Backup server (old)

amanda.conf

• dumptypes
• dumpcycle
• estimate timeouts
• Tapetype definitions

Exclude lists

This part has been moved to a separate page. See Exclude and include lists.

Device configuration

Tapetypes

Tapetype definitions are specified in amanda.conf configuration file. The tapetype definition provides AMANDA how much it is supposed to be able to store in a tape (length), how much space is wasted at the end of a dump image with the EOF mark (filemark) and how fast the tape unit is (speed).

The most important parameter is length, since AMANDA may decide to delay a backup if length is too small, but, if it is too large, AMANDA may end up leaving dumps in the holding disk or having to abort some dump.

Filemark is important if you have many disks, particularly with small incremental backups. The space wasted by so many filemarks may add up and considerably modify the available tape space.

The speed is currently unused.

AMANDA provides the amtapetype utility to calculate the size of a tape, to generate a "tapetype" entry for your amanda.conf.

Specifying the appropriate tape device, but beware that it may take many hours to run (it fills the tape twice ...). Make sure you do not use hardware compression, even if you plan to use hardware compression in the future. amtapetype writes random data to tape, and random data will expand instead of compressing, therefore you'll get an estimate that's smaller than expected.

Some tapetype definitions are available here.

Changers

This part has been moved to a separate page.

See Changers.

RAIT

This section has been moved to a separate section.

See: Rait.

File driver/Disk backups

This section has been moved to a separate page;

See File driver.

Server-side and Client-side encryption

This section has been moved to a separate page.

See Encryption.

Custom Compression

• compress client custom
  • Specify client_custom_compress "PROG"
  • PROG must not contain white space and it must accept -d for uncompress.

• compress server custom
  • Specify server_custom_compress "PROG"
  • PROG must not contain white space and it must accept -d for uncompress.

• sample dumptype:

 define dumptype custom-tar {
 global
 program "GNUTAR"
 comment "root partitions dumped with custom compression"
 compress server custom
 server_custom_compress "/usr/bin/my_gzip"
 priority low
}

• I have tested custom compression using bzip2. Dumps works fine. Amrestore has a glitch on which

the image gets uncompressed correctly and written to a temp file but gets a broken-pipe error. I am investigating the problem.

Tape hardware compression

This section has been moved to a separate page.

See: Hardware compression.