amanda — The Open Source Backup Platform
This manual page gives an overview of the Amanda commands and configuration files for quick reference.
Here are all the Amanda commands. Each one has its own manual page. See them for all the gory details.
There are four user-editable files that control the behavior of Amanda.
The first two are amanda.conf(5) and amanda-client.conf(5), the main configuration files for the server and client, respectively. They contain parameters to customize Amanda for the site.
Next is the disklist(5) file, which lists hosts and disk partitions to back up.
Last is the seldom-edited tapelist(5) file, which lists tapes that are currently active. These files are described in more detail in the following sections.
All configuration files are stored in individual configuration
directories, usually under /etc/amanda/
.
A site will often have more than
one configuration.
For example, it might have a
normal
configuration for everyday backups and an
archive
configuration for infrequent full archival backups.
The configuration files would be stored under directories
/etc/amanda/normal/
and
/etc/amanda/archive/
, respectively.
Part of the job of an Amanda administrator is to create,
populate and maintain these directories.
Most Amanda applications take a "config" parameter; this is generally the
(unqualified) name of the configuration directory, e.g.,
normal
. If the parameter is .
(dot),
the current directory is used. This feature is present for backward
compatibility, but is not commonly used.
All log and database files generated by Amanda go in corresponding
directories somewhere.
The exact location is controlled by entries in
amanda.conf(5).
A typical location would be under /var/adm/amanda
.
For the above example, the files might go in
/var/adm/amanda/normal/
and
/var/adm/amanda/archive/
.
As log files are no longer needed (no longer contain relevant information), Amanda cycles them out in various ways, depending on the type of file.
Detailed information about amdump runs are stored in dump logs -- files named amdump.NN where NN is a sequence number, with 1 being the most recent file. Amdump rotates these files each run, keeping roughly the last tapecycle (see below) worth of them.
The file used by amreport to generate the mail summary is the trace log. This file constitutes the "catalog" describing the data on the tapes written in a run. It is named log.YYYYMMDDHHMMSS.NN where YYYYMMDDHHMMSS is the datestamp of the start of the amdump or amflush run and NN is a sequence number started at 0. At the end of each amdump run, log files for runs whose tapes have been reused are renamed into a subdirectory of the main log directory (see the logdir parameter below) named oldlog. It is up to the Amanda administrator to remove them from this directory when desired.
Index (backup image catalogue) files older than the full dump matching the oldest backup image for a given client and disk are removed by amdump at the end of each run.
For Samba access, Amanda needs a file on the Samba server (which may
or may not also be the tape server) named
/etc/amandapass
with share names, (clear text) passwords and (optional) domain names,
in that order, one per line, whitespace separated.
By default, the user used to connect to the PC is the same for all
PC's and is compiled into Amanda.
It may be changed on a host by host basis
by listing it first in the password field followed
by a percent sign and then the password.
For instance:
//some-pc/home normalpw //another-pc/disk otheruser%otherpw
With clear text passwords, this file should obviously be tightly protected. It only needs to be readable by the Amanda-user on the Samba server.
All host and disk arguments to programs are special expressions. The command applies to all DLEs that match the arguments. This section describes the matcher.
The matcher matches by word, each word is a glob expression, words are separated by the separator '.' for host and '/' for disk. You can anchor the expression at left with a '^'. You can anchor the expression at right with a '$'. The matcher is case insensitive for host but is case sensitive for disk. A match succeeds if all words in your expression match contiguous words in the host or disk.
If the disk is a UNC ("\\windows\share") then all '\' are converted to '/' before the match. Using '\' is complicated because of the extra quoting required by the shell and amanda. It's easier to use '/' because it require less quoting ("//windows/share")
word separator for a host
word separator for a disk
word separator for a UNC disk
anchor at left
anchor at right
match exactly one character except the separator
match zero or more characters except the separator
match zero or more characters including the separator
match a single character, namely any of the characters enclosed by the brackets.
match a single character, namely any characters that is not enclosed by the brackets.
The shell interpret some of these characters, they must be escaped by a backslash '\' and/or the expression must be enclosed in simple or double quote.
Some examples:
Will match hosta
, foo.hosta.org
, and
hoSTA.dOMAIna.ORG
but not hostb
.
Will match host
but not hosta
.
Will match hosta
and hostb
, but
not host
.
Will match hoina
but not ho.aina.org
.
Will match hoina
and ho.aina.org
.
Will match hosta
but not foo.hosta.org
.
Will match /dev/sda1
and /dev/sda12
.
Will match the disk opt
but not the host opt
.
Will match the host opt
but not the disk opt
.
Will match the disk /
but no other disk.
Will match the disks /usr
and /usr/local
.
Will match the disks /usr
but not /usr/local
.
Will match the disks \\windows1\share
and \\windows2\share
.
Will match the disks \\windows\share1
and \\windows\share2
.
Will match the disk \\windows\share
.
A datestamp expression is a range expression where we only match the prefix. Leading ^ is removed. Trailing $ forces an exact match.
match all dates beginning with 20001212, 20001213 or 20001214
same as previous
match all dates between 20001212 and 20001224
match all dates that start with 2000121 (20001210-20001219)
match all dates that start with 2 (20000101-29991231)
match all dates between 20000101-20101231
match only 200010
A dump specification selects one or more dumps. It has the form [host][:disk][@datestamp], where each component is a pattern as described above. If a component is missing, it is treated as a wildcard. The characters ':', '@', and '\' may be escaped within any component by preceding them with a '\'.
Some examples:
all dumps of client17
All dumps on with datestamps matching 20080615
All dumps of /var/www on host webserver
The dump of webserver with datestamp 200806150317
All dumps of /var/www on any host
Most commands allow the override of specific
configuration options on the command line, using the -o option. This option has the form -o name
=value
.
An optional space is allowed after the -o .
Each configuration option should be specified in a separate
command-line option.
For global options, name
is simply the name of the option, e.g.,
amdump -oruntapes=2
For options in a named section of the configuration, name
has the
form SECTION
:section_name
:name
,
where SECTION
is one of TAPETYPE, DUMPTYPE, HOLDINGDISK, or INTERFACE, and
section_name
is the name of the tapetype, dumptype, holdingdisk, or interface.
Examples:
amdump -o TAPETYPE:HP-DAT:length=2000m amdump -o DUMPTYPE:no-compress:compress="server fast" amdump -o HOLDINGDISK:hd1:use="-100 mb" amdump -o INTERFACE:local:use="2000 kbps"
When overriding device properties, one must carefully quote the command line to simulate the syntax of real configuration files. The following example should serve as a guide:
amdump -o 'device-property="PROPERTY_MAX_VOLUME_USAGE" "100000"'
Note that configuration overrides are not effective for tape changers, which supply a tapedev based on their own configuration. In order to override tapedev, you must also disable any changer:
amdump -otapedev=/dev/nst1 -otpchanger=''
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