Amanda essentials on Debian etch

The version of amanda that ships with Debian etch has got a bit more sophisticated in it's authentication.

Out of the box, it doesn't let you restore with amrecover. Here's the changes I've had to do to make it work.

Firstly, in /etc/inetd.conf the amanda service lines change to:

amandaidx stream tcp nowait backup /usr/sbin/tcpd /usr/lib/amanda/amindexd -auth=bsd amdump amindexd amidxtaped
amidxtape stream tcp nowait backup /usr/sbin/tcpd /usr/lib/amanda/amidxtaped -auth=bsd amdump amindexd amidxtaped
amanda dgram udp wait backup /usr/sbin/tcpd /usr/lib/amanda/amandad -auth=bsd amdump amindexd amidxtaped

inetd then needs restarting to pick up this change

Then in /etc/amandahosts, "amindexd amidxtaped" needs adding to any lines giving root access to do the restore

Tape drive fun

Following the upgrade of a server from debian sarge to etch over the weekend, the backup software (amanda) decided that it didn't want to properly access the drive.

This was particularly odd as I've done several other upgrades from sarge to etch without a problem (or at least without problems to do with amanda) already. It turns out that the issue is with the particular tape drive in question (a USB connected HP DDS4 drive) being fussy about the tape block size. Downloading the amanda source and re-compiling with the tape block size (in the debian/rules file) set to 64 - the debian default was 256.