Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 Administration Unleashed

Using Amanda for Backups 225Table 10.2 contains common parameters that can be used to customize the tape drivesettings. Refer to the amanda.conf man page for a full list of parameters for configuring atape drive.TABLE 10.2ParametertapedevtapetypetapelisttapebufstapecycleruntapesTape Drive Parameters for AmandaDescriptionPath to the tape device to use. Must be a non-rewinding tape device.Type of tapes to be used. Must be set to a tapetype definition fromamanda.conf.Filename for the tapelist file. Maintained by Amanda and should not bemodified.Number of buffers used by the backup process to hold data before it iswritten to tape. Buffer is in the shared memory region.Size of the tape rotation. Must be larger than the number of tapes it takesfor a full backup.Maximum number of tapes to be used for a single backup run. If thisnumber is larger than one, a tape changer must be configured with thetpchanger parameter.Saving to Other MediaAmanda was originally written to be used with a tape device, but it can be configured toback up to other media such as a set of hard drives. To configure Amanda to back up to amedia type other than a tape, the parameters in Listing 10.1 must be set.LISTING 10.1Using the Hard Drive as a Virtual Tapetpchanger chg-disktapedev “file:/backups/DailySet1”tapetype HDdefine tapetype HD {comment “use hard drive as tape”length 2048 mbytes}The tpchanger specifies which script to use to change the virtual tape device. Severalscripts are provided in /usr/lib/amanda/ by the amanda-server RPM package. Thechg-disk script is recommended when using the hard drive as a virtual tape.Set the tapedev parameter in amanda.conf to use the file driver with the name of anexisting directory to store backups. In Listing 10.1, the /backups/DailySet1/ directory isused. This directory must be created and configured as a virtual tape before runningamdump to generate backups, and the directory and all the files in it must be owned by theamanda user so amdump has permission to write to it. Use the following steps as the rootuser to create the virtual tape (assuming /backups/DailySet1/ is being configured as thevirtual tape):10