Backups with AMANDA

Restore Files From Amanda

Background

We have two main file-servers (musashi, and yamato), which each perform their own backups Monday through Friday (typically). Musashi has a SCSI-attached HP LTO-1 Ultrium 230 (Aug. 2003) tape-drive; yamato has a replacement Ultrium 232 (Nov. 2006) tape-drive.
Yamato only backs up it's SCSI-connected RAID drives. Musashi doesn't back up one of it's own SCSI-connected RAID drives (too much non-essential data), but musashi does "reach out" and backup other machines' files. What gets backed up is listed/controlled in the /etc/amanda/Dailyxxx/disklist. Both yamato and musashi have amanda configured as a server and client, while the remote machines captured by musashi have amanda configured as a client-only.

Amanda Server Configuration

The first step was to determine the tapetype entry, in /etc/amanda/Dailyxxx/amanda.conf; here are the results from two different tests on separate systems:

Ultrium 230

define tapetype Ultrium230 {
    comment "HP Ultrium 230, produced by amtapetype"
    length 101376 mbytes
    filemark 0 kbytes
    speed 13871 kps
}

Ultrium 232

amanda@trainwreck ~ $ amtapetype -f /dev/nst0 -e 100G -o
Writing 1024 Mbyte   compresseable data:  37 sec
Writing 1024 Mbyte uncompresseable data:  72 sec
WARNING: Tape drive has hardware compression enabled
Estimated time to write 2 * 102400 Mbyte: 14400 sec = 4 h 0 min
wrote 3080192 32Kb blocks in 94 files in 7025 seconds (short write)
wrote 3096576 32Kb blocks in 189 files in 7511 seconds (short write)
define tapetype unknown-tapetype {
    comment "just produced by tapetype prog (hardware compression on)"
    length 96512 mbytes
    filemark 0 kbytes
    speed 13611 kps
}

Tape Drive Compression

Compression can be turned on or off using the mt tool noted below, then initiating the tapetype check; kill the tapetype check with ctrl-C when you've got enough info (takes quite a few minutes)

trainwreck ~ # mt -f /dev/nst0 defcompression 1
trainwreck ~ # su - amanda
amanda@trainwreck ~ $ amtapetype -f /dev/nst0 -e 100G -o
Writing 1024 Mbyte   compresseable data:  42 sec
Writing 1024 Mbyte uncompresseable data:  72 sec
WARNING: Tape drive has hardware compression enabled
Estimated time to write 2 * 102400 Mbyte: 14400 sec = 4 h 0 min

amanda@trainwreck ~ $ logout
trainwreck ~ # mt -f /dev/nst0 defcompression 0
trainwreck ~ # su - amanda
amanda@trainwreck ~ $ amtapetype -f /dev/nst0 -e 100G -o
Writing 512 Mbyte   compresseable data:  38 sec
Writing 512 Mbyte uncompresseable data:  39 sec
Estimated time to write 2 * 102400 Mbyte: 15600 sec = 4 h 20 min

Amanda Client Configuration

Unfortunately, with the Gentoo packaging, you get more than you need, for just a client:

inferno / # emerge -pv amanda

These are the packages that would be merged, in order:

Calculating dependencies... done!
[ebuild  N    ] sys-block/mtx-1.2.18  164 kB 
[ebuild  N    ] sci-visualization/gnuplot-4.0-r1  USE="emacs gd png readline -X -doc -ggi -pdf -plotutils (-svga) -xemacs" 2,111 kB 
[ebuild  N    ] app-arch/mt-st-0.7-r1  35 kB 
[ebuild  N    ] sys-apps/xinetd-2.3.14  USE="perl tcpd" 295 kB 
[ebuild  N    ] app-arch/dump-0.4.41  USE="readline -ermt -static" 277 kB 
[ebuild  N    ] app-backup/amanda-2.4.5  USE="-berkdb -debug -gdbm -samba -xfs" 1,506 kB 

Total: 6 packages (6 new), Size of downloads: 4,386 kB

There are a couple of separate steps required, for amanda-client to work - configuring the xinetd meta-server, and configuring amanda. Most aggravations seem to stem from permissions, whether it's the server-access through xinetd, or the amanda-permitted-user in .amandahosts.

inferno / # emacs -nw /etc/xinetd.d/amanda

service amanda
{
        socket_type     = dgram
        protocol        = udp
        wait            = yes
        user            = amanda
        group           = amanda
        groups          = yes
        server          = /usr/libexec/amandad
        # You need to ensure this points to your Amanda server!
        # Don't just remove it!
        only_from           = trainwreck (clearly, this should point to your server)
        disable         = no
}

If this is a brand-new installation of xinetd, don't forget to start it! And, add it to your startup-scripts (Gentoo shown):

inferno / # /etc/init.d/xinetd start
 * Caching service dependencies ...                                         [ ok ]
 * Starting xinetd ...                                                      [ ok ]

inferno / # emacs -nw /etc/amanda/amandahosts

# Machine-name for those hosts which are permitted to back up (fully-qualified
# is best).  An entry in /etc/hosts adds fail-safe against DNS death :-)
# |
# |                                     permitted user-name
# |                                     |

trainwreck.shaw.ca                      amanda  (again, use your server)

That's really all the client needs, unless you're actively using tcpwrappers, in which case /etc/hosts.allow and /etc/hosts.deny may require changes. Similarly, if iptables is running, you'll need to add firewall rules to allow amanda through.
To now bring this client into the backup routine, some entries are needed on the backup-server, in the disklist file:

trainwreck ~ # emacs -nw /etc/amanda/Daily/disklist

Now, run a check from your backup-server, to ensure things look good: