1AMANDA(8) AMANDA(8)
2
6 amanda - Advanced Maryland Automatic Network Disk Archiver
7
9 amadmin config command [options]
10 amcheck [options] config
13 amcheckdb config
16 amcleanup config
19 amcrypt
22 amdd [options]
25 amdump config
27 amaespipe
30 amflush [-f] config
33 amgetconf [config] parameter
36 amlabel config label [slot slot]
39 ammt [options]
42 amoverview config [options]
44 amplot [options] amdump-files
47 amrecover [config] [options]
50 amreport [config] [options]
53 amrestore [options] tapedevice [hostname [diskname]]
56 amfetchdump [options] config [hostname [diskname [date [level]]]]
59 amrmtape [options] config label
61 amstatus config [options]
64 amtape config command [options]
67 amtapetype [options]
70 amtoc [options] logfile
72 amverify config
75 amverifyrun config
78
80 Amanda is the "Advanced Maryland Automatic Network Disk Archiver". This
81 manual page gives an overview of the Amanda commands and configuration
82 files for quick reference.
83 Here are all the Amanda commands. Each one has its own manual page. See
85 them for all the gory details.
86 amdump
88 Take care of automatic Amanda backups. This is normally executed by
89 cron on a computer called the tape server host and requests backups
90 of file systems located on backup clients. Amdump backs up all
91 disks in the disklist file (discussed below) to tape or, if there
92 is a problem, to a special holding disk. After all backups are
93 done, amdump sends mail reporting failures and successes.
94 amflush
96 Flush backups from the holding disk to tape. Amflush is used after
97 amdump has reported it could not write backups to tape for some
98 reason. When this happens, backups stay in the holding disk. Run
99 amflush after the tape problem is corrected to write backups from
100 the holding disk to tape.
101 amcleanup
103 Clean up after an interrupted amdump. This command is only needed
104 if amdump was unable to complete for some reason, usually because
105 the tape server host crashed while amdump was running.
106 amrecover
108 Provides an interactive interface to browse the Amanda index files
109 (backup image catalogues) and select which tapes to recover files
110 from. It can also run amrestore and a restore program (e.g. tar)
111 to actually recover the files.
112 amrestore
114 Read an Amanda tape, searching for requested backups. Amrestore is
115 suitable for everything from interactive restores of single files
116 to a full restore of all partitions on a failed disk.
117 amfetchdump
119 Performs Amanda tape restoration, similar to amrestore. Additional
120 capabilities include "hands-off" searching of multiple tapes,
121 automatic retrieval of specific dump files based on dump logs, and
122 assembly of tape-spanning split dump files.
123 amlabel
125 Write an Amanda format label onto a tape. All Amanda tapes must be
126 labeled with amlabel. Amdump and amflush will not write to an
127 unlabeled tape (see TAPE MANAGEMENT below).
128 amcheck
130 Verify the correct tape is mounted and all file systems on all
131 backup client systems are ready to be backed up. Often run by cron
132 before amdump to generate a mail warning that backups might fail
133 unless corrective action is taken.
134 amadmin
136 Take care of administrative tasks like finding out which tapes are
137 needed to restore a filesystem, forcing hosts to do full backups of
138 selected disks and looking at schedule balance information.
139 amtape
141 Take care of tape changer control operations like loading
142 particular tapes, ejecting tapes and scanning the tape storage
143 slots.
144 amverify
146 Check Amanda backup tapes for errors.
147 amrmtape
149 Delete a tape from the Amanda databases.
150 amstatus
152 Report the status of a running or completed amdump.
153 amoverview
155 Display a chart of hosts and file systems backed up every run.
156 amplot
158 Generate utilization plots of Amanda runs for performance tuning.
159 amreport
161 Generate an Amanda summary E-mail report.
162 amtoc
164 Generate table of content files for Amanda tapes.
165 amcheckdb
167 Verify every tape Amanda knows about is consistent in the database.
168 amgetconf
170 Look up parameters in the Amanda configuration file.
171 amtapetype
173 Generate a tapetype definition.
174 amaespipe
176 Wrapper program from aespipe (data encryption utility)
177 amcrypt
179 Reference encryption program for Amanda symmetric data encryption
180
182 There are three user-editable files that control the behavior of
183 Amanda.
184 The first is amanda.conf, the main configuration file. It contains
186 parameters to customize Amanda for the site. Refer to the
187 amanda.conf(5), manpage for details on Amanda configuration parameters.
188 Second is the disklist file, which lists hosts and disk partitions to
190 back up.
191 Third is the tapelist file, which lists tapes that are currently
193 active. These files are described in more detail in the following
194 sections.
195 All files are stored in individual configuration directories under
197 /usr/local/etc/amanda/. A site will often have more than one
198 configuration. For example, it might have a normal configuration for
199 everyday backups and an archive configuration for infrequent full
200 archival backups. The configuration files would be stored under
201 directories /usr/local/etc/amanda/normal/ and
202 /usr/local/etc/amanda/archive/, respectively. Part of the job of an
203 Amanda administrator is to create, populate and maintain these
204 directories.
205 All log and database files generated by Amanda go in corresponding
207 directories somewhere. The exact location is controlled by entries in
208 amanda.conf. A typical location would be under /var/adm/amanda. For the
209 above example, the files might go in /var/adm/amanda/normal/ and
210 /var/adm/amanda/archive/.
211 As log files are no longer needed (no longer contain relevant
213 information), Amanda cycles them out in various ways, depending on the
214 type of file.
215 Detailed information about amdump runs are stored in files named
217 amdump.NN where NN is a sequence number, with 1 being the most recent
218 file. Amdump rotates these files each run, keeping roughly the last
219 tapecycle (see below) worth of them.
220 The file used by amreport to generate the mail summary is named
222 log.YYYYMMDD.NN where YYYYMMDD is the datestamp of the start of the
223 amdump run and NN is a sequence number started at 0. At the end of each
224 amdump run, log files for runs whose tapes have been reused are renamed
225 into a subdirectory of the main log directory (see the logdir parameter
226 below) named oldlog. It is up to the Amanda administrator to remove
227 them from this directory when desired.
228 Index (backup image catalogue) files older than the full dump matching
230 the oldest backup image for a given client and disk are removed by
231 amdump at the end of each run.
232
234 The disklist file determines which disks will be backed up by Amanda.
235 The file usually contains one line per disk:
236 hostname diskname [diskdevice] dumptype [spindle [interface] ]
238 All pairs [ hostname diskname ] must be unique.
240 Lines starting with # are ignored, as are blank lines. The fields have
242 the following meanings:
243 hostname
245 The name of the host to be backed up. If diskdevice refers to a PC
246 share, this is the host Amanda will run the Samba smbclient program
247 on to back up the share.
248 diskname
250 The name of the disk (a label). In most case, you set your diskname
251 to the diskdevice and you don't set the diskdevice. If you want
252 multiple entries with the same diskdevice, you must set a different
253 diskname for each entry. It's the diskname that you use on the
254 commandline for any Amanda command. Look at the example/disklist
255 file for example.
256 diskdevice
258 Default: same as diskname. The name of the disk device to be backed
259 up. It may be a full device name, a device name without the /dev/
260 prefix, e.g. sd0a, or a mount point such as /usr.
261 It may also refer to a PC share by starting the name with two
263 (forward) slashes, e.g. //some-pc/home. In this case, the program
264 option in the associated dumptype must be entered as GNUTAR. It is
265 the combination of the double slash disk name and program GNUTAR in
266 the dumptype that triggers the use of Samba.
267 dumptype
269 Refers to a dumptype defined in the amanda.conf file. Dumptypes
270 specify backup related parameters, such as whether to compress the
271 backups, whether to record backup results in /etc/dumpdates, the
272 disk's relative priority, etc.
273 spindle
275 Default: -1. A number used to balance backup load on a host.
276 Amanda will not run multiple backups at the same time on the same
277 spindle, unless the spindle number is -1, which means there is no
278 spindle restriction.
279 interface
281 Default: local. The name of a network interface definition in the
282 amanda.conf file, used to balance network load.
283 Instead of naming a dumptype, it is possible to define one in-line,
285 enclosing dumptype options within curly braces, one per line, just like
286 a dumptype definition in amanda.conf. Since pre-existing dumptypes are
287 valid option names, this syntax may be used to customize dumptypes for
288 particular disks.
289 A line break must follow the left curly bracket.
291 For instance, if a dumptype named normal is used for most disks, but
293 use of the holding disk needs to be disabled for the file system that
294 holds it, this would work instead of defining a new dumptype:
295 hostname diskname [ diskdevice ] {
297 normal
298 holdingdisk never
299 } [ spindle [ interface ] ]
300
302 The tapelist file contains the list of tapes in active use. This file
303 is maintained entirely by Amanda and should not be created or edited
304 during normal operation. It contains lines of the form:
305 YYYYMMDD label flags
307 Where YYYYMMDD is the date the tape was written, label is a label for
309 the tape as written by amlabel and flags tell Amanda whether the tape
310 may be reused, etc (see the reuse options of amadmin).
311 Amdump and amflush will refuse to write to an unlabeled tape, or to a
313 labeled tape that is considered active. There must be more tapes in
314 active rotation (see the tapecycle option) than there are runs in the
315 backup cycle (see the dumpcycle option) to prevent overwriting a backup
316 image that would be needed to do a full recovery.
317
319 The normal value for the tapedev parameter, or for what a tape changer
320 returns, is a full path name to a non-rewinding tape device, such as
321 /dev/nst0 or /dev/rmt/0mn or /dev/nst0.1 or whatever conventions the
322 operating system uses. Amanda provides additional application level
323 drivers that support non-traditional tape-simulations or features. To
324 access a specific output driver, set tapedev (or configure your changer
325 to return) a string of the form driver:driver-info where driver is one
326 of the supported drivers and driver-info is optional additional
327 information needed by the driver.
328 The supported drivers are:
330 tape
332 This is the default driver. The driver-info is the tape device
333 name. Entering
334 tapedev /dev/rmt/0mn
336 is really a short hand for
338 tapedev tape:/dev/rmt/0mn
340 null
342 This driver throws away anything written to it and returns EOF for
343 any reads except a special case is made for reading a label, in
344 which case a "fake" value is returned that Amanda checks for and
345 allows through regardless of what you have set in labelstr. The
346 driver-info field is not used and may be left blank:
347 tapedev null:
350 The length value from the associated tapetype is used to limit the
352 amount of data written. When the limit is reached, the driver will
353 simulate end of tape.
354 Note
356 This driver should only be used for debugging and testing, and
357 probably only with the record option set to no.
358 rait
360 Redundant Array of Inexpensive (?) Tapes. Reads and writes tapes
361 mounted on multiple drives by spreading the data across N-1 drives
362 and using the last drive for a checksum. See docs/RAIT for more
363 information.
364 The driver-info field describes the devices to use. Curly braces
366 indicate multiple replacements in the string. For instance:
367 tapedev rait:/dev/rmt/tps0d{4,5,6}n
370 would use the following devices:
372 /dev/rmt/tps0d4n /dev/rmt/tps0d5n /dev/rmt/tps0d6n
374 file
376 This driver emulates a tape device with a set of files in a
377 directory. The driver-info field must be the name of an existing
378 directory. The driver will test for a subdirectory of that named
379 data and return offline until it is present. When present, the
380 driver uses two files in the data subdirectory for each tape file.
381 One contains the actual data. The other contains record length
382 information.
383 The driver uses a file named status in the file device directory to
385 hold driver status information, such as tape position. If not
386 present, the driver will create it as though the device is rewound.
387 The length value from the associated tapetype is used to limit the
389 amount of data written. When the limit is reached, the driver will
390 simulate end of tape.
391 One way to use this driver with a real device such as a CD-writer
393 is to create a directory for the file device and one or more other
394 directories for the actual data. Create a symlink named data in the
395 file directory to one of the data directories. Set the tapetype
396 length to whatever the medium will hold.
397 When Amanda fills the file device, remove the symlink and
399 (optionally) create a new symlink to another data area. Use a CD
400 writer software package to burn the image from the first data area.
401 To read the CD, mount it and create the data symlink in the file
403 device directory.
404
406 Amanda processes on the tape server host run as the dumpuser user
407 listed in amanda.conf. When they connect to a backup client, they do so
408 with an Amanda-specific protocol. They do not, for instance, use rsh or
409 ssh directly.
410 On the client side, the amandad daemon validates the connection using
412 one of several methods, depending on how it was compiled and on options
413 it is passed:
414 .rhosts
416 Even though Amanda does not use rsh, it can use .rhosts-style
417 authentication and a .rhosts file.
418 .amandahosts
420 This is essentially the same as .rhosts authentication except a
421 different file, with almost the same format, is used. This is the
422 default mechanism built into Amanda.
423 The format of the .amandahosts file is:
425 hostname [ username [ service ]*]
427 If username is ommitted, it defaults to the user running amandad,
429 i.e. the user listed in the inetd or xinetd configuration file.
430 The service is a list of the service the client is authorized to
432 execute: amdump, noop, selfcheck, sendsize, sendbackup, amindexd,
433 amidxtaped. amdump is a shortcut for "noop selfcheck sendsize
434 sendbackup"
435 Kerberos
437 Amanda may use the Kerberos authentication system. Further
438 information is in the docs/KERBEROS file that comes with an Amanda
439 distribution.
440 For Samba access, Amanda needs a file on the Samba server (which
442 may or may not also be the tape server) named /etc/amandapass with
443 share names, (clear text) passwords and (optional) domain names, in
444 that order, one per line, whitespace separated. By default, the
445 user used to connect to the PC is the same for all PC's and is
446 compiled into Amanda. It may be changed on a host by host basis by
447 listing it first in the password field followed by a percent sign
448 and then the password. For instance:
449 //some-pc/home normalpw
451 //another-pc/disk otheruser%otherpw
452 With clear text passwords, this file should obviously be tightly
453 protected. It only needs to be readable by the Amanda-user on the
454 Samba server.
455 You can find further information in the docs/SAMBA file that comes
457 with an Amanda distribution.
458
460 All host and disk arguments to programs are special expressions. The
461 command applies to all disks that match your arguments. This section
462 describes the matcher.
463 The matcher matches by word, each word is a glob expression, words are
465 separated by the separator '.' for host and '/' for disk. You can
466 anchor the expression at left with a '^'. You can anchor the expression
467 at right with a '$'. The matcher is case insensitive for host but is
468 case sensitive for disk. A match succeeds if all words in your
469 expression match contiguous words in the host or disk.
470 . word separator for a host
472 / word separator for a disk
473 ^ anchor at left
474 $ anchor at right
475 ? match exactly one
476 character except the
477 separator
478 * match zero or more
479 characters except the
480 separator
481 ** match zero or more
482 characters including the
483 separator
484 Some examples:
487 EXPRESSION WILL MATCH WILL NOT MATCH
489 ho.aina.org
490 ^hosta hosta foo.hosta.org
491 sda* /dev/sda1
492 /dev/sda12
493 /opt opt (disk) opt (host)
494 .opt. opt (host) opt (disk)
495 / / any other disk
496 /usr /usr
497 /usr/opt
498 /usr$ /usr /usr/opt
499 hosta hosta hostb
500 hoSTA.dOMAIna.ORG
501 foo.hosta.org
502 host host hosta
503 host? hosta host
504 hostb
505 ho*na hoina ho.aina.org
506 ho**na hoina
507
510 A datestamp expression is a range expression where we only match the
511 prefix. Leading ^ is removed. Trailing $ forces an exact match.
512 ┌────────────┬────────────────────────────┐
514 │20001212-14 │ match all dates beginning │
515 │ │ with 20001212, 20001213 or │
516 │ │ 20001214 │
517 ├────────────┼────────────────────────────┤
518 │20001212-4 │ same as previous │
519 ├────────────┼────────────────────────────┤
520 │20001212-24 │ match all dates between │
521 │ │ 20001212 and 20001224 │
522 ├────────────┼────────────────────────────┤
523 │2000121 │ match all dates that start │
524 │ │ with 2000121 │
525 │ │ (20001210-20001219) │
526 ├────────────┼────────────────────────────┤
527 │2 │ match all dates that start │
528 │ │ with 2 (20000101-29991231) │
529 ├────────────┼────────────────────────────┤
530 │2000-10 │ match all dates between │
531 │ │ 20000101-20101231 │
532 ├────────────┼────────────────────────────┤
533 │200010$ │ match only 200010 │
534 └────────────┴────────────────────────────┘
535
537 Most command allow to overwrite any configuration parameter on the
538 command line with the -o option.
539 -o NAME=value
541 eg. -o runtapes=2
543 eg. -o DUMPTYPE:no-compress:compress="server fast"
545 eg. -o TAPETYPE:HP-DAT:length=2000m
547 eg. -o INTERFACE:local:use="2000 kbps"
549
551 James da Silva, <jds@amanda.org> : Original text
552 Stefan G. Weichinger, <sgw@amanda.org>, maintainer of the
554 Amanda-documentation: XML-conversion, major update
555
557 amadmin(8), amanda.conf(5), amanda-client.conf(5), amcheck(8),
558 amcheckdb(8), amcleanup(8), amdd(8), amdump(8), amfetchdump(8)
559 amflush(8), amgetconf(8), amlabel(8), ammt(8), amoverview(8),
560 amplot(8), amrecover(8), amreport(8), amrestore(8), amrmtape(8),
561 amstatus(8), amtape(8), amtapetype(8), amtoc(8), amverify(8),
562 amverifyrun(8)
563 02/07/2007 AMANDA(8)