How To:Migrate from older amanda versions

This article is a part of the How Tos collection.

Overview

Sometimes you have to upgrade your backupserver.

This article describes, how to migrate from an old amanda version (amanda-server-2.4.4p2-3) to the current version (amanda-server-2.5.1p3).

Backup jobs

The default backup job is e.g. DailySet1.

Amanda store the configuration data for this backup job in /etc/amanda/DailySet1: e.g. /etc/amanda/DailySet1/amanda.conf

The Amanda database data for this backup job is stored in /var/lib/amanda/DailySet1.

The file index for backup data is stored in /var/lib/amanda/DailySet1/curinfo/HOST/DISK.

Startpoint

After 3 years of using amanda 2.4 there was time for updating the whole server.

On a new server with Fedora Core 6 I installed amanda 2.5 with the old DLT-tapedrive.

I configured the new server and tested the backup with a small backupjob.

In /etc/amanda/DailySet1/amanda.conf there is to change your basic configuration like

1. runtapes
2. tapedev
3. tpchan
4. infofile "/var/lib/amanda/DailySet1/curinfo"
5. logdir "/var/lib/amanda/DailySet1"
6. indexdir "/var/lib/amanda/DailySet1/index" ger
7. tape type
8. labelstr
9. infofile "/var/lib/amanda/DailySet1/curinfo"
10. logdir "/var/lib/amanda/DailySet1"
11. indexdir "/var/lib/amanda/DailySet1/index"
12. ...

Problems with amrecover from amanda 2.5

amrecover reported always:

  NAK: user root from europa.lmetrix.de is not allowed to execute the service amindexd: 
  Please add "amindexd amidxtaped" to the line in /var/lib/amanda/.amandahostsd" to the line in /var/lib/amanda/.amandahosts

After adding

  server.fqdn root amindexd amidxtaped

to /var/lib/amanda/.amandahosts amrecover worked.

Keep an eye on /etc/xinet.d/amanda

  service amanda
  {
       socket_type             = dgram
       protocol                = udp
       flags                   = IPv4
       wait                    = yes
       user                    = amanda
       group                   = disk
       server                  = /usr/lib/amanda/amandad
  #    server_args             = -auth=bsd amdump amindexd amidxtaped
       disable                 = no
  }

Transfering data

In the parameter in /et/amanda/DailySet1/amanda.conf

1. infofile "/var/lib/amanda/DailySet1/curinfo"
2. logdir "/var/lib/amanda/DailySet1"
3. indexdir "/var/lib/amanda/DailySet1/index"

is defined, where amanda stores his process data.

Therefore I transfered the whole directory /var/lib/amanda/DailySet1 from the old server to the new server.

Also the disklist in /etc/amanda/DailySet1

amrecover

After transfering data I made some test with amrecover, but the tests failed:

Since amandaversion 2.5 the dumptype needs to have an index directive:

  define dumptype comp-root-tar {
   root-tar
   comment "Root partitions with compression"
   compress client fast
   index yes
  }

Therefore try the index directive before migrating ;-)

amrestore

The tests with amrestore worked fine:

  /usr/sbin/amrestore  -l tapename tapedevice sourcehost /drive/on/host