Setting up Amanda

From openSUSE

This is a brief run through of setting Amanda to run a backup of the local machine.

This is based on the Cool Solutions article "Using Amanda to Backup Your Linux Server": [1]

I'm using OpenSUSE 10.2 on an IBM xSeries 225 with a 20/40 GB SCSI DAT as /dev/nst0.

As root Install Amanda through Yast

Once installed you need to enable the amanda xinet.d service, edit /etc/xinetd.d/amanda and change the line disable = yes to disable = no and restart the xinetd service from yast

Note: On OpenSUSE 10.3 I had to change the xinet.d service settings to get it working, see the notes at the bottom of the page.

The first thing to do is to let amanda probe your tape drive to find it's capacity. Put a tape in to the drive (all data will be erased on the tape) and run (-e is the estimated size of your tape 20GB in my case):

   amtapetype -o -f /dev/nst0 -e 20G

This will take along time and produce something like the following:

   define tapetype unknown-tapetype {
       comment "just produced by tapetype prog (hardware compression on)"
       length 16385 mbytes
       filemark 32 kbytes
       speed 2152 kps
   }

copy this to a text file for now for safe keeping.

When we write our config we'll also need to setup how many tapes were using with Amanda, there is a script available at: [2] you can use to work out the numbers for you. Download / run this and make a note of the numbers it produces for use when we write out the config.

As I was using 5 tapes for a Mon - Fri backup the script produced:

   dumpcycle 1 week
   runspercycle 5
   runtapes 1
   tapecycle 6 tapes

Yes it says 6 tapes, thats correct as you have to allow 1 more than your using, see the amanda docs.

Now we setup our config directory for our backup, I'm using fullback:

   mkdir /etc/amanda/fullback
   chown amanda.disk /etc/amanda/fullback

in the fullback directory create the following config files: amanda.conf, disklist and fullback.exclude.

Here is a copy of my amanda.conf containing the information obtained from amtapetype and the tape number script:

   org "FSC World" # Title of report
   mailto "root" # recipients of report, space separated
   dumpuser "amanda" # the user to run dumps under
   inparallel 4 # maximum dumpers that will run in parallel
   netusage 600 # maximum net bandwidth for Amanda, in KB per sec
   
   dumpcycle 1 week
   runspercycle 5
   runtapes 1
   tapecycle 6 tapes
   
   bumpsize 20 MB
   bumpdays 1
   bumpmult 4
   
   tapedev "/dev/nst0"
   
   tapetype SEGATEDAT-40
   labelstr "^FULLBACK-[0-9][0-9]*$"
   
   holdingdisk hd1 {
   	comment "Temporary holding space"
   	directory "/var/tmp/amanda"
   	use 2000 MB
   }
   
   infofile "/var/lib/amanda/fullback/curinfo"
   logdir "/var/log/amanda/fullback"
   
   indexdir "/var/lib/amanda/fullback/index"
   
   define tapetype SEGATEDAT-40 {
       comment "SEGATE 40GB DAT (hardware compression on)"
       length 16385 mbytes
       filemark 32 kbytes
       speed 2152 kps
   }
   
   define dumptype root-tar {
   program "GNUTAR"
   comment "root partition dump with tar"
   index yes
   dumpcycle 0
   exclude list "/etc/amanda/fullback/fullback.exclude"
   priority high
   }
   
   

Note: seting the dumpcycle 0 peramater in the define dumptype root-tar { section at the bottom of the config should give us a full backup everyday, if you want incrementals then remove it.

Here is a copy of my fullback.exclude:

   /proc
   /tmp
   

And lastly my disklist. This is where we tell amanda what to back up, I'm backing up from /:

   localhost / root-tar

Now we setup some files, directories and permissions:

   mkdir /var/tmp/amanda
   mkdir /var/lib/amanda/fullback
   mkdir /var/lib/amanda/fullback/index
   mkdir /var/log/amanda
   mkdir /var/log/amanda/fullback
   
   touch /etc/amanda/fullback/tapelist
   touch /var/lib/amanda/amandates
   
   chown amanda.disk /var/tmp/amanda
   chown amanda.disk /etc/amanda/fullback/*
   chown amanda.disk /var/lib/amanda/amandates
   chown -R amanda.disk /var/lib/amanda/fullback
   chown amanda.disk /var/log/amanda/fullback
   
   chmod 770 /var/tmp/amanda
   chmod 770 /etc/amanda/fullback
   chmod 700 /etc/amanda/fullback/*
   chmod -R 770 /var/lib/amanda/fullback
   chmod 770 /var/log/amanda/fullback
   

Next you should run amcheck on your config.

   su amanda
   amcheck fullback

resolve any errors! - There are a couple of hints at the bottom of this page.

You have to label tapes to with Amanda, you need to put each tape in in turn and run amlabel for each of them. This will also run an amcheck on your config and alert you to any errors.

   su amanda
   amlabel fullback FULLBACK-01

next tape

   amlabel fullback FULLBACK-02

Once you've labelled your tapes you can now run a backup by running:

   su amanda
   amdump fullback

Once it's finished you should get an email in the root mailbox account with the results.

If it backed up OK then you can create a script and run it from cron:

in your crontab:

   01 00 * * 1-5 /root/backup.sh

and in /root/backup.sh:

   # Change to amanda user and run amanda dump program
   su amanda -c "/usr/sbin/amdump fullback
   
   # Eject the tape
   sg_start /dev/nst0 –eject

Errors / Trouble shooting

You may get these errors when running amcheck or running a backup:

1

ERROR localhost NAK: user amanda from localhost is not allowed to execute the service noop: /var/lib/amanda/.amandahosts: incorrect permissions; file must be accessible only by its owner

Make sure /var/lib/amanda/.amandahosts exists and contains "localhost amanda" and set the permissions correctly.

   chown amanda:disk /var/lib/amanda/.amandahosts

   chmod 600 /var/lib/amanda/.amandahosts

2

WARNING: localhost: selfcheck request failed: Connection refused

change the xinet.d service settings as below:

Service settings for xinet.d on OpenSUSE 10.3

   service amanda
   {
   	disable = no
   	socket_type = stream
   	protocol = tcp
   	wait = no
   	user = amanda
   	group = disk
   	groups = yes
   	server = /usr/lib/amanda/amandad
   	server_args = -auth=bsdtcp amdump amindexd amidxtaped
   }

and in your amanda.conf under your define dump type section add the option:

   auth "bsdtcp"

.