a cleaning tape get used changerdev /dev/sg1 # # Next comes the data for drive 0 # config 0 drivenum0 dev /dev/nst0 # the device that is used for the tapedrive 0 startuse0 # The slots associated with the drive 0 enduse 5 # statfile/etc/amanda/tape-slot # The file where the actual slot is stored cleancart 5 # the slot where the cleaningcartridge for drive 0 is located cleanfile /etc/amanda/tape-clean # The file where the cleanings are recorded usagecount /etc/amanda/backup/totaltime
Re: dumpcycle / runspercycle / tapecycle best practices?
On Wed, 3 Nov 2004 17:46:19 -0500, Jon LaBadie <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > I've not used the scsi chg script/program. > Have you read and done what it says in the documentation > and example files to set up config files for chg-scsi ... I'm assumming that chg-scsi is the correct glue script for my environment...I have a 6-tape changer with one drive.
Re: dumpcycle / runspercycle / tapecycle best practices?
On Wed, Nov 03, 2004 at 05:14:35PM -0600, Erik Anderson wrote: > On Wed, 3 Nov 2004 17:46:19 -0500, Jon LaBadie <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > I've not used the scsi chg script/program. > > Have you read and done what it says in the documentation > > and example files to set up config files for chg-scsi ... > > I'm assumming that chg-scsi is the correct glue script for my > environment...I have a 6-tape changer with one drive. No, that is just one of several possibilities. Tape drives have traditionally been scsi. -- Jon H. LaBadie [EMAIL PROTECTED] JG Computing 4455 Province Line Road(609) 252-0159 Princeton, NJ 08540-4322 (609) 683-7220 (fax)
Re: dumpcycle / runspercycle / tapecycle best practices?
Hi, as i'm using chg-scsi with some changers under linux let's check a few things : 1.) remove all comments from chg-scsi.conf, sometimes i had problems with chg-scsi which went away after removing them all. 2.) set lastslot to 4 or your cleaningtape will be loaded in every search cycle through the magazin. (probably not what you want) 3.) your changer and your tapedrive are recognized at bootup by the kernel, correct? ( do you see both when you do a "cat /proc/scsi/scsi" ?) Christoph Erik Anderson schrieb: On Wed, 3 Nov 2004 17:46:19 -0500, Jon LaBadie <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: I've not used the scsi chg script/program. Have you read and done what it says in the documentation and example files to set up config files for chg-scsi ... Yes, indeed I have. Here's my chg-scsi.conf: number_configs 1 eject 1 # Tapedrives need an eject command sleep 5 # Seconds to wait until the tape gets ready cleanmax10 # How many times could a cleaning tape get used changerdev /dev/sg1 # # Next comes the data for drive 0 # config 0 drivenum0 dev /dev/nst0 # the device that is used for the tapedrive 0 startuse0 # The slots associated with the drive 0 enduse 5 # statfile/etc/amanda/tape-slot # The file where the actual slot is stored cleancart 5 # the slot where the cleaningcartridge for drive 0 is located cleanfile /etc/amanda/tape-clean # The file where the cleanings are recorded usagecount /etc/amanda/backup/totaltime
Re: dumpcycle / runspercycle / tapecycle best practices?
On Thu, 04 Nov 2004 09:23:10 +0100, Christoph Scheeder <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Hi, > as i'm using chg-scsi with some changers under linux let's check a few > things : > 1.) remove all comments from chg-scsi.conf, sometimes i had problems > with chg-scsi which went away after removing them all. > 2.) set lastslot to 4 or your cleaningtape will be loaded in every > search cycle through the magazin. (probably not what you want) > 3.) your changer and your tapedrive are recognized at bootup by the > kernel, correct? > ( do you see both when you do a "cat /proc/scsi/scsi" ?) Hello Christoph - I have removed all of the comments from my chg-scsi.conf, and I have noticed no change in behavior. And yes, my changer and tape drive are surely recognized by the kernel. I am able to load/read/write/unload tapes using the mt and mtx commands. Thanks! -Erik
Re: dumpcycle / runspercycle / tapecycle best practices?
On Thu, Nov 04, 2004 at 08:31:31AM -0600, Erik Anderson enlightened us: > On Thu, 04 Nov 2004 09:23:10 +0100, Christoph Scheeder > <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > Hi, > > as i'm using chg-scsi with some changers under linux let's check a few > > things : > > 1.) remove all comments from chg-scsi.conf, sometimes i had problems > > with chg-scsi which went away after removing them all. > > 2.) set lastslot to 4 or your cleaningtape will be loaded in every > > search cycle through the magazin. (probably not what you want) > > 3.) your changer and your tapedrive are recognized at bootup by the > > kernel, correct? > > ( do you see both when you do a "cat /proc/scsi/scsi" ?) > > Hello Christoph - I have removed all of the comments from my > chg-scsi.conf, and I have noticed no change in behavior. And yes, my > changer and tape drive are surely recognized by the kernel. I am able > to load/read/write/unload tapes using the mt and mtx commands. > Then why not use chg-zd-mtx? :-) -- Matt Hyclak Department of Mathematics Department of Social Work Ohio University (740) 593-1263 pgpYZq8e1K2Eg.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: dumpcycle / runspercycle / tapecycle best practices?
On Wed, Nov 03, 2004 at 10:53:59PM +0100, Jukka Salmi wrote:
> Hmm, when setting dumpcycle to zero, to what value should runspercycle
> be set if amdump runs once a day? Zero ("same as dumpcycle") or one?
Both settings are equivalent. From planner.c:
if (runs_per_cycle <= 0) {
runs_per_cycle = 1;
}
So pick the one that looks nicer :-)
--
| | /\
|-_|/ > Eric Siegerman, Toronto, Ont.[EMAIL PROTECTED]
| | /
The animal that coils in a circle is the serpent; that's why so
many cults and myths of the serpent exist, because it's hard to
represent the return of the sun by the coiling of a hippopotamus.
- Umberto Eco, "Foucault's Pendulum"
Re: dumpcycle / runspercycle / tapecycle best practices?
Eric Siegerman --> amanda-users (2004-11-04 14:02:13 -0500):
> On Wed, Nov 03, 2004 at 10:53:59PM +0100, Jukka Salmi wrote:
> > Hmm, when setting dumpcycle to zero, to what value should runspercycle
> > be set if amdump runs once a day? Zero ("same as dumpcycle") or one?
>
> Both settings are equivalent. From planner.c:
> if (runs_per_cycle <= 0) {
> runs_per_cycle = 1;
> }
>
> So pick the one that looks nicer :-)
Fine, thanks!
Jukka
--
bashian roulette:
$ ((RANDOM%6)) || rm -rf ~
RE: What tapecycle value to use?
I have an alternative suggestion for you. I've got two different conf's, one for my regular weekly rotational stuff, and one called "Archives" for my permanent archives. Whenever I want to make a permanent backup of my systems, I just run a dump of the Archives conf, that way I don't have to mess around with trying to make permanents out of my daily rotationals. Michael Martinez > -Original Message- > From: Toralf Lund [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] > Sent: Wednesday, October 09, 2002 10:04 AM > To: Amanda Mailing List > Subject: What tapecycle value to use? > > > I've never been quite able to figure out what value to use > for tapecycle. > > I expect to run backups on first 4 days of week, so I've set > runspercycle 4 > > Tapes are labelled > Mon-1 > Tue-1 > ... > Mon-2 > ... > ... > Thu-4 > > After the fourth "weekly set", the first one is reused, then > the 2nd and > 3rd. Set 4 is special, however - I don't want to reuse those > tapes, but > rather store them in a safe place and replace them with new > ones. So after > sets 1-4 are written, then sets 1-3 once more, I want to be able to do > > amlabel ... Mon-4 > amlabel ... Tue-4 > > without being told that those tapes are already active. What > exactly do I > set "tapecycle" to in order to allow this? > -- > - Toralf >
Re: What tapecycle value to use?
On Wednesday 09 October 2002 10:04, Toralf Lund wrote: >I've never been quite able to figure out what value to use for > tapecycle. > >I expect to run backups on first 4 days of week, so I've set > runspercycle 4 > >Tapes are labelled >Mon-1 >Tue-1 >... >Mon-2 >... >... >Thu-4 > >After the fourth "weekly set", the first one is reused, then the > 2nd and 3rd. Set 4 is special, however - I don't want to reuse > those tapes, but rather store them in a safe place and replace > them with new ones. So after sets 1-4 are written, then sets 1-3 > once more, I want to be able to do > >amlabel ... Mon-4 >amlabel ... Tue-4 > >without being told that those tapes are already active. What > exactly do I set "tapecycle" to in order to allow this? You are trying to dictate to amanda, and that tends to be a hassle. With the inevitable, often human error generated reruns, (forgetting to change the tapes even after amanda sends you an email telling you too is a good example:-) that require the next tape in the tapecycle which in turn throws your carefully crafted schedule out the window, its easier to just let amanda do her thing. She is very good at it. Tapecycle is however many tapes you actually have in the rotation, and should be enough that you have at least 2 consequitive fulls of each entry in the disklist on hand at all times. Here it runs every night, so the dumpcycle is one week or 7 days. runspercycle is then 7, and tapecycle is 20. -- Cheers, Gene AMD K6-III@500mhz 320M Athlon1600XP@1400mhz 512M 99.17% setiathome rank, not too shabby for a WV hillbilly
Re: What tapecycle value to use?
> I have an alternative suggestion for you. > > I've got two different conf's, one for my regular weekly rotational > stuff, > and one called "Archives" for my permanent archives. > > Whenever I want to make a permanent backup of my systems, I just run a > dump > of the Archives conf, that way I don't have to mess around with trying to > make permanents out of my daily rotationals. Doesn't that introduce a lot of extra complexity and additional work? Also, I want to be sure that the permanent backups contain exactly the same directories as the "normal" ones - seems to me that the best way to do that is to use the same config. - Toralf > > Michael Martinez > > > -Original Message- > > From: Toralf Lund [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] > > Sent: Wednesday, October 09, 2002 10:04 AM > > To: Amanda Mailing List > > Subject: What tapecycle value to use? > > > > > > I've never been quite able to figure out what value to use > > for tapecycle. > > > > I expect to run backups on first 4 days of week, so I've set > > runspercycle 4 > > > > Tapes are labelled > > Mon-1 > > Tue-1 > > ... > > Mon-2 > > ... > > ... > > Thu-4 > > > > After the fourth "weekly set", the first one is reused, then > > the 2nd and > > 3rd. Set 4 is special, however - I don't want to reuse those > > tapes, but > > rather store them in a safe place and replace them with new > > ones. So after > > sets 1-4 are written, then sets 1-3 once more, I want to be able to do > > > > amlabel ... Mon-4 > > amlabel ... Tue-4 > > > > without being told that those tapes are already active. What > > exactly do I > > set "tapecycle" to in order to allow this? > > -- > > - Toralf > > >
Re: What tapecycle value to use?
> On Wednesday 09 October 2002 10:04, Toralf Lund wrote: > >I've never been quite able to figure out what value to use for > > tapecycle. > > > >I expect to run backups on first 4 days of week, so I've set > > runspercycle 4 > > > >Tapes are labelled > >Mon-1 > >Tue-1 > >... > >Mon-2 > >... > >... > >Thu-4 > > > >After the fourth "weekly set", the first one is reused, then the > > 2nd and 3rd. Set 4 is special, however - I don't want to reuse > > those tapes, but rather store them in a safe place and replace > > them with new ones. So after sets 1-4 are written, then sets 1-3 > > once more, I want to be able to do > > > >amlabel ... Mon-4 > >amlabel ... Tue-4 > > > >without being told that those tapes are already active. What > > exactly do I set "tapecycle" to in order to allow this? > > You are trying to dictate to amanda, and that tends to be a hassle. > With the inevitable, often human error generated reruns, > (forgetting to change the tapes even after amanda sends you an > email telling you too is a good example:-) that require the next > tape in the tapecycle which in turn throws your carefully crafted > schedule out the window, its easier to just let amanda do her > thing. She is very good at it. Well, no matter what I do, I need *some* way to label new tapes without too many '-f's etc. Also, I know some people are using separate configs for permanent backups, but it seems like this requires a lot of additional work, and also introduces the risk of not having the same directories backed up on "normal" and "archival" runs (which is essential.) > Tapecycle is however many tapes you actually have in the rotation, > and should be enough that you have at least 2 consequitive fulls of > each entry in the disklist on hand at all times. Here it runs > every night, so the dumpcycle is one week or 7 days. runspercycle > is then 7, and tapecycle is 20. Well, maybe I should just use 10 or something (4 runspercycle + 1 extra tape * 2), but what tapes will be used, then? I think the real question is: How does Amanda decide what tape to use next, and what tapes are considered active, when there are more than "tapecycle" different labels? - Toralf
