Using AMANDA
This is an excerpt from the
book Unix Backup & Recovery. This
page is only part of the AMANDA chapter that is available here
for free.
Advanced AMANDA Configuration
Once you have AMANDA running
for a while, you may choose to do some additional advanced configuration.
Adjust the Backup Cycle
Several dumptype parameters
control the backup level AMANDA picks for a run:
-
Dumpcycle
-
Maximum days between full dumps.
-
strategy nofull
-
Never schedule (or run) a full
dump.
-
strategy incronly
-
Only schedule non-full dumps.
Note that dumpcycle is both
a general amanda.conf parameter and a specific dumptype parameter. The
value in a specific dumptype takes precedence. To handle areas that change
significantly between each run and should get a full dump each time (such
as the mail spool on a busy e-mail server or a database area), create a
dumptype based on another dumptype with attributes changed as desired (client
dump program, compression, etc) and set dumpcycle in the new dumptype to
zero:
define mail-spool {
comp-user-tar
dumpcycle
0
}
To run full dumps by hand
outside of AMANDA (perhaps they are too large for the normal tape capacity,
or need special processing), create a new dumptype and set strategy to
incronly:
define full-too-big {
comp-user-tar
strategy
incronly
}
Tell AMANDA when a full dump
of the area has been done with the force suboption of amadmin. Take care
to do full dumps often enough that the tape cycle does not wrap around
and overwrite the last good non-full backups.
To never do full dumps (such
as an area easily regenerated from vendor media), create a new dumptype
and set strategy to nofull:
define man-pages {
comp-user-tar
strategy
nofull
}
Only level 1 backups of such
areas are done, so wrapping around the tape cycle is not a problem.
To do periodic archival full
dumps, create a new AMANDA configuration with its own set of tapes but
the same disklist as the normal configuration (e.g. symlink them together).
Copy amanda.conf, setting all dumpcycle values to 0 and record to no, e.g.
in the global dumptype. If a changer is used, set runtapes very high so
tape capacity is not a planning restriction. Disable the normal AMANDA
run, or set the hold file as described in Operating AMANDA, so AMANDA
does not try to process the same client from two configurations at the
same time.
Copyright (c) 2000, O'Reilly
and Associates. All Rights Reserved.
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