UNIX System Administration Handbook - Evi Nemeth [127]
Another common problem occurs when Amanda cannot get an estimate of the dump sizes for a client’s filesystems. The first things to check in this situation are that the client is reachable over the network and that its copy of Amanda is set up properly. You can also check the debug files in the client’s /tmp/amanda directory. Each of Amanda client programs writes debugging output here every time it runs.
When Amanda can’t obtain a size estimate, look at sendsize’s debug file. sendsize parses the output of dump and looks for the estimated size line. If it doesn’t see it, Amanda reports [no estimate]. Here’s an example of a sendsize.debug file:
sendsize: getting size via dump for c0t0d0s3 level 1
sendsize: running "/usr/ccs/bin/dump 1sf 100000 - /dev/dsk/c0t0d0s3"
DUMP: Date of this level 1 dump: Wed Sep 01 21:59:36 1999
DUMP: Date of last level 0 dump: Mon Aug 30 05:08:33 1999
DUMP: Dumping /dev/dsk/c0t0d0s3 (/var) to standard output
DUMP: mapping (Pass I) [regular files]
DUMP: mapping (Pass II) [directories]
DUMP: mapping (Pass II) [directories]
DUMP: mapping (Pass II) [directories]
DUMP: estimated 7150 tape blocks on 0.00 tape(s).
DUMP: dumping (Pass III) [directories]
....
calculating for amname 'c0t0d0s7', dirname '/local'
sendsize: getting size via dump for c0t0d0s7 level 0
sendsize: running "/usr/ccs/bin/dump 0sf 100000 - /dev/dsk/c0t0d0s7"
DUMP: Cannot open/stat /dev/rdsk/c0t0d0s7, Permission denied
....
(no size line match in above dump output)
In this case, it’s obvious that we need to fix the permissions on /dev/rdsk/c0t0d0s7.
If you can’t solve your problem by looking in the log files or the Amanda documentation, you may want to look over the archives of the Amanda mailing lists. You can search them at
http://www.egroups.com/list/amanda-users
http://www.egroups.com/list/amanda-hackers
File restoration from an Amanda backup
To restore from Amanda backups, use the amadmin and amrestore programs. Let’s walk through a complete example.
Suppose we have a user who deleted a whole directory and wants it restored. The first step is to find the tapes on which the directory was backed up. To do this, you need the following information:
• The name of the machine and partition on which the directory resided
• The full path to the directory
• The date the directory was lost or corrupted
• The date the directory was last modified
The dates will determine a range of tapes that contain the directory in a state we might want to restore. Let’s suppose the directory we want to restore is in zamboni’s /local partition, and that it was modified on October 5 and deleted on October 12. amadmin will determine which tapes we need:
% amadmin podunk find zamboni c0t0d0s7
date host disk lv tape file status
2000-01-26 zamboni c0t0d0s7 1 Podunk-795 33 OK
2000-01-25 zamboni c0t0d0s7 1 Podunk-794 41 OK
2000-01-23 zamboni c0t0d0s7 0 Podunk-792 9 OK
2000-01-22 zamboni c0t0d0s7 1 Podunk-791 32 OK
...
1999-10-13 zamboni c0t0d0s7 1 Podunk-685 38 OK
1999-10-12 zamboni c0t0d0s7 1 Podunk-684 37 OK
1999-10-11 zamboni c0t0d0s7 1 Podunk-683 39 OK
1999-10-10 zamboni c0t0d0s7 1 Podunk-682 72 OK
1999-10-09 zamboni c0t0d0s7 1 Podunk-681 44 OK
1999-10-08 zamboni c0t0d0s7 1 Podunk-680 88 OK
1999-10-07 zamboni c0t0d0s7 1 Podunk-518 35 OK
1999-10-06 zamboni c0t0d0s7 1 Podunk-517 33 OK
1999-10-05 zamboni c0t0d0s7 1 Podunk-516 33 OK
1999-10-04 zamboni c0t0d0s7 1 Podunk-515 51 OK
1999-10-03 zamboni c0t0d0s7 1 Podunk-514 16 OK
1999-10-02 zamboni c0t0d0s7 1 Podunk-513 19 OK
1999-10-01 zamboni c0t0d0s7 1 Podunk-512 36 OK
1999-09-30 zamboni c0t0d0s7 1 Podunk-511 15 OK
1999-09-29 zamboni c0t0d0s7 1 Podunk-510 78 OK
1999-09-28 zamboni c0t0d0s7 0 Podunk-509 99 OK
...
The find option causes amadmin to go through each log file in the amanda.conf configuration, searching for the machine and partition we supplied as arguments. To do our restore, we need the level 0 tape Podunk-509 and the level 1 tape Podunk-683 from the day before the deletion. For the level 1, we could theoretically