Amidxtaped protocol

This page picks up where Amandad Service Protocol leaves off. Amidxtaped sends exactly one dump in response to a set of parameters on its control stream. To get another dump, start a new amidxtaped.

REQ

An amidxtaped REQ packet looks like:

SERVICE amidxtaped
OPTIONS features=''features'';auth=''auth'';

All of the interesting specification of which data to send comes on the control connection, below.

REP

Amidxtaped sets up two streams in its REP packet:

CONNECT CTL ctlfd DATA datafd

the control connection is bidirectional, while the data connection only carries data from amidxtaped.

Control Connection

Note that when amidxtaped is started directly from inetd, the main socket becomes the control connection after the SECURITY line.

The control connection is a set of specifier lines, followed by an "END" line. All lines are terminated by "\r\n". Are you still asking why? Accept the insanity.

Not all specifiers must be given in any particular request. The available specifiers are:

LABEL=label

not a label, but a Tapelist Specification giving the files to be recovered

FSF=fsf

seek to this file before starting the recovery (ignored)

HEADER

prefix the data with an Amanda header (DISK_BLOCK_BYTES long)

FEATURES=features

reiterates the requester's feature-set (in case amidxtaped was started from inetd)

DEVICE=device

tape device (or changer) to restore from

HOST=host

host for this dump

DISK=disk

diskname for this dump

DATESTAMP=datestamp

datestamp for this dump

CONFIG=config

Amanda configuration to use

the list of specifiers is terminated by

END\r\n

or by any line that starts with a digit (.. good, you didn't ask why -- you're learning!). Any non-matchting lines will be ignored. Any lines after the terminating line are also ignored. Amrecover sends an invalid DATA-PATH specifier after END, presumably to illustrate this point.