[lug] figuring out amanda config

[D. Stimits]

dio2002 at indra.com wrote:

>i config'd / used amanda to perform backups for a company i worked for
>about 3-4 years ago.  Tape of course.  I guess amanda isn't any better now
>than it was then because my fondest memories were how difficult it was to
>find out how to do trivial things with it.  Generally i recall the
>documentation being very poor.  But i think i recall you can do what you
>want to do.  I just don't remember how though.. maybe someone else on the
>group can shed some light.
>
>  
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I found that a hard drive can be listed as a staging area, but not as a 
final backup destination. Restoring requires some sort of index, I don't 
want to assume that the intermediate staging area is able to function as 
a restore device. In any case, other than the temporary staging area, 
amanda does not appear to be able to use a non-serial device.

Documentation is indeed poor, there are pieces that can be solved by 
reading the various sample files, but not what I would call "real" 
documentation.

>another thought.  why don't you just use soemthing like rsync.  it does
>network backups to drives just fine.  you should be able to script/cron it
>if you want to automate it.
>
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I may have to abandon amanda, but apparently there is some possibility 
of using amanda on linux to back up windows (trying to figure this part 
out for someone else), and so far as I know rsync is a linux/unix only 
method (and if not for that one windows machine I'd gladly abandon windows).

I'm curious if anyone here has ever used iSCSI to do network backups? If 
so, what software did you use?

D. Stimits, stimits AT comcast DOT net

>  
>
>>I'm trying to figure out how to use amanda to do a network backup to a
>>machine with extra disk space (I know, drives are not a backup medium,
>>but it is cheap and better than nothing). It appears that any backup
>>device needs a "tapetype", and the ones I've found are all literally
>>serial devices like tape drives. Is it possible to use an ordinary
>>partition that is formatted and mounted? Or is it possible to use an
>>ordinary partition that is not formatted or mounted as a raw device? The
>>"device" I'm thinking of is just an LVM partition at /dev/mapper/backup,
>>currently formatted as ext3 and mounted. Both machines are running
>>fedora core. Am I out of luck, or can someone offer a clue on defining a
>>tapetype for use on a normal hard drive partition? I'm not even sure
>>that amanda allows such a device to be used.
>>
>>D. Stimits, stimits AT comcast DOT net
>>
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>>
>
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