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Amanda 2.5 Released
Anonymous Coward writes to tell us that a new release of the popular open source backup tool Amanda is now available fixing many of the limitations of previous versions. From the release: "Overall the focus of the release is on security of the backup process & backed up data, scalability of the backup process and ease of installation & configuration of Amanda."
... I've been looking for something like this. Thank you Slashdot. :-)
In high school, Amanda was always my backup too!
Ahh, fun times.
How we know is more important than what we know.
i've been using amanda at work for the past year now and it's been wonderful. thanks to all the developer's out there who work so hard (the mailing list rocks too).
Well, it should've been, anyhow.
I love and trust Amanda to do all my backup. Thanks for the new release...
I've been running it for 4 nights now, replaceing the previous 2.4.5 version I've been running for quite some time, and its working just like the 2.4.5 version it replaced. So if you are worried about the upgrade breaking something, if it worked with your old configs, it should Just Work(TM) with the new version too. I used the same config/build script I've been useing for years to build and install it.
Newbies, please goto amanda.org or zmanda.org and read the top ten FAQ there, it will save you many headaches in getting it setup. To make it work, and work well, may require a re-thinking of how you think a backup should be done. Once setup its a background process you get nightly emails from, but requires little or no hand-holding on a daily basis other than making sure the tape needed is in the drive for tonights run. vtape users (where the tape images are kept on a humongous hard drive) don't even have to deal with that, the best of both worlds IMO. I've been doing that for about 18 months or more here at the coyote.den, my private domains name.
And I highly recommend subscribing to the amanda-user mailing list, details on amanda.org, where you can ask for help and get it from more knowledgable people than I, although you will find me there too. 10 messages is a busy day so it won't eat your lunch.
--
Cheers, Gene
Its amazing how this simple to use software makes sysadmin work so easy. Thanks goes to the Amanda development community.
Does it support spanning archives across tapes yet? I used amanda a lot about 4 years ago and was amazed that it didn't support such a simple function.
Nothing against Amanda, but I switched from using Amanda to going to BackupPC. http://backuppc.sf.net/
/bin/ls on five of your linux boxes that all run the same distribution. It will only store one copy of /bin/ls on the backup server and use hardlinks to keep track of all the other copies. Plus it compresses the files.
What I really like about BackupPC is the Disk based backup focus of it. It does NOT support tape drives. But for doing backups to hard drives it is great. And with the way it will only keep one copy of a file, no matter how many systems it is on really helps to minimize disk space usage. Example: You have
Great stuff!
Yes, it supports tape spanning. It also supports compression and encryption of your choice (so you should be able to use star instead of gtar & bzip2 rather than gzip). These are the most frequently requested features, so this is really a good release!
The biggest thing I have problems with using Amanda is the need for a clean IP path to the destination, so I can't run a backup through a proxy firewall. Does the new version still use UDP for control?
I have to say that I really like this new tagging system. "whocares" is an absolutely terrific tag for this article.
How does this new version compare to Bacula (http://www.bacula.org/)?
The thing I like about Bacula is that it will allow you to spread a backup job accross multiple tapes, supports backups to disk, has its own scheduling system, and has a native windows client. From what I understand Amanda uses tar and relies upon NFS, SMB, or other network filesystem protocols to work. Bacula on the other hand has a true client/server architecture with a native client running on all of the systems it supports. It also makes use of MySQL to keep track of backup jobs. This made it very easy for me to create a web interface for it (http://raobackup.eas.asu.edu/
If Amanda has been improved to be competitive with Bacula in some of these areas then I'll definitely have to investigate it.
Lee
Muslim community leaders warn of backlash from tomorrow morning's terrorist attack.
Not only has it always been versatile as far as the hardware it uses--for my SOHO server, an external USB Harddrive is the ticket, one that I can just snatch and carry with me if natural disaster threatens, e.g.--but the METHOD of backup is superior to anything I've personally ever encountered.
Backup AND restore are both a breeze.
I'm sure that AMANDA is more appropriate for many (read "more servers") usage, but I've found rdiff-backup to be perfect for someone like me, with only a single server to worry about (althought that single server contains all my family's business and personal files--so to us, it's not such a trivial thing).
Any technology distinguishable from magic is insufficiently advanced.
A good piece of software thats getting some attention it deserves. Looking at http://amanda.zmanda.com/amanda-25-released.html and the wiki at http://wiki.amanda.com/ it feel like amanda is getting the recognition it deserves. For newbies I would recommed http://forums.zmanda.com/ and the wiki above.
Seems none of these are are available for Debian?
Backups? Here I was, thinking that a followup to Third Stage had been released.
] D
yeah it is, just not off their site:r veri ent
http://packages.debian.org/stable/utils/amanda-se
http://packages.debian.org/stable/utils/amanda-cl
Does it support generalised backup apps, or do they still have to be wrapped in scripts to make them look like dump or tar?
For me, the lack of automatic backup scheduling in other packages is a complete deal-breaker. Amanda, I just tell it how many full backups I want over what period, and it makes it happen. There's no "full backup this friday" crap. You don't have enough tape? It defers the backups it can, and lets you know you need to get more... it's painless.
For a site with growing storage there's no alternative to Amanda.
How does Amanda compare to proprietary solutions (e.g. NetVault)?
And does it support tape backup hardware?
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When using a backup software, Robustness matters more than anything else. Amanda is a rock solid project. Others, Bacula etc., don't come close when it comes to reliability.
Odd that you got modded 'troll,' since I think your question is anything but.
I've been wondering the same thing. There are quite a few Linux backup products out there, ranging from the more full-featured network backup systems like Amanda and Bacula to shell scripts (some of which are damned impressive by themselves). I've become aware of all the different options because I just bought a DDS tape autoloader for backing up my home network, and choosing one can be pretty daunting. (And I only have a handful of clients to back up.)
I think there is a definite need to sort out or at least get a central place where people can read about the pros and cons of various strategies, that alone would take a lot of the "black art" feeling out of network backups.
(By the way that web interface for Bacula seems pretty neat. Nice work.)
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
I went to the site expecting the good old Rainbow style A.M.A.N.D.A. logo, but the site is 'zmanda' branded...
To me, this looks like some third party updated and extended some OSS. That said, I think the title is a bit misleading in that this isn't Amanda 2.5 at all, but some other project...
Just my $0.02
Can Amanda handle POSIX access control lists?
Melissa
"Screw Sun, cross-platform will never work. Let's move on and steal the Java language." - Visual J++ Product Manager
Also we use rsnapshot for hourly/daily/weekly/monthly snapshots of the whole filesystem (rsnapshot is very cool and simple too).
i've been using amanda at work for the past year now and it's been wonderful.
She's very accessible at the company parties. Three drinks and she works wonders...
is that like Jake 2.0?
Amanda 2.4.4 is in debian stable. 2.4.5p1 is under test. 2.5.0 will be available from the debian maintainer soon.
It will be also available from http://www.zmanda.com/downloads.html site soon
I would much rather back up to DVD than tapes, and while various backup programs support this I have yet to find one that will cope if I want to back up more than 4.4GB.
I don't want anything fancy - just full and incremental backup. Yet every product seems to be designed either for single users backing up key documents to a single CD, or for enterprise users backing up terabytes of documents to expensive tape drives!
I know that Mondo Rescue supports spanning over discs of any size. It also supports differential backups. I personally use it for nightly backups. Setup is simple via command line switches, and restoring is done via a curses-based tool on the bootable iso. http://mondorescue.org/about.shtml
Well, this might be a great product. Unfortunately, their download page is broken. This is using Firefox on Fedora. You'd think that would at least work.
Perhaps they require cookies or javascript; but either way, it's a sign of a clueless webmaster.
Any company that can't get the basic download operation to work from their webpage is someone you have to really wonder about. What are they targeting? Windows? Feh. And this is when they're trying to appear to the Linux crowd?
Sorry to diss these guys, but when they don't have the basics down, you have to wonder about the rest of the code. Granted, a clueless webmaster may not equate to the code developers. But it is a sign of bad management.
Why is it I can't read tags? Do I need to be a subscriber?
That's kind of sucky because then you're streaming your very important data across the internet in cleartext. You might be able to get connection tracking to route through a VPN, but I assume that would require an iptables firewall on both ends of the connection.
Our interim solution has been to rsync (over ssh) all remote data to the local disk on the tape backup server and then back that up. It's not the best thing at all, but it works. Ideally we'll stop using amanda entirely at some point and switch to afbackup which seems to not have these issues.
I've been thinking of starting up a backup regimen at home recently. But my wife uses MacOSX and it would be nice if there was an EASY way to set it up a client on her machine. You know, something along the lines of a .DMG or .mpkg file to click and install, another program to do any configuration needed in a windowed environment. I did a little cursory reading prior to this post but I have only seen where it must be compiled on the machine which requires all sorts of prerequisites. I guess I could do it all if there was no other way, but I'd like to know if there IS another way first you know?
It's a shame that they didn't include backing up to DVD or disk. Yes, you can use the disk holding area and manually clean it out periodically so it doesn't fill up. That's what I do.
But it would be nice if you could specify the equivalent of some number of tape sets in the holding area and have them overwrite themselves without manual intervention.
~~~ A SLASHDOT VIGNETTE ~~~
[telephone rings]
Slashdotter: Hello? Oh hi Mom. How's my laundry coming along?
Mother: It's almost done, dearie. I can't seem to get the stain out of your Starfleet Command t-shirt, though.
Slashdotter: [frustrated] Aww!
Mother: Don't worry, I'll keep trying. [pause] Dear, are you seeing anyone? I'm worried about you.
Slashdotter: Aw come on, mom. Well, um, yeah... sure I'm seeing someone.
Mother: You're not fibbing again, are you?
Slashdotter: What? No!
Mother: If you aren't fibbing, tell me what her name is.
Slashdotter: Uh...her name is... Amanda.
Mother: Really?
Slashdotter: Yeah, Amanda. I'm serious. Amanda is really cool.
Mother: You have a GIRLFRIEND? REALLY? I'm so thrilled! Your father will be so thrilled!
Slashdotter: Yes... Amanda. In fact, she's someone at the office. We really "click".
Mother: Oh! I am ~so~ glad. You do have to be careful with an office relationship, dearie. I hope you are being discrete.
Slashdotter: Don't worry, mom. We keep it very professional when we see each other at work.
Mother: I'm glad! Amanda... that is a nice name. Is she pretty?
Slashdotter: Oh yes, yes she is. Pretty in an intuitive sort of way. And totally low maintenance.
Mother: She sounds wonderful!
Slashdotter: Yeah... um... Yeah, and mom? Amanda would really like to see my Starfleet Command t-shirt this weekend...
Mother: I'll take care of it right away, dear! Your father will be so thrilled!
Rich And Stupid is not so bad as Working For Rich And Stupid.
http://www.realhamster.com/
If you tell anyone about this, don't mention my name.
I have a serious question for you guys. I do a little computer help on the side and a businees owner wants me to setup a backup system for his personal computer. He mainly just wants to backup his e-mail. He's using outlook on an win XP box, so what Windows friendly program would you recommend for the task?
I guess you could just rewrite the makeconfig file to build it on Debian.
OTOH, if you are using a linux distribution that closely follows the file/
directory structure that many F/OSS projects expect, like Slackware does,
then Amanda will build and run without any problems
So, I guess you have choices: (1) you yourself contribute to a Debian
version of this software, (2) wait until someone else does this work for
you, or (3) switch to a supported linux distribution. Not to be a troll or
anything, but these options are what makes F/OSS so great.
Thank you slashdot, what would I do without you?
Seriously, why are we seeing product announcements on the front page? OSTG already owns freshmeat, there is no reason to reproduce this information on Slashdot. I hope I'm not marked as a troll on this, and I'll even go as far and NOT post as a coward.
I was originally going to ask how this improves over tar and dar (I've been using dar up to this point) but after looking over the site I realize I need to try Amanda out. I have a question though: if a backup archive gets damaged, can the non-damaged parts of the file still be restored (like dar) or are you utterly screwed (like tar)?
/srv, /var, /root, /etc, and /home) which get mmoved to a central server and then redundant copies are moved over to a workstation on a weekly basis (or in the case of MySQL databases, daily), and backups are archived to optical media weekly. The advantage to this strategy is obviously the speed of recovery. Disadvantage? We're not doing FULL backups so a system reinstall is required in the event of a catastrophic failure (I don't view this as a drawback, BTW, considering that a Linux install minus GUI takes under a half hour including package selection).
This looks like a great solution because like commercial backup programs for Windows, I can centralize our backups. What I have set up right now is scripts to create dar archives of the data we care about (/data,
The Christian Right is Neither (Christian nor right). See: Matthew 23, Matthew 25, Ezekiel 16:48-50
Mother: Oh! I am ~so~ glad. You do have to be careful with an office relationship, dearie. I hope you are being discrete. ...
More like:
Mother: I hope you are being discreet.
Slashdotter: Yes, completely discrete.
You might want to take a look at Dirvish ( http://www.dirvish.org/ ).
I use it at work all the time. Dirvish can handle multiple backups using hardlinks, thus reducing the required space while keeping full images.
From their site:
Dirvish is a fast, disk based, rotating network backup system.
With dirvish you can maintain a set of complete images of your filesystems with unattended creation and expiration. A dirvish backup vault is like a time machine for your data.
Basically, my home network consists of a couple of (linux) workstations coupled to a (linux) Samba fileserver (which also does duty as a home "intranet" webserver and database [mysql and postgresql] server). For the workstations, I have a cron job setup for 1am where each machine mounts the nfs partition and copies various directories for the user of that workstation (/home/$USER/* and others) to the "home" mounted directory for the user. On the server a cron job then runs at 2am and backs up those copies, plus other server directories and data (ie, SQL dumps from the databases, config files for Samba, Apache, and PHP, other data I want to keep) to a temporary area. Once this occurs, the process then creates an ISO image of the temporary area, places it in a "public" readable samba directory for the ISOs, and cleans out the temporary area. The iso images are named by a datetime stamp, and this area is also cleaned periodically every 7 days by the automatic processes so that there is only 7 images kept at one time (past 7 days).
Every week I take the last full image made and create a CD-R of it. Obviously, I can only "backup" about 700Mb or so with this method, more if I use a DVD burner. I have also toyed around with the idea of using the split utility to split an archive across disks, or modding my scripts to do this "manually". One could also backup to a tape drive (tar image), or to a USB drive (flash or enclosed laptop drive).
Like I said, this isn't a robust solution, and numerous improvements could be made to it. I don't back up all of the data on the server (which doesn't have a large hard drive, but it is mostly filled with MP3s, pictures, etc - stuff that I already have a copy of on other CD-Rs and other media), just the important or working data (ie, resumes, email, bookmarks, development code, etc) that I want an archive of. However, for most purposes and uses, it would work fine for most people and thier personal data. Should my fileserver crash (which it did recently, and I was able to restore), I am not able to simply "restore from backup" and all is well - I have to rebuild the system in its entirety (reimage drive, reinstall OS, etc), but I do have the data from the last backup available so that I don't lose any work and such.
I am waiting for the day (probably will never come, I am realistic somewhat) when I can buy a backup solution that supports modern consumer drive space requirements and doesn't require me to take out a second mortgage on my house to do so. I will probably be waiting for a very long time...
Reason is the Path to God - Anon