FAQ

This section lists frequent questions about Amanda by users who are unfamiliar with how it works. If you have installed Amanda and are having trouble, you may also want to check the Troubleshooting section.

• FAQ:Where should I ask questions?
• FAQ:What is the difference between Amanda and Zmanda?

Concepts

Amanda doesn't work like other backup programs. Users who are new to Amanda are often confused by these fundamental differences.

• FAQ:How are backup levels defined and how does Amanda use them?
• FAQ:How do I make Amanda do full backups on weekends and incrementals during the week?
• FAQ:How do I force Amanda to do a full backup?
• FAQ:How can I configure Amanda for long-term archiving?
• FAQ:Why does Amanda not append to a tape?
• FAQ:How do I back up a partition that won't fit on a tape?
• FAQ:Why does Amanda sometimes promote full dumps?
• FAQ:What is the difference between "skip-full" and "strategy nofull"?
• FAQ:Which tape changer is right for me?
• FAQ:Should I use software or hardware compression?
• FAQ:Should I use a holdingdisk when the final destination of the backup is a virtual tape?
• FAQ:Ok, I'm done with testing Amanda, now I want to put it in production. How can I reset its databases so as to start from scratch?
• FAQ:What is the 'amandates' file for?
• FAQ:Why can I write new labels to my tapes but can't read the old ones?

Terminology

• FAQ:What is a DLE?
• FAQ:What is 'bumping'?
• FAQ:What are indexes?
• FAQ:What does 'autoflush' parameter do?
• FAQ:How are backup levels defined and how does Amanda use them?

Backup Applications

Amanda can interface with an array of backup applications to actually fetch the data from the target system.

• FAQ:Which backup program for filesystems is better?
• FAQ:What versions of GNU Tar are Amanda-compatible?