amanda.conf — Main configuration file for Amanda, the Advanced Maryland Automatic Network Disk Archiver
amanda.conf is the main configuration file for Amanda. This manpage lists the
relevant sections and parameters of this file for quick reference.
The file <CONFIG_DIR>/<config>/amanda.conf is loaded.
There are a number of configuration parameters that control the behavior of the Amanda programs. All have default values, so you need not specify the parameter in amanda.conf if the default is suitable.
Lines starting with # are ignored, as are blank lines. Comments may be placed on a line with a directive by starting the comment with a #. The remainder of the line is ignored.
Keywords are case insensitive, i.e. mailto and MailTo are treated the same.
Integer arguments may have one of the following (case insensitive) suffixes, some of which have a multiplier effect:
Some number of bytes.
Some number of bytes per second.
Some number of kilobytes (bytes*1024).
Some number of kilobytes per second (bytes*1024).
Some number of megabytes (bytes*1024*1024).
Some number of megabytes per second (bytes*1024*1024).
Some number of gigabytes (bytes*1024*1024*1024).
Some number of tapes.
Some number of days.
Some number of weeks (days*7).
The value inf may be used in most places where an integer is expected to mean an infinite amount.
Boolean arguments may have any of the values y, yes, t, true or on to indicate a true state, or n, no, f, false or off to indicate a false state. If no argument is given, true is assumed.
Default: daily. A descriptive name for the configuration. This string appears in the Subject line of mail reports. Each Amanda configuration should have a different string to keep mail reports distinct.
Default: operators. A space separated list of recipients for mail reports.
Default: 10 days. The number of days in the backup cycle. Each disk will get a full backup at least this often. Setting this to zero tries to do a full backup each run.
This parameter may also be set in a specific dumptype (see below). This value sets the default for all dumptypes so must appear in amanda.conf before any dumptypes are defined.
Default: same as dumpcycle. The number of amdump runs in dumpcycle days. A value of 0 means the same value as dumpcycle. A value of -1 means guess the number of runs from the tapelist file, which is the number of tapes used in the last dumpcycle days / runtapes.
Default: 15 tapes. Typically tapes are used by Amanda in an ordered rotation. The tapecycle parameter defines the size of that rotation. The number of tapes in rotation must be larger than the number of tapes required for a complete dump cycle (see the dumpcycle parameter).
This is calculated by multiplying the number of amdump runs per dump cycle (runspercycle parameter) times the number of tapes used per run (runtapes parameter). Typically two to four times this calculated number of tapes are in rotation. While Amanda is always willing to use a new tape in its rotation, it refuses to reuse a tape until at least 'tapecycle -1' number of other tapes have been used.
It is considered good administrative practice to set the tapecycle parameter slightly lower than the actual number of tapes in rotation. This allows the administrator to more easily cope with damaged or misplaced tapes or schedule adjustments that call for slight adjustments in the rotation order.
Default: No. By default, Amanda can only track at most one run per calendar day. When this option is enabled, however, Amanda can track as many runs as you care to make.
WARNING: This option is not backward-compatible. Do not enable it if you intend to downgrade your server installation to Amanda community edition 2.5.0
Default: not set. When set, this directive will cause Amanda to automatically write an Amanda tape label to any blank tape she encounters. This option is DANGEROUS because when set, Amanda will ERASE any non-Amanda tapes you may have, and may also ERASE any near-failing tapes. Use with caution.
When using this directive, specify the template for new tape labels. The template should contain some number of contiguous '%' characters, which will be replaced with a generated number. Be sure to specify enough '%' characters that you do not run out of tape labels. Example: label_new_tapes "DailySet1-%%%"
Default: amanda. The login name Amanda uses to run the backups. The backup client hosts must allow access from the tape server host as this user via .rhosts or .amandahosts, depending on how the Amanda software was built.
Printer to use when doing tape labels. See the lbl-templ tapetype option.
Default:
null:.
The path name of the non-rewinding tape device.
Non-rewinding tape device names often have an 'n' in the name,
e.g.
/dev/rmt/0mn,
however this is operating system specific and you should consult
that documentation for detailed naming information.
If a tape changer is configured (see the tpchanger option), this option might not be used.
If the null output driver is selected (see the section OUTPUT DRIVERS in the amanda(8) manpage for more information), programs such as amdump will run normally but all images will be thrown away. This should only be used for debugging and testing, and probably only with the record option set to no.
Default:
null:.
The path name of the raw tape device.
This is only used if Amanda is compiled for Linux machines with floppy tapes
and is needed for QIC volume table operations.
Default: none. The name of the tape changer. If a tape changer is not configured, this option is not used and should be commented out of the configuration file.
If a tape changer is configured, choose one of the changer scripts (e.g. chg-scsi) and enter that here.
Default:
/dev/null.
A tape changer configuration parameter.
Usage depends on the particular changer defined with the
tpchanger
option.
Default:
/usr/adm/amanda/log/changer-status.
A tape changer configuration parameter.
Usage depends on the particular changer defined with the
tpchanger
option.
Default:
1.
The maximum number of tapes used in a single run.
If a tape changer is not configured, this option is not used
and should be commented out of the configuration file.
If a tape changer is configured, this may be set larger than one to let Amanda write to more than one tape.
Note that this is an upper bound on the number of tapes, and Amanda may use less.
Also note that as of this release, Amanda does not support true tape overflow. When it reaches the end of one tape, the backup image Amanda was processing starts over again on the next tape.
Default: runtapes*tape_length. Maximum number of bytes the planner will schedule for a run.
Default: first. The algorithm used to choose which dump image to send to the taper.
First in, first out.
The first dump image that will fit on the current tape.
The largest dump image.
The largest dump image that will fit on the current tape.
The smallest dump image.
Last in, first out.
Default: .*. The tape label constraint regular expression. All tape labels generated (see amlabel(8)) and used by this configuration must match the regular expression. If multiple configurations are run from the same tape server host, it is helpful to set their labels to different strings (for example, "DAILY[0-9][0-9]*" vs. "ARCHIVE[0-9][0-9]*") to avoid overwriting each other's tapes.
Default: EXABYTE. The type of tape drive associated with tapedev or tpchanger. This refers to one of the defined tapetypes in the config file (see below), which specify various tape parameters, like the length, filemark size, and speed of the tape media and device.
First character of a tapetype string must be an alphabetic character
Default: 30 seconds. Maximum amount of time that amcheck will wait for each client host.
Default: 1800 seconds. Amount of idle time per disk on a given client that a dumper running from within amdump will wait before it fails with a data timeout error.
Default: 300 seconds. Amount of time per disk on a given client that the planner step of amdump will wait to get the dump size estimates. For instance, with the default of 300 seconds and four disks on client A, planner will wait up to 20 minutes for that machine. A negative value will be interpreted as a total amount of time to wait per client instead of per disk.
Default: 3. How many times the server will try a connection.
Default: 3. How many times the server will resend a REQ packet if it doesn't get the ACK packet.
Default: 300 Kbps. The maximum network bandwidth allocated to Amanda, in Kbytes per second. See also the interface section.
Default:
10.
The maximum number of backups that Amanda will attempt to run in parallel.
Amanda will stay within the constraints of network bandwidth and
holding disk space available, so it doesn't hurt to set
this number a bit high. Some contention can occur with larger numbers
of backups, but this effect is relatively small on most systems.
Default:
"k".
The unit used to print many numbers, k=kilo, m=mega, g=giga, t=tera.
Default: tttTTTTTTT. The priority order of each dumper:
s: smallest size S: largest size t: smallest time T: largest time b: smallest bandwidth B: largest bandwidth
Default:
1.
The maximum number of backups from a single host that Amanda will
attempt to run in parallel. See also the
inparallel
option.
Note that this parameter may also be set in a specific dumptype (see below). This value sets the default for all dumptypes so must appear in amanda.conf before any dumptypes are defined.
Default: 10 Mbytes. The minimum savings required to trigger an automatic bump from one incremental level to the next, expressed as size. If Amanda determines that the next higher backup level will be this much smaller than the current level, it will do the next level. The value of this parameter is used only if the parameter bumppercent is set to 0.
The global setting of this parameter can be overwritten inside of a dumptype-definition.
See also the options bumppercent, bumpmult and bumpdays.
Default: 0 percent. The minimum savings required to trigger an automatic bump from one incremental level to the next, expressed as percentage of the current size of the DLE (size of current level 0). If Amanda determines that the next higher backup level will be this much smaller than the current level, it will do the next level.
If this parameter is set to 0, the value of the parameter bumpsize is used to trigger bumping.
The global setting of this parameter can be overwritten inside of a dumptype-definition.
See also the options bumpsize, bumpmult and bumpdays.
Default:
1.5.
The bump size multiplier.
Amanda multiplies
bumpsize
by this factor for each level.
This prevents active filesystems from
bumping too much by making it harder to bump to the next level.
For example, with the default
bumpsize
and
bumpmult
set to 2.0, the bump threshold will be 10 Mbytes for level one, 20
Mbytes for level two, 40 Mbytes for level three, and so on.
The global setting of this parameter can be overwritten inside of a dumptype-definition.
Default: 2 days. To insure redundancy in the dumps, Amanda keeps filesystems at the same incremental level for at least bumpdays days, even if the other bump threshold criteria are met.
The global setting of this parameter can be overwritten inside of a dumptype-definition.
Default: disklist. The file name for the disklist file holding client hosts, disks and other client dumping information.
Default:
/usr/adm/amanda/curinfo.
The file or directory name for the historical information database.
If Amanda was configured to use DBM databases, this is the base file
name for them.
If it was configured to use text formated databases (the default),
this is the base directory and within here will be a directory per
client, then a directory per disk, then a text file of data.
Default:
/usr/adm/amanda.
The directory for the
amdump
and
log
files.
Default
/usr/adm/amanda/index.
The directory where index files (backup image catalogues) are stored.
Index files are
only generated for filesystems whose
dumptype
has the
index
option enabled.
Default: tapelist. The file name for the active tapelist file. Amanda maintains this file with information about the active set of tapes.
Default:
20.
The number of buffers used by the
taper
process run by
amdump
and
amflush
to hold data as it is read from the network or disk before it is written to tape.
Each buffer is a little larger than 32 KBytes and is held in a shared memory region.
Default:
100.
The part of holding-disk space that should be reserved for incremental
backups if no tape is available, expressed as a percentage of the
available holding-disk space (0-100).
By default, when there is no tape to write to, degraded mode (incremental) backups
will be performed to the holding disk. If full backups should also be allowed in this case,
the amount of holding disk space reserved for incrementals should be lowered.
Default: off. Whether an amdump run will flush the dumps from holding disk to tape.
Default: on. Amrecover will call amrestore with the -f flag for faster positioning of the tape.
Default: on. Amrecover will call amrestore with the -l flag to check the label.
Default: ''. Amrecover will use the changer if you use 'settape <string>' and that string is the same as the amrecover_changer setting.
Defines the width of columns amreport should use. String is a comma (',') separated list of triples. Each triple consists of three parts which are separated by a equal sign ('=') and a colon (':') (see the example). These three parts specify:
the name of the column, which may be:
Compress (compression ratio) Disk (client disk name) DumpRate (dump rate in KBytes/sec) DumpTime (total dump time in hours:minutes) HostName (client host name) Level (dump level) OrigKB (original image size in KBytes) OutKB (output image size in KBytes) TapeRate (tape writing rate in KBytes/sec) TapeTime (total tape time in hours:minutes)
the amount of space to display before the column (used to get whitespace between columns).
the width of the column itself. If set to a negative value, the width will be calculated on demand to fit the largest entry in this column.
Here is an example:
columnspec "Disk=1:18,HostName=0:10,OutKB=1:7"
The above will display the disk information in 18 characters and put one space before it. The hostname column will be 10 characters wide with no space to the left. The output KBytes column is seven characters wide with one space before it.
Default: none. The name of an Amanda configuration file to include within the current file. Useful for sharing dumptypes, tapetypes and interface definitions among several configurations.
Default: 0. Debug level of the auth module
Default: 0. Debug level of the event module
Default: 0. Debug level of the holdingdisk module
Default: 0. Debug level of the protocol module
Default: 0. Debug level of the planner process
Default: 0. Debug level of the driver process
Default: 0. Debug level of the dumper process
Default: 0. Debug level of the chunker process
Default: 0. Debug level of the taper process
Default: --with-udpportrange or 512,1023. Reserved udp port that will be used (bsd, bsdudp)
Default: --with-low-tcpportrange or 512,1023. Reserved tcp port that will be used (bsdtcp)
Default: --with-tcpportrange or 1025,65536. Unreserved tcp port that will be used (bsd, bsdudp)
The amanda.conf file may define one or more holding disks used as buffers to hold backup images before they are written to tape. The syntax is:
holdingdisk name {
holdingdisk-option holdingdisk-value
...
}
Name is a logical name for this holding disk.
The options and values are:
Default: none. A comment string describing this holding disk.
Default:
/dumps/amanda.
The path to this holding area.
Default: 0 Gb. Amount of space that can be used in this holding disk area. If the value is zero, all available space on the file system is used. If the value is negative, Amanda will use all available space minus that value.
Default: 1 Gb. Holding disk chunk size. Dumps larger than the specified size will be stored in multiple holding disk files. The size of each chunk will not exceed the specified value. However, even though dump images are split in the holding disk, they are concatenated as they are written to tape, so each dump image still corresponds to a single continuous tape section.
If 0 is specified, Amanda will create holding disk chunks as large as ((INT_MAX/1024)-64) Kbytes.
Each holding disk chunk includes a 32 Kbyte header, so the minimum chunk size is 64 Kbytes (but that would be really silly).
Operating systems that are limited to a maximum file size of 2 Gbytes actually cannot handle files that large. They must be at least one byte less than 2 Gbytes. Since Amanda works with 32 Kbyte blocks, and to handle the final read at the end of the chunk, the chunk size should be at least 64 Kbytes (2 * 32 Kbytes) smaller than the maximum file size, e.g. 2047 Mbytes.
The amanda.conf file may define multiple sets of backup options
and refer to them by name from the disklist file.
For instance, one set of options might be defined for file systems
that can benefit from high compression, another set that does not compress well,
another set for file systems that should always get a full backup and so on.
A set of backup options are entered in a dumptype section, which looks like this:
define dumptype name {
dumptype-option dumptype-value
...
}
Name
is the name of this set of backup options.
It is referenced from the disklist file.
Some of the options in a
dumptype
section are the same as those in the main part of amanda.conf.
The main option value is used to set the default for all
dumptype
sections. For instance, setting
dumpcycle
to 50 in the main part of the config file causes all following
dumptype
sections to start with that value,
but the value may be changed on a section by section basis.
Changes to variables in the main part of the config file must be
done before (earlier in the file) any
dumptypes
are defined.
The dumptype options and values are:
Default: bsd. Type of authorization to perform between tape server and backup client hosts.
bsd, bsd authorization with udp initial connection and one tcp connection by data stream.
bsdtcp, bsd authorization but use only one tcp connection.
bsdudp, like bsd, but will use only one tcp connection for all data stream.
krb4 to use Kerberos-IV authorization.
krb5 to use Kerberos-V authorization.
rsh to use rsh authorization.
ssh to use OpenSSH authorization.
Default: $libexec/amandad. Specify the amandad path of the client, only use with rsh/ssh authentification.
Default: CLIENT_LOGIN. Specify the username to connect on the client, only use with rsh/ssh authentification.
Default: 10 Mbytes. The minimum savings required to trigger an automatic bump from one incremental level to the next, expressed as size. If Amanda determines that the next higher backup level will be this much smaller than the current level, it will do the next level. The value of this parameter is used only if the parameter bumppercent is set to 0.
See also the options bumppercent, bumpmult and bumpdays.
Default: 0 percent. The minimum savings required to trigger an automatic bump from one incremental level to the next, expressed as percentage of the current size of the DLE (size of current level 0). If Amanda determines that the next higher backup level will be this much smaller than the current level, it will do the next level.
If this parameter is set to 0, the value of the parameter bumpsize is used to trigger bumping.
See also the options bumpsize, bumpmult and bumpdays.
Default:
1.5.
The bump size multiplier.
Amanda multiplies
bumpsize
by this factor for each level.
This prevents active filesystems from
bumping too much by making it harder to bump to the next level.
For example, with the default
bumpsize
and
bumpmult
set to 2.0, the bump threshold will be 10 Mbytes for level one, 20
Mbytes for level two, 40 Mbytes for level three, and so on.
Default: 2 days. To insure redundancy in the dumps, Amanda keeps filesystems at the same incremental level for at least bumpdays days, even if the other bump threshold criteria are met.
Default: none. A comment string describing this set of backup options.
Default:
0.50,
0.50.
The expected full and incremental compression factor for dumps.
It is only used if Amanda does not have any history information on
compression rates for a filesystem, so should not usually need to be set.
However, it may be useful for the first time a very large filesystem that
compresses very little is backed up.
Default: client fast. If Amanda does compression of the backup images, it can do so either on the backup client host before it crosses the network or on the tape server host as it goes from the network into the holding disk or to tape. Which place to do compression (if at all) depends on how well the dump image usually compresses, the speed and load on the client or server, network capacity, holding disk capacity, availability of tape hardware compression, etc.
For either type of compression, Amanda also allows the selection of three styles of compression. Best is the best compression available, often at the expense of CPU overhead. Fast is often not as good a compression as best, but usually less CPU overhead. Or to specify Custom to use your own compression method. (See dumptype custom-compress in example/amanda.conf for reference)
So the compress options line may be one of:
Specify client_custom_compress "PROG"
PROG must not contain white space and it must accept -d for uncompress.
Specify server_custom_compress "PROG"
PROG must not contain white space and it must accept -d for uncompress.
Note that some tape devices do compression and this option has nothing to do with whether that is used. If hardware compression is used (usually via a particular tape device name or mt option), Amanda (software) compression should be disabled.
Default: 10 days. The number of days in the backup cycle. Each disk using this set of options will get a full backup at least this of ten. Setting this to zero tries to do a full backup each run.
Default: none. To encrypt backup images, it can do so either on the backup client host before it crosses the network or on the tape server host as it goes from the network into the holding disk or to tape.
So the encrypt options line may be one of:
Specify client_encrypt "PROG"
PROG must not contain white space.
Specify client_decrypt_option "decryption-parameter" Default: "-d"
decryption-parameter must not contain white space.
(See dumptype server-encrypt-fast in example/amanda.conf for reference)
Specify server_encrypt "PROG"
PROG must not contain white space.
Specify server_decrypt_option "decryption-parameter" Default: "-d"
decryption-parameter must not contain white space.
(See dumptype client-encrypt-nocomp in example/amanda.conf for reference)
Note that current logic assumes compression then encryption during backup(thus decrypt then uncompress during restore). So specifying client-encryption AND server-compression is not supported. amcrypt which is a wrapper of aespipe is provided as a reference symmetric encryption program.
Default: client. Determine the way Amanda does it's estimate.
Use the same program as the dumping program, this is the most accurate way to do estimates, but it can take a long time.
Use a faster program to do estimates, but the result is less accurate.
Use only statistics from the previous run to give an estimate, it takes only a few seconds but the result is not accurate if your disk usage changes from day to day.
Default: file. There are two exclude lists, exclude file and exclude list. With exclude file , the string is a GNU-tar exclude expression. With exclude list , the string is a file name on the client containing GNU-tar exclude expressions. The path to the specified exclude list file, if present (see description of 'optional' below), must be readable by the Amanda user.
All exclude expressions are concatenated in one file and passed to GNU-tar
as an --exclude-from argument.
Exclude expressions must always be specified as relative to the head directory of the DLE.
With the append keyword, the string is appended to the current list, without it, the string overwrites the list.
If optional is specified for exclude list, then amcheck will not complain if the file doesn't exist or is not readable.
For exclude list, if the file name is relative, the disk name being backed up is prepended. So if this is entered:
exclude list ".amanda.excludes"
the actual file used would be
/var/.amanda.excludes
for a backup of /var,
/usr/local/.amanda.excludes for a backup of
/usr/local, and so on.
Default: auto. Whether a holding disk should be used for these backups or whether they should go directly to tape. If the holding disk is a portion of another file system that Amanda is backing up, that file system should refer to a dumptype with holdingdisk set to never to avoid backing up the holding disk into itself.
Never use a holdingdisk, the dump will always go directly to tape. There will be no dump if you have a tape error.
Use the holding disk, unless there is a problem with the holding disk, the dump won't fit there or the medium doesn't require spooling (e.g., VFS device)
Always dump to holdingdisk, never directly to tape. There will be no dump if it doesn't fit on holdingdisk
Default: no. Whether disks associated with this backup type should be backed up or not. This option is useful when the disklist file is shared among several configurations, some of which should not back up all the listed file systems.
Default: file ".". There are two include lists, include file and include list. With include file , the string is a glob expression. With include list , the string is a file name on the client containing glob expressions.
All include expressions are expanded by Amanda, concatenated in one file and passed to GNU-tar as a
--files-from argument. They must start with "./" and contain no other "/".
Include expressions must always be specified as relative to the head directory of the DLE.
For globbing to work at all, even the limited single level, the top level directory of the DLE must be readable by the Amanda user.
With the append keyword, the string is appended to the current list, without it, the string overwrites the list.
If optional is specified for include list, then amcheck will not complain if the file doesn't exist or is not readable.
For include list, If the file name is relative, the disk name being backed up is prepended.
Default: no. Whether an index (catalogue) of the backup should be generated and saved in indexdir. These catalogues are used by the amrecover utility.
Default: no. Whether the backup image should be encrypted by Kerberos as it is sent across the network from the backup client host to the tape server host.
Default:
1.
The maximum number of backups from a single host that Amanda will attempt to run in parallel.
See also the main section parameter inparallel.
Default:
10000.
The maximum number of day for a promotion, set it 0 if you don't want
promotion, set it to 1 or 2 if your disks get overpromoted.
Default: medium. When there is no tape to write to, Amanda will do incremental backups in priority order to the holding disk. The priority may be high (2), medium (1), low (0) or a number of your choice.
Default: DUMP. The type of backup to perform. Valid values are DUMP for the native operating system backup program, and GNUTAR to use GNU-tar or to do PC backups using Samba.
Default:
yes.
Whether to ask the backup program to update its database (e.g. /etc/dumpdates
for DUMP or /usr/local/var/amanda/gnutar-lists for GNUTAR) of time stamps.
This is normally enabled for daily backups and turned off for periodic archival runs.
Default: no. If true and planner has scheduled a full backup, these disks will be skipped, and full backups should be run off-line on these days. It was reported that Amanda only schedules level 1 incrementals in this configuration; this is probably a bug.
Default: no. If true and planner has scheduled an incremental backup, these disks will be skipped.
Default:
none.
Backups will not start until after this time of day.
The value should be hh*100+mm, e.g. 6:30PM (18:30) would be entered as
1830.
Default: standard. Strategy to use when planning what level of backup to run next. Values are:
The standard Amanda schedule.
Never do full backups, only level 1 incrementals.
Never do incremental backups, only full dumps.
Never do backups (useful when sharing the disklist file).
Only do incremental dumps. amadmin force should be used to tell Amanda that a full dump has been performed off-line, so that it resets to level 1. It is similar to skip-full, but with incronly full dumps may be scheduled manually. Unfortunately, it appears that Amanda will perform full backups with this configuration, which is probably a bug.
Default: none. Split dump file on tape into pieces of a specified size. This allows dumps to be spread across multiple tapes, and can potentially make more efficient use of tape space. Note that if this value is too large (more than half the size of the average dump being split), substantial tape space can be wasted. If too small, large dumps will be split into innumerable tiny dumpfiles, adding to restoration complexity. A good rule of thumb, usually, is 1/10 of the size of your tape.
Default: none. When dumping a split dump in PORT-WRITE mode (usually meaning "no holding disk"), buffer the split chunks to a file in the directory specified by this option.
Default: 10M. When dumping a split dump in PORT-WRITE mode, if no split_diskbuffer is specified (or if we somehow fail to use our split_diskbuffer), we must buffer split chunks in memory. This specifies the maximum size split chunks can be in this scenario, and thus the maximum amount of memory consumed for in-memory splitting. The size of this buffer can be changed from its (very conservative) default to a value reflecting the amount of memory that each taper process on the dump server may reasonably consume.
The following dumptype entries are predefined by Amanda:
define dumptype no-compress {
compress none
}
define dumptype compress-fast {
compress client fast
}
define dumptype compress-best {
compress client best
}
define dumptype srvcompress {
compress server fast
}
define dumptype bsd-auth {
auth bsd
}
define dumptype krb4-auth {
auth krb4
}
define dumptype no-record {
record no
}
define dumptype no-hold {
holdingdisk no
}
define dumptype no-full {
skip-full yes
}
In addition to options in a dumptype section, one or more other dumptype names may be entered, which make this dumptype inherit options from other previously defined dumptypes. For instance, two sections might be the same except for the record option:
define dumptype normal {
comment "Normal backup, no compression, do indexing"
no-compress
index yes
maxdumps 2
}
define dumptype testing {
comment "Test backup, no compression, do indexing, no recording"
normal
record no
}
Amanda provides a dumptype named global in the sample amanda.conf file that all dumptypes should reference. This provides an easy place to make changes that will affect every dumptype.
The amanda.conf file may define multiple types of tape media and devices. The information is entered in a tapetype section, which looks like this in the config file:
define tapetype name {
tapetype-option tapetype-value
...
}
Name is the name of this type of tape medium/device. It is referenced from the tapetype option in the main part of the config file.
The tapetype options and values are:
Default: none. A comment string describing this set of tape information.
Default: 1 kbytes. How large a file mark (tape mark) is, measured in kbytes. If the size is only known in some linear measurement (e.g. inches), convert it to kbytes using the device density.
Default: 2000 kbytes. How much data will fit on a tape.
Note that this value is only used by Amanda to schedule which backups will be run. Once the backups start, Amanda will continue to write to a tape until it gets an error, regardless of what value is entered for length (but see the section OUTPUT DRIVERS in the amanda(8) manpage for exceptions).
Default: 32 kbytes. How much data will be written in each tape record expressed in KiloBytes. The tape record size (= blocksize) can not be reduced below the default 32 KBytes. The parameter blocksize can only be raised if Amanda was compiled with the configure option --with-maxtapeblocksize=N set with "N" greater than 32 during configure.
Default: (from configure --with-maxtapeblocksize). How much data will be read in each tape record expressed in KiloBytes. Some hardware require a value not too large, and some require it to be equal to the blocksize. It is useful if you configured amanda with a big --with-maxtapeblocksize and your hardware don't work with a value that big.
Default: true. If true, every record, including the last one in the file, will have the same length. This matches the way Amanda wrote tapes prior to the availability of this parameter. It may also be useful on devices that only support a fixed blocksize.
Note that the last record on the tape probably includes trailing null byte padding, which will be passed back to gzip, compress or the restore program. Most programs just ignore this (although possibly with a warning).
If this parameter is false, the last record in a file may be shorter than the block size. The file will contain the same amount of data the dump program generated, without trailing null byte padding. When read, the same amount of data that was written will be returned.
Default: 200 bps. How fast the drive will accept data, in bytes per second. This parameter is NOT currently used by Amanda.
A PostScript template file used by amreport to generate labels. Several sample files are provided with the Amanda sources in the example directory. See the amreport(8) man page for more information.
In addition to options, another tapetype name may be entered, which makes this tapetype inherit options from another tapetype. For instance, the only difference between a DLT4000 tape drive using Compact-III tapes and one using Compact-IV tapes is the length of the tape. So they could be entered as:
define tapetype DLT4000-III {
comment "DLT4000 tape drives with Compact-III tapes"
length 12500 mbytes # 10 Gig tapes with some compression
filemark 2000 kbytes
speed 1536 kps
}
define tapetype DLT4000-IV {
DLT4000-III
comment "DLT4000 tape drives with Compact-IV tapes"
length 25000 mbytes # 20 Gig tapes with some compression
}
The amanda.conf file may define multiple types of network interfaces. The information is entered in an interface section, which looks like this:
define interface name {
interface-option interface-value
...
}
name is the name of this type of network interface. It is referenced from the disklist file.
Note that these sections define network interface characteristics, not the actual interface that will be used. Nor do they impose limits on the bandwidth that will actually be taken up by Amanda. Amanda computes the estimated bandwidth each file system backup will take based on the estimated size and time, then compares that plus any other running backups with the limit as another of the criteria when deciding whether to start the backup. Once a backup starts, Amanda will use as much of the network as it can leaving throttling up to the operating system and network hardware.
The interface options and values are:
Default: none. A comment string describing this set of network information.
Default: 300 Kbps. The speed of the interface in Kbytes per second.
In addition to options, another interface name may be entered, which makes this interface inherit options from another interface. At the moment, this is of little use.
James da Silva, <[email protected]>: Original text
Stefan G. Weichinger, <[email protected]>, maintainer of the
Amanda-documentation: XML-conversion, major update, splitting