HOWTO Restore Files From Amanda

How to restore files from an Amanda tape backup.

SSH to musashi or hurricane for recovering files from a machine, and SSH to spitfire to recover files from users or projects.

Finding Where the Files you want to Restore are Located

hostname / # su - amanda
amanda@hostname ~ $ amadmin $backupname find $hostname/$ipaddress $directorypath

Worked Example:
amanda@hostname ~ $ amadmin DailyMusashi find 209.87.56.16 /etc

You should see something like this:

2006-04-07 209.87.56.16 /etc/  0 DailyMusashi20   24 OK
2006-04-10 209.87.56.16 /etc/  1 DailyMusashi21   16 OK
2006-04-11 209.87.56.16 /etc/  1 DailyMusashi22   19 OK
2006-04-12 209.87.56.16 /etc/  1 DailyMusashi23   23 OK
2006-04-13 209.87.56.16 /etc/  1 DailyMusashi24   29 OK
2006-04-18 209.87.56.16 /etc/  1 DailyMusashi25   23 OK

Another example:

amanda@trainwreck ~ $ amadmin Daily find inferno /srv/www
Scanning /holding...
Scanning /holding...

date       host    disk     lv tape or file file status
2007-04-23 inferno /srv/www  0 Daily05         8 OK
2007-04-24 inferno /srv/www  1 Daily06         4 OK
2007-04-25 inferno /srv/www  1 Daily07         2 OK
2007-04-26 inferno /srv/www  1 Daily08         2 OK
2007-04-27 inferno /srv/www  1 Daily09         2 OK
2007-04-30 inferno /srv/www  0 Daily10        10 OK
2007-05-01 inferno /srv/www  1 Daily01         6 OK
2007-05-02 inferno /srv/www  1 Daily02         2 OK
2007-05-03 inferno /srv/www  1 Daily03         2 OK
2007-05-04 inferno /srv/www  1 Daily04         2 OK

Note: You cannot specify a low-level directory or a file. You have to use the same name that amanda used for the backup - typically a directory. For example, if a user deleted all their Firefox bookmarks/preferences, you cannot directly try to find /home/gordp/.mozilla/firefox/xxx.gord, but rather you would have to find /home/gordp. This is because amanda only knows about having backed up /home/gordp.

Restoring Files

Looking at the file-listing, you are interested in the most-recent level0 backup (to begin with), and the most-recent level1. None of the others (ie xxx ) are of any interest at all. We will only use DailyMusashi20, and DailyMusashi25 in the first example; Daily10 and Daily04 in the second example.

If you had level2, level3 or higher, then they would get "layered" on top of the level0 and level1 restores. In this case, you would use the most recent level2, level3 or higher tapes.

Now that you know what tape the files are on, insert the first tape into the drive and ask for the files. Note: The files will be extracted into the current directory.
NOTE: Make sure you have enough drive-space for the extraction to succeed! df -h

amanda@hostname ~ $ mkdir restore; cd restore
amanda@hostname ~ $ amrestore -p /dev/nst0 209.87.56.16 /etc | tar xvf -

Or, another couple of examples using amfetchdump

amanda@hostname ~ $ amfetchdump -d /dev/nst0 -p hurricane 209.87.56.56 /vservers/sr-hercules01/var/lib/mysql 20120606 | tar xvf -
amanda@hostname ~ $ amfetchdump -d /dev/nst0 -p hurricane 209.87.56.5 /var/www 20120618 | tar xvf -

Either command (amrestore or amfetchdump) will output the files and directories in the current folder. You can abort the process at anytime when your file has been recovered (CTRL-C).

If you need multiple tapes, simply rewind (below), eject (below), insert the next tape, and repeat the above amrestore command.

Now that the files have been extracted, you can copy them to their final destination. If the final destination is local to the amanda-server where you've just extracted the files, simply use cp, probably with the -R option to recurse and copy subdirectories.

If the final destination is a remote-machine, use scp, again with -r recursive option if you need subdirectories copied over also.

File ownerships will likely be wrong! use chown -R <user:group> <directory> to correct this.

Finish Up

Rewind a tape; as root:

hostname / # mt -f /dev/st0 rewind     (/dev/nst0 is the non-rewinding device, although it may rewind anyway)
hostname / # mt -f /dev/nst0 eject