Amcheck: selfcheck request timed out
--- This text was originally contributed to the AMANDA-FAQ-O-Matic by [email protected]. ---
This can occur under several different situations. First, make sure this problem is repeatable; if Amanda programs are NFS-auto-mounted, some clients may fail to mount the Amanda binaries in time.
If the error is repeatable, log into the client, and check whether the directory /tmp/amanda exists, and a file named amandad.debug exists in there: amandad will create this file whenever it starts. If this file does not exist, amandad is not starting properly, or it lacks permission to create /tmp/amanda/amandad.debug.
In the latter case, wipe out /tmp/amanda, and amandad should create it next time it runs. In the former case, check your inetd configuration. Make sure you have added the Amanda services to /etc/services (or the NIS services map), that /etc/inetd.conf was properly configured, and that you have signalled inetd to reread this file (some systems may need rebooting). Check section 2.2 from the INSTALL file for details. Check the inetd man-page for possible differences between the standard inetd.conf format and the one in your system.
Pay special attention to typos in inetd.conf; error messages will probably appear in /var/adm/messages or /var/log/messages if you have typed the amandad program name incorrectly. Make sure the same user that you have specified at configure-time (--with-user=USERNAME) is listed in inetd.conf. Check whether this user has permission to run amandad, as well as any shared libraries amandad depends upon, by running the specified amandad command by hand, as the Amanda user. It should just time-out after 30 seconds waiting for a UDP packet. If you type anything, it will abort immediately, because it can't read a UDP packet from the keyboard.
As soon as you have properly configured inetd.conf so as to run amandad, you should no longer get the `selfcheck request timed out' message. A nice tool to help make sure inetd is really listening on the amandad port is lsof, available at ftp://vic.cc.purdue.edu/pub/tools/unix/lsof.