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AMANDA(8)							     AMANDA(8)

NAME
       amanda - Advanced Maryland Automatic Network Disk Archiver

SYNOPSIS
       amadmin config command [options]

       amcheck [options] config

       amcheckdb config

       amcleanup config

       amcrypt

       amdd [options]

       amdump config

       amaespipe

       amflush [-f] config

       amgetconf [config] parameter

       amlabel config label [slot�slot]

       ammt [options]

       amoverview config [options]

       amplot [options] amdump-files

       amrecover [config] [options]

       amreport [config] [options]

       amrestore [options] tapedevice [hostname�[diskname]]

       amfetchdump [options] config [hostname�[diskname�[date�[level]]]]

       amrmtape [options] config label

       amstatus config [options]

       amtape config command [options]

       amtapetype [options]

       amtoc [options] logfile

       amverify config

       amverifyrun config

DESCRIPTION
       Amanda is the "Advanced Maryland Automatic Network Disk Archiver". This
       manual page gives an overview of the Amanda commands and	 configuration
       files for quick reference.

       Here are all the Amanda commands. Each one has its own manual page. See
       them for all the gory details.

       amdump Take care of automatic Amanda backups. This is normally executed
	      by  cron	on a computer called the tape server host and requests
	      backups of file systems located on backupclients.	 Amdump	 backs
	      up  all disks in the disklist file (discussed below) to tape or,
	      if there is a problem, to a special holdingdisk. After all back‐
	      ups  are	done,  amdump  sends  mail reporting failures and suc‐
	      cesses.

       amflush
	      Flush backups from the holding disk to tape.   Amflush  is  used
	      after amdump has reported it could not write backups to tape for
	      some reason. When this happens,  backups	stay  in  the  holding
	      disk.  Run  amflush after the tape problem is corrected to write
	      backups from the holding disk to tape.

       amcleanup
	      Clean up after an	 interrupted  amdump.  This  command  is  only
	      needed if amdump was unable to complete for some reason, usually
	      because the tape server host crashed while amdump was running.

       amrecover
	      Provides an interactive interface to  browse  the	 Amanda	 index
	      files  (backup  image  catalogues)  and  select  which  tapes to
	      recover files from. It can also run amrestore and a restore pro‐
	      gram (e.g.  tar) to actually recover the files.

       amrestore
	      Read an Amanda tape, searching for requested backups.  Amrestore
	      is suitable for everything from interactive restores  of	single
	      files to a full restore of all partitions on a failed disk.

       amfetchdump
	      Performs	Amanda	tape  restoration, similar to amrestore. Addi‐
	      tional capabilities include "hands-off"  searching  of  multiple
	      tapes,  automatic retrieval of specific dump files based on dump
	      logs, and assembly of tape-spanning split dump files.

       amlabel
	      Write an Amanda format label onto a tape. All Amanda tapes  must
	      be  labeled  with amlabel.  Amdump and amflush will not write to
	      an unlabeled tape (see TAPE MANAGEMENT below).

       amcheck
	      Verify the correct tape is mounted and all file systems  on  all
	      backup  client  systems  are ready to be backed up. Often run by
	      cron before amdump to generate a mail warning that backups might
	      fail unless corrective action is taken.

       amadmin
	      Take  care  of administrative tasks like finding out which tapes
	      are needed to restore a filesystem, forcing  hosts  to  do  full
	      backups of selected disks and looking at schedule balance infor‐
	      mation.

       amtape Take care of tape changer control operations like	 loading  par‐
	      ticular  tapes,  ejecting	 tapes	and  scanning the tape storage
	      slots.

       amverify
	      Check Amanda backup tapes for errors.

       amrmtape
	      Delete a tape from the Amanda databases.

       amstatus
	      Report the status of a running or completed amdump.

       amoverview
	      Display a chart of hosts and file systems backed up every run.

       amplot Generate utilization plots of Amanda runs for  performance  tun‐
	      ing.

       amreport
	      Generate an Amanda summary E-mail report.

       amtoc  Generate table of content files for Amanda tapes.

       amcheckdb
	      Verify  every tape Amanda knows about is consistent in the data‐
	      base.

       amgetconf
	      Look up parameters in the Amanda configuration file.

       amtapetype
	      Generate a tapetype definition.

       amaespipe
	      Wrapper program from aespipe (data encryption utility)

       amcrypt
	      Reference encryption program for Amanda symmetric	 data  encryp‐
	      tion

CONFIGURATION
       There  are  three  user-editable	 files	that  control  the behavior of
       Amanda.

       The first is amanda.conf, the  main  configuration  file.  It  contains
       parameters   to	 customize   Amanda   for   the	 site.	Refer  to  the
       amanda.conf(5), manpage for details on Amanda configuration parameters.

       Second is the disklist file, which lists hosts and disk	partitions  to
       back up.

       Third  is  the  tapelist	 file,	which  lists  tapes that are currently
       active. These files are described in more detail in the following  sec‐
       tions.

       All  files  are	stored	in  individual configuration directories under
       /usr/local/etc/amanda/. A site will often have more than one configura‐
       tion.  For  example,  it might have a normal configuration for everyday
       backups and an archive configuration for infrequent full archival back‐
       ups.   The  configuration  files	 would	be  stored  under  directories
       /usr/local/etc/amanda/normal/	and    /usr/local/etc/amanda/archive/,
       respectively.  Part of the job of an Amanda administrator is to create,
       populate and maintain these directories.

       All log and database files generated  by	 Amanda	 go  in	 corresponding
       directories  somewhere.	The exact location is controlled by entries in
       amanda.conf. A typical location would be under /var/adm/amanda. For the
       above  example,	the  files  might  go  in  /var/adm/amanda/normal/ and
       /var/adm/amanda/archive/.

       As log files are no longer needed (no longer contain relevant  informa‐
       tion), Amanda cycles them out in various ways, depending on the type of
       file.

       Detailed information about  amdump  runs	 are  stored  in  files	 named
       amdump.NN  where	 NN is a sequence number, with 1 being the most recent
       file.  Amdump rotates these files each run, keeping  roughly  the  last
       tapecycle (see below) worth of them.

       The  file  used	by  amreport  to  generate  the	 mail summary is named
       log.YYYYMMDD.NN where YYYYMMDD is the datestamp of  the	start  of  the
       amdump run and NN is a sequence number started at 0. At the end of each
       amdump run, log files for runs whose tapes have been reused are renamed
       into a subdirectory of the main log directory (see the logdir parameter
       below) named oldlog. It is up to the  Amanda  administrator  to	remove
       them from this directory when desired.

       Index  (backup image catalogue) files older than the full dump matching
       the oldest backup image for a given client  and	disk  are  removed  by
       amdump at the end of each run.

DISKLIST FILE
       The  disklist  file determines which disks will be backed up by Amanda.
       The file usually contains one line per disk:

       hostname diskname [diskdevice] dumptype [spindle [interface] ]

       All pairs [ hostname diskname ] must be unique.

       Lines starting with # are ignored, as are blank lines. The fields  have
       the following meanings:

       hostname
	      The  name of the host to be backed up. If diskdevice refers to a
	      PC share, this is the host Amanda will run the  Samba  smbclient
	      program on to back up the share.

       diskname
	      The  name	 of  the  disk	(a  label). In most case, you set your
	      diskname to the diskdevice and you don't set the diskdevice.  If
	      you want multiple entries with the same diskdevice, you must set
	      a different diskname for each entry. It's the diskname that  you
	      use on the commandline for any Amanda command. Look at the exam‐
	      ple/disklist file for example.

       diskdevice
	      Default: same as diskname. The name of the  disk	device	to  be
	      backed  up.  It may be a full device name, a device name without
	      the /dev/ prefix, e.g.  sd0a, or a mount point such as /usr.

	      It may also refer to a PC share by starting the  name  with  two
	      (forward)	 slashes, e.g.	//some-pc/home. In this case, the pro‐
	      gram option in the associated dumptype must be entered  as  GNU‐
	      TAR.  It	is  the	 combination of the double slash disk name and
	      program GNUTAR in the dumptype that triggers the use of Samba.

       dumptype
	      Refers to a dumptype defined in the amanda.conf file.  Dumptypes
	      specify  backup  related parameters, such as whether to compress
	      the backups, whether to record backup results in /etc/dumpdates,
	      the disk's relative priority, etc.

       spindle
	      Default:	-1.  A	number	used to balance backup load on a host.
	      Amanda will not run multiple backups at the  same	 time  on  the
	      same spindle, unless the spindle number is -1, which means there
	      is no spindle restriction.

       interface
	      Default: local. The name of a network  interface	definition  in
	      the amanda.conf file, used to balance network load.

       Instead	of  naming  a  dumptype, it is possible to define one in-line,
       enclosing dumptype options within curly braces, one per line, just like
       a  dumptype definition in amanda.conf. Since pre-existing dumptypes are
       valid option names, this syntax may be used to customize dumptypes  for
       particular disks.

       A line break must follow the left curly bracket.

       For  instance,  if  a dumptype named normal is used for most disks, but
       use of the holding disk needs to be disabled for the file  system  that
       holds it, this would work instead of defining a new dumptype:

       hostname diskname [ diskdevice ] {
	 normal
	 holdingdisk no
       } [ spindle [ interface ] ]

TAPE MANAGEMENT
       The  tapelist  file contains the list of tapes in active use. This file
       is maintained entirely by Amanda and should not be  created  or	edited
       during normal operation. It contains lines of the form:

       YYYYMMDD label flags

       Where  YYYYMMDD	is the date the tape was written, label is a label for
       the tape as written by amlabel and flags tell Amanda whether  the  tape
       may be reused, etc (see the reuse options of amadmin).

       Amdump  and  amflush will refuse to write to an unlabeled tape, or to a
       labeled tape that is considered active. There must  be  more  tapes  in
       active  rotation	 (see the tapecycle option) than there are runs in the
       backup cycle (see the dumpcycle option) to prevent overwriting a backup
       image that would be needed to do a full recovery.

OUTPUT DRIVERS
       The  normal value for the tapedev parameter, or for what a tape changer
       returns, is a full path name to a non-rewinding tape  device,  such  as
       /dev/nst0  or  /dev/rmt/0mn  or /dev/nst0.1 or whatever conventions the
       operating system uses.  Amanda provides	additional  application	 level
       drivers	that  support non-traditional tape-simulations or features. To
       access a specific output driver, set tapedev (or configure your changer
       to  return) a string of the form driver:driver-info where driver is one
       of the supported drivers and driver-info is optional additional	infor‐
       mation needed by the driver.

       The supported drivers are:

       tape   This  is	the default driver. The driver-info is the tape device
	      name. Entering

	      tapedev /dev/rmt/0mn
	      is really a short hand for

	      tapedev tape:/dev/rmt/0mn

       null   This driver throws away anything written to it and  returns  EOF
	      for any reads except a special case is made for reading a label,
	      in which case a "fake" value is returned that Amanda checks  for
	      and  allows through regardless of what you have set in labelstr.
	      The driver-info field is not used and may be left blank:

	      tapedev null:

	      The length value from the associated tapetype is used  to	 limit
	      the  amount  of  data  written.  When  the limit is reached, the
	      driver will simulate end of tape.

	      Note
	      This driver should only be used for debugging and	 testing,  and
	      probably	only  with the record option set to no..TP rait Redun‐
	      dant Array of Inexpensive (?)  Tapes.  Reads  and	 writes	 tapes
	      mounted  on  multiple  drives  by	 spreading the data across N-1
	      drives and using the last drive for a  checksum.	See  docs/RAIT
	      for more information.

	      The driver-info field describes the devices to use. Curly braces
	      indicate multiple replacements in the string. For instance:

	      tapedev rait:/dev/rmt/tps0d{4,5,6}n

	      would use the following devices:

	      /dev/rmt/tps0d4n/dev/rmt/tps0d5n/dev/rmt/tps0d6n

       file   This driver emulates a tape device with a	 set  of  files	 in  a
	      directory. The driver-info field must be the name of an existing
	      directory. The driver will test for a subdirectory of that named
	      data  and	 return offline until it is present. When present, the
	      driver uses two files in the data	 subdirectory  for  each  tape
	      file.  One  contains  the actual data. The other contains record
	      length information.

	      The driver uses a file named status in the file device directory
	      to hold driver status information, such as tape position. If not
	      present, the driver will create  it  as  though  the  device  is
	      rewound.

	      The  length  value from the associated tapetype is used to limit
	      the amount of data written.  When	 the  limit  is	 reached,  the
	      driver will simulate end of tape.

	      One  way	to  use	 this  driver with a real device such as a CD-
	      writer is to create a directory for the file device and  one  or
	      more  other  directories	for  the actual data. Create a symlink
	      named data in the file directory to one of the data directories.
	      Set the tapetype length to whatever the medium will hold.

	      When  Amanda  fills  the	file  device,  remove  the symlink and
	      (optionally) create a new symlink to another data area. Use a CD
	      writer  software	package	 to burn the image from the first data
	      area.

	      To read the CD, mount it and create the data symlink in the file
	      device directory.

AUTHORIZATION
       Amanda  processes  on  the  tape	 server	 host run as the dumpuser user
       listed in amanda.conf. When they connect to a backup client, they do so
       with an Amanda-specific protocol. They do not, for instance, use rsh or
       ssh directly.

       On the client side, the amandad daemon validates the  connection	 using
       one of several methods, depending on how it was compiled and on options
       it is passed:

       Even though
	      Amanda does not use rsh, it can use file.

       This is essentially the same as
	      authentication except a different file,  with  almost  the  same
	      format,  is  used.  This	is  the	 default  mechanism built into
	      Amanda.

	      The format of the .amandahosts file is:

	      hostname [ username ]

	      If username is ommitted, it defaults to the user	running	 aman‐
	      dad,  i.e.  the user listed in the inetd or xinetd configuration
	      file.

       Kerberos
	      Amanda may  use  the  Kerberos  authentication  system.  Further
	      information  is  in  the	docs/KERBEROSfile  that	 comes with an
	      Amanda distribution.

	      For Samba access, Amanda needs a file on the Samba server (which
	      may  or  may  not also be the tape server) named /etc/amandapass
	      with share names, (clear text) passwords and  (optional)	domain
	      names,  in  that	order,	one per line, whitespace separated. By
	      default, the user used to connect to the PC is the same for  all
	      PC's and is compiled into Amanda. It may be changed on a host by
	      host basis by listing it first in the password field followed by
	      a percent sign and then the password. For instance:

		//some-pc/home normalpw
		//another-pc/disk otheruser%otherpw.fi
	      With clear text passwords, this file should obviously be tightly protected. It only needs to be readable by the
	      Amanda-user on the Samba server.

	      You can find further information in the
	      docs/SAMBAfile that comes with an
	      Amanda
	      distribution.

HOST & DISK EXPRESSION
       All  host  and  disk arguments to programs are special expressions. The
       command applies to all disks that match your  arguments.	 This  section
       describes the matcher.

       The  matcher matches by word, each word is a glob expression, words are
       separated by the separator '.' for host	and  '/'  for  disk.  You  can
       anchor the expression at left with a '^'. You can anchor the expression
       at right with a '$'. The matcher is case insensitive for	 host  but  is
       case  sensitive for disk. A match succeeds if all words in your expres‐
       sion match contiguous words in the host or disk.

       /    word separator for a disk
       ^    anchor at left
       $    anchor at right
       ?    match exactly one character except the separator
       *    match zero or more characters except the separator
       **   match zero or more characters including the separator

       Some examples:

       EXPRESSION     WILL MATCH	   WILL NOT MATCH
       hosta	      hosta		   hostb
		      hoSTA.dOMAIna.ORG
		      foo.hosta.org
       host	      host		   hosta
       host?	      hosta		   host
		      hostb
       ho*na	      hoina		   ho.aina.org
       ho**na	      hoina
		      ho.aina.org
       ^hosta	      hosta		   foo.hosta.org
       sda*	      /dev/sda1
		      /dev/sda12
       /opt/	      opt (disk)	   opt (host)
       /	      /			   any other disk
       /usr	      /usr
		      /usr/opt
       /usr$	      /usr		   /usr/opt

DATESTAMP EXPRESSION
       A datestamp expression is a range expression where we  only  match  the
       prefix.	Leading	 ^  is	removed.  Trailing  $  forces  an exact match.
       20001212-14match	 all  dates  beginning	with  20001212,	 20001213   or
       2000121420001212-4same  as  previous20001212-24match  all dates between
       20001212 and 200012242000121match all dates  that  start	 with  2000121
       (20001210-20001219)2match    all	   dates    that    start    with    2
       (20000101-29991231)2000-10match	      all	 dates	       between
       20000101-20101231200010$match only 200010.PP

AUTHOR
       James da Silva, <jds@amanda.org> : Original text

       Stefan  G. Weichinger, <sgw@amanda.org>, maintainer of the Amanda-docu‐
       mentation: XML-conversion, major update

SEE ALSO
       amadmin(8),  amanda.conf(5),  amcheck(8),  amcheckdb(8),	 amcleanup(8),
       amdd(8), amdump(8), amfetchdump(8)amflush(8), amgetconf(8), amlabel(8),
       ammt(8), amoverview(8),	amplot(8),  amrecover(8),  amreport(8),	 amre‐
       store(8), amrmtape(8), amstatus(8), amtape(8), amtapetype(8), amtoc(8),
       amverify(8), amverifyrun(8)

								     AMANDA(8)
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