Create the script

This is the most important step, this script is the work horse of the solution. I've called it /bin/amandatar. You can call it whatever you want though. It's a Perl script, it may not be very pretty code, but it does the job. In the script, an example is given for the backup of a Lotus Notes Domino server.

#!/usr/bin/perl

# Tar wrapper for Amanda's tar. 
#

use Getopt::Long qw(:config pass_through);

# Obtain directory and file information from the command line.

$result = GetOptions (
 'directory=s' => \$dir,
 'file=s' => \$file
);

# Check whether Amanda wants to do some administrative task (eg. indexinfo 
# or obtain the number of bytes to be backed up) 
# if file = /dev/null it's an administrative task and most of the time, no extra
#   processing is necessary.

# What you see here is just a log of the backup start time, and more important
#   the stopping of the domino server

if ( $file ne '/dev/null' )
{
  if ( $dir eq '/local/notesdata' )
  {
    system "echo 'Start backup notes at ' >> /var/lib/amanda/runtime" ;
    system "date >> /var/lib/amanda/runtime";
    system ( "/etc/init.d/domino stop >> /var/lib/amanda/runtime" );
  }
}

# The command line is being 'reconstructed'. Necessary because the GetOptions
#   call above has stripped the file and directory information.
# This is what I meant with 'ugly'  code ;-)

while ( $ARGV[0] ne '' )
{
  $val = $ARGV[0] ;
  unshift ( @NEWARGV, $val, ) ;
  shift @ARGV;
}

while ( $NEWARGV[0] ne '' )
{
  $val = $NEWARGV[0] ;
  unshift ( @ARGV, $val ) ;
  shift @NEWARGV;
}

if ( $dir ne '' )
{
  unshift ( @ARGV, '--directory', $dir );
}
if ( $file ne '' )
{
  unshift ( @ARGV, '--file', $file );
}

if ( $file ne '/dev/null' )
{
  system "echo 'Backing up directory ' $dir >> /var/lib/amanda/runtime" ;
}

# And finally make sure tar is called :-)
#   (path may differ on your installation)
unshift ( @ARGV , "/bin/tar" ) ;

system ( @ARGV ) ;

# Postprocessing
#
# If Notes backup was requested, restart the server.
# Log the backup end time.
#

if ( $file ne '/dev/null' )
{
  if ( $dir eq '/local/notesdata' )
  {
    system ( "/etc/init.d/domino start >> /var/lib/amanda/runtime" );
    system "echo 'End backup notes at ' >> /var/lib/amanda/runtime" ;
    system "date >> /var/lib/amanda/runtime";
  }
}

exit 0;

# End script

On some systems it may be necessary to setuid root the script.

Rebuild Amanda so that it uses your newly created script.

Download the sources, untar them to a directory. I'm sure there are lots of documents already available on how to do this, so I won't go into too much detail. (Refer to Amanda Installation Notes).

fast path :

/usr/local/src # tar -xvzf amanda-source.tar.gz
/usr/local/src # cd amanda-version
/usr/local/src/amanda-version # ./configure \
  --with-user=amanda \
  --prefix=/usr/local \
  --exec-prefix=/usr \
  --bindir=/usr/bin \
  --sbindir=/usr/sbin \
  --libexecdir=/usr/lib/amanda \
  --with-configdir=/etc/amanda \
  --with-group=disk \
  --with-gnutar=/bin/amandatar \
  --with-gnutar-listdir=/var/lib/amanda/gnutar-lists \
  --with-tmpdir=/tmp/amanda \
  --with-smbclient=/usr/bin/smbclient \
  --mandir=/usr/local/man

Here, it may be necessary to adjust some paths to match your installation. This setup works on SuSE Linux (also SLES) and MacOSX although you may have to use another binary tar.

As you see, you may also "replace" the smbclient if necessary. I haven't yet tested it though. I'll leave it as an exercise for the reader <g>.

/usr/local/src/amanda-version # make 
/usr/local/src/amanda-version # make install

Now proceed as with a "normal" installation.