Adding new vtapes to amanda and troubleshooting

I needed to add new vtapes to amanda after successfully adding new space via LVM. Using a one line script included in the vtape how-to on the amanda wiki, I created the additional tape directories - slot[m] to slot[n].

After this, I changed the configuration file's tapecycle parameter to reflect the advice by martineau in a zmanda forum post - that tapecycle should be at least runspercycle * runtapes.

On executing amcheck on one of the amanda configurations, I ran into an error - WARNING taper changer error: slot : Slot  is already in use by driveN. This was resolved by deleting the driveN directory as suggested by dustin in another zmanda forum post.

Earlier, an all estimate timed out error had been resolved by adding the directive estimate calcsize to the configuration's dumptype as suggested by paddy in a zmanda forum post.

Getting Started with Amanda

Having initially considered Bacula, I chose amanda for use in backup due to it's better organized documentation. Being a newbie, I selected the quick start getting started tutorial as the first step through the online documents.

In that process, I consulted the bsd authentication howto for more information on authentication. I also found the vtape howto very helpful since I did not have a physical tape device. Having gone followed the tutorial and branching into the howtos at the relevant sections, I was able to do a successful test run.

Using another article in the howtos collection, I made further changes to the configuration to allow for dumps to be split across multiple tapes (vtapes in my case). It was then time to follow another howto to duplicate that configuration to the production environment where the virtual tapes needed to be configured for use on a non-Linux partition.