181 lines
8 KiB
Text
181 lines
8 KiB
Text
Amanda, The Advanced Maryland Automatic Network Disk Archiver
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Copyright (c) 1991-1998 University of Maryland at College Park
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All Rights Reserved.
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See the files COPYRIGHT, COPYRIGHT-REGEX and COPYRIGHT-APACHE for
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distribution conditions and official warranty disclaimer.
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PLEASE NOTE: THIS SOFTWARE IS BEING MADE AVAILABLE ``AS-IS''. UMD is making
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this work available so that other people can use it. This software is in
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production use at our home site - the UMCP Department of Computer Science -
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but we make no warranties that it will work for you. Amanda development is
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unfunded - the development team maintains the code in their spare time. As a
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result, there is no support available other than users helping each other on
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the Amanda mailing lists. See below for information on the mailing lists.
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WHAT IS AMANDA?
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---------------
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This is a release of Amanda, the Advanced Maryland Automatic
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Network Disk Archiver. Amanda is a backup system designed to archive many
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computers on a network to a single large-capacity tape drive.
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Here are some features of Amanda:
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* written in C, freely distributable.
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* built on top of standard backup software: Unix dump/restore, GNU Tar
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and others.
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* will back up multiple machines in parallel to a holding disk, blasting
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finished dumps one by one to tape as fast as we can write files to
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tape. For example, a ~2 Gb 8mm tape on a ~240K/s interface to a host
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with a large holding disk can be filled by Amanda in under 4 hours.
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* does simple tape management: will not overwrite the wrong tape.
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* supports tape changers via a generic interface. Easily customizable to
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any type of tape carousel, robot, or stacker that can be controlled via
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the unix command line.
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* supports Kerberos 4 security, including encrypted dumps. The Kerberos
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support is available as a separate add-on package, see the file
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KERBEROS.HOW-TO-GET on the ftp site, and the file docs/KERBEROS in this
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package, for more details.
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* for a restore, tells you what tapes you need, and finds the proper
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backup image on the tape for you.
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* recovers gracefully from errors, including down or hung machines.
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* reports results, including all errors in detail, in email.
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* will dynamically adjust backup schedule to keep within constraints: no
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more juggling by hand when adding disks and computers to network.
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* includes a pre-run checker program, that conducts sanity checks on both
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the tape server host and all the client hosts (in parallel), and will
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send an e-mail report of any problems that could cause the backups to
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fail.
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* can compress dumps before sending or after sending over the net, with
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either compress or gzip.
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* can optionally synchronize with external backups, for those large
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timesharing computers where you want to do full dumps when the system
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is down in single-user mode (since BSD dump is not reliable on active
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filesystems): Amanda will still do your daily dumps.
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* lots of other options; Amanda is very configurable.
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WHAT ARE THE SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS FOR AMANDA?
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--------------------------------------------
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Amanda requires a host that is mostly idle during the time backups are
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done, with a large capacity tape drive (e.g. an EXABYTE, DAT or DLT tape).
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This becomes the "tape server host". All the computers you are going to dump
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are the "backup client hosts". The server host can also be a client host.
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Amanda works best with one or more large "holding disk" partitions on the
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server host available to it for buffering dumps before writing to tape.
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The holding disk allows Amanda to run backups in parallel to the disk, only
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writing them to tape when the backup is finished. Note that the holding
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disk is not required: without it Amanda will run backups sequentially to
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the tape drive. Running it this way kills the great performance, but still
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allows you to take advantage of Amanda's other features.
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As a rule of thumb, for best performance the holding disk should be larger
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than the dump output from your largest disk partitions. For example, if
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you are backing up some full gigabyte disks that compress down to 500 MB,
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then you'll want 500 MB on your holding disk. On the other hand, if those
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gigabyte drives are partitioned into 500 MB filesystems, they'll probably
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compress down to 250 MB and you'll only need that much on your holding
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disk. Amanda will perform better with larger holding disks.
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Actually, Amanda will still work if you have full dumps that are larger
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than the holding disk: Amanda will send those dumps directly to tape one at
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a time. If you have many such dumps you will be limited by the dump speed
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of those machines.
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Amanda does not yet support single backup images larger than a tape.
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WHAT SYSTEMS DOES AMANDA RUN ON?
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--------------------------------
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Amanda should run on any modern Unix system that supports dump or GNU
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tar, has sockets and inetd, and either system V shared memory, or BSD
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mmap implemented.
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In particular, Amanda 2.4.1p1 has been compiled, and the client side tested
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on the following systems:
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AIX 3.2 and 4.1
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BSDI BSD/OS 2.1 and 3.1
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DEC OSF/1 3.2 and 4.0
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FreeBSD 2.2.5
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IRIX 5.2 and 6.3
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GNU/Linux on x86, alpha, sparc, arm and powerpc
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NetBSD 1.0
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Nextstep 3 (*)
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OpenBSD 2.5 x86, sparc, etc (ports available)
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SunOS 4.1.x (x >= 1) and 5.[567]
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Ultrix 4.2
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HP-UX 9.x and 10.x (x >= 01)
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The Amanda 2.4.1p1 server side is known to run on all of the other
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machines except on those marked with an asterisk.
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If you know of any system that is not listed here on which amanda
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builds successfully, either client&server or client-only, please
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report to amanda-hackers@amanda.org.
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WHERE DO I GET AMANDA?
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----------------------
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There are several versions of Amanda. The latest version at the time
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of this writing is available at:
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ftp://ftp.amanda.org/pub/amanda
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HOW DO I GET AMANDA UP AND RUNNING?
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-----------------------------------
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Read the file docs/INSTALL. There are a variety of steps, from compiling
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Amanda to installing it on the tape server host and the client machines.
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docs/INSTALL contains general installation instructions.
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docs/SYSTEM.NOTES contains system-specific information.
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docs/FAQ contains answers to frequently asked questions.
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docs/KERBEROS explains installation under Kerberos 4.
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docs/TAPE.CHANGERS explains how to customize the changer interface.
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docs/WHATS.NEW details new features.
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WHO DO I TALK TO IF I HAVE A PROBLEM?
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-------------------------------------
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Amanda is completely unsupported and made available as-is. However,
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you may be able to get useful information in the Amanda mailing lists:
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==> To join a mailing list, DO NOT, EVER, send mail to that list. Send
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mail to <listname>-request@amanda.org, or amanda-lists@amanda.org,
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with the following line in the body of the message:
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subscribe <listname> <your-email-address>
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amanda-announce
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The amanda-announce mailing list is for important announcements
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related to the Amanda Network Backup Manager package, including new
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versions, contributions, and fixes. NOTE: the amanda-users list is
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itself on the amanda-announce distribution, so you only need to
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subscribe to one of the two lists, not both.
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To subscribe, send a message to amanda-announce-request@amanda.org.
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amanda-users
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The amanda-users mailing list is for questions and general discussion
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about the Amanda Network Backup Manager. This package and related
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files are available via anonymous FTP from ftp.amanda.org in the
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pub/amanda directory. NOTE: the amanda-users list is itself on the
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amanda-announce distribution, so you only need to subscribe to one of
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the two lists, not both.
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To subscribe, send a message to amanda-users-request@amanda.org.
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amanda-hackers
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The amanda-hackers mailing list is for discussion of the
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technical details of the Amanda package, including extensions,
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ports, bugs, fixes, and alpha testing of new versions.
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To subscribe, send a message to amanda-hackers-request@amanda.org.
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Share and Enjoy,
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The Amanda Development Team
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