On Wednesday 09 October 2002 22:20, chancock AT delphi.bsd.uchicago DOT edu 
wrote:
>> "tapes in my library are not full" is not a useful thing to say
>> about amanda; amanda over-writes each tape, *never* appends.
>
>This message was from a previous message sent by Jay.
>
>I understand that amanda doesn't do appends of backups.
>However I wasn't aware that a complete backup get overwritten.
>The reason I ask this is because I thought that during backup
>you have a brand new tape. If your first full backup excceds the
>capcity of the tape amanda will report the area and amanda will
>rewind the tape to the begining of the tape.
>
>So say if you have a tape with a few backups on it if the next
> backup exceeds the capcity of the tape then is the statement
> above saying that once preexisting backup reaches the end of the
> tape then will amanda rewind the tape and write over the old
> backups?
>
>If this is the case how can this be changed
>
>Craig Hancock

If amanda does that, its configuration is indeed seriously foobar.

What amanda should do if it hits the end of the tape, is to rewind 
that tape, eject it, and ask either you or the robot for a fresh 
one.  It will restart the failed disklist entry on the next tape.  
And if that entry is bigger than a tape, you are in a loop till you 
are out of tapes.

The fix for that is to break the disklist entry up into the 
individual subdirs of the oversized entry, whch also means you will 
be usng tar, not dump.  Thats how I do a 37 gig /usr on 4gig tapes 
here.

-- 
Cheers, Gene
AMD K6-III@500mhz 320M
Athlon1600XP@1400mhz  512M
99.17% setiathome rank, not too shabby for a WV hillbilly