Amanda in 15 Minutes

Abstract
Amanda is the most popular open source backup and recovery software in the
world because of its openness, robustness, functionality and scalability. Yet it is
very easy to set up and maintain in production. This article illustrates how, in
about 15 minutes, you can:
• Install and configure an Amanda backup server.
• Prepare three different client machines (SLES 11, Fedora 13, and
Windows XP) for backup.
• Set backup parameters.
• Verify the configuration.
• Verify backup and restore.
Revision: 1.4
Table of Contents
1 The Problem .................................................................................................................................3
2 The Challenge ..............................................................................................................................3
3 The Solution: Amanda .................................................................................................................3
3.1 Installation Prerequisites ......................................................................................................5
4 Installing the Amanda Backup Server .........................................................................................6
5 Installing the Amanda Clients ......................................................................................................7
5.1 Installing Amanda Client RPM on Iron (Fedora 13) ............................................................7
5.2 Installing Amanda Client RPM on Copper (SLES 11) ........................................................8
5.3 Installing Amanda Client on Uranium (Windows XP) ........................................................9
6 Configuring the Backup Server ...................................................................................................9
6.1 Configuring the Server .......................................................................................................10
6.2 Adding Client Iron (Fedora 13) ..........................................................................................11
6.3 Adding Client Copper (SLES 11) ......................................................................................11
6.4 Adding Client Uranium (Windows XP) .............................................................................12
7 Verification and Backup ............................................................................................................13
8 Recovery ....................................................................................................................................14
8.1 Recovery of Linux client (Copper) ....................................................................................14
8.2 Recovery of ZWC client (Uranium) ...................................................................................16
9 Conclusion .................................................................................................................................17
10 Request for Feedback ...............................................................................................................17
11 Glossary ...................................................................................................................................18

Page 2 of 18
1 The Problem
Today's businesses rarely run on just one operating system. Linux users and administrators often
have strong preferences for one distribution over another, web designers might lean towards the
Mac, and legacy software and hardware may require various UNIX operating systems. Yet,
despite the complexity of modern business computing environments, a system administrator is
expected to find a reliable backup solution.
Many enterprises expect users to keep important files on networked resources, both for sharing
and to back them up. Others expect to back up desktop machines and laptops. With the price of
hard disk storage continuously falling, today it is common to have terabytes of storage and
corresponding amounts of data that can be lost1. Furthermore, we live in a global and e-
commerce economy, where businesses run around the clock and crucial business data is
constantly changing. In this environment, it is more critical than ever to have a reliable backup
system in place.

2 The Challenge
For our 15-minute challenge, we want to backup two Linux systems (each running a different
Linux distribution) , and one Windows XP system. We use only freely available open source
software.
Our scenario is as follows:
The user Sunil works with sensitive information. We need to make a backup of his home
directory, /home/sunil, which resides on a Linux system called Iron, running Fedora 13. Our
webmaster needs to backup the /srv/www/htdocs/ directory on the webserver, Copper,
running SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 11 (SLES 11). Our manager works solely on a Windows
XP system called Uranium, and keeps all of his work in a folder called C:\Data.
Here is a summary of our configuration:
Client Filesystem OS Compression?
Copper /srv/www/htdocs/ SLES 11 Yes
Iron /home/sunil Fedora 13 Yes
Uranium C:\Data Windows XP Yes

The “Compression?” column refers to whether that client should compress the data rather than
the server (or even the tape drive).

3 The Solution: Amanda

Amanda is open-source backup software that is flexible, secure and scalable in dynamic
computing environments. Amanda can save you from expensive proprietary backup software and
from those custom backup scripts that don’t scale and have a propensity to break at the worst
times. Dating back to 1991, Amanda has been used successfully in environments from one

1 "Data expands to fill the space available for storage" is a special case of Parkinson's Law which dates back
decades.

Page 3 of 18
standalone machine to hundreds of clients. Amanda is so thoroughly documented, from
community wikis to published system administration texts, that it might be hard to discern just
how easy an Amanda backup can be.
This article will show you how, in about 15 minutes, you can:
1. Install and configure the Amanda backup server.
2. Install and configure the three different clients for backup.
3. Set backup parameters.
4. Verify the configuration.
5. Perform a backup.
6. Recover some files from a backup.
We will install and configure Amanda backup server software on a machine running Red Hat
Enterprise Linux 5 named Quartz. The Amanda Server software manages the backup data, the
backup schedule, and stores the backups on media. We will install and configure Amanda backup
client software on Copper and on Iron. The Windows XP client, Uranium, will be backed up
using Zmanda Windows Client Community Edition (ZWC).

Illustration 1: Backup Schematic

It is good practice to back up critical portions of the backup server as well as clients. We don't
show a backup on the server. It is just another Linux client to Amanda. Adding a suitable backup
on Quartz will be left as an exercise.
Compression is available on amanda servers and clients. You may specify the compression tool
on Unix clients and servers. The Zmanda Windows Client uses ZIP compression, which is
compatible with pkzip, winzip and other classic Windows archival tools. Client side compression
offers two advantages:

Page 4 of 18
 • Less data to send over the network, so faster backups.
• Because of Amanda's parallelism, you don't have the backup server compressing several
dumps simultaneously, which relieves the backup server considerably.
On the other hand, compression on the client may use up resources (CPU and memory) on the
client. Depending on the relative resources of the client and server, it may be optimal to
compress on the server rather than the client.

3.1 Installation Prerequisites

There are two components to Amanda, the client and the server. Install one, the other or both as
required. The basic Amanda setup consists of an Amanda server, the Amanda clients to be
backed up, and the storage media on which the backup data will be stored, such as tape or hard
disk.
We can also use an intermediate storage area called a holding disk for caching the data. A
holding disk provides these key benefits:
• It allows data to be streamed to media at full speed, preventing tape buffer under-runs and
shoe-shining of tapes.
• It can act as a hedge against media failure. Data is first backed-up to the holding disk, and
then later spooled to media when it is available.
• It gives you dump parallelism. With a holding disk, Amanda can do more at the same
time, speeding things up. It can build several dumps simultaneously on the holding disk
while copying one to tape. Changing a tape doesn't mean stopping the backups.
It is a good practice to include a holding disk as a part of even a minimal setup.
You may want to take a look at the Introduction to Amanda. This will give you some
understanding of the advantages of using Amanda, the community around Amanda, and the
resources available to you.
Before we begin, please note the following prerequisites. Their installation, configuration and
use are beyond the scope of this article.
1. tar 1.15 or later and xinetd are required for Unix clients, so they must be installed on
Quartz, Iron and Copper.
2. Quartz will send out email reports of each backup run, so it must be able to send mail to
the root user. Any mail transport agent (MTA) will do.
3. The systems should all be on the same network and available.
4. We will need general root access as well as remote root access through SSH to UNIX and
Linux clients. Ensure that SSH is enabled, passed through the firewalls, and working. We
will use configuration commands over SSH later.
5. Deal with firewall issues. Clients must allow TCP ports 10080 through 10083 inclusive
from the backup server through their firewalls
6. Directories to be backed up must exist.

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You can get free Amanda binary and source RPM packages, and source tarballs from
http://www.amanda.org/download.php. You can get the binary of Zmanda Windows Client
(ZWC) Community Edition for free from http://www.zmanda.com/download-amanda.php. Your
Linux distribution repositories may have amanda packages, but those may not be the most recent
and may not contain some of the utility scripts we show here. We recommend the most recent
version, so we will install those.
Download as follows:
1. The Amanda backup server RPM package onto Quartz.
2. The Amanda client RPM onto Iron and Copper. On Iron, if there is no RPM for Fedora
13, get that for 12.
3. The ZWC client onto Uranium.
Also note that this article assumes a fresh install of Amanda. If you have an existing Amanda
installation, additional steps are needed to ensure the proper upgrade to the latest Amanda release
(3.1.0 and later).
While this article shows using Amanda 3.1.0, we recommend the latest versions1. The latest
version of the Windows client may not agree exactly with the Linux server. Usually clients will
work just fine with an Amanda server version of similar version number. For additional details
about ZWC client installation please refer to the Amanda Wiki. The messages on your screen
will be similar to what we show below. To conserve paper and bandwidth, we have omitted a lot
of the installation output.
Note: You can install Amanda on a host that had a previous installation of Amanda. In that
event, you will see messages indicating that the user amandabackup already exists and that you
should check certain properties. This is generally not a problem.

4 Installing the Amanda Backup Server

1. Log in as root on Quartz, the Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 server.
2. Install the Amanda backup server RPM. As a part of the installation a user named
amandabackup is created who belongs to the group disk. We use yum to check for and
install dependencies.
[root@quartz ~]# yum --nogpgcheck install amanda-backup_server-
3.1.0-2.rhel5.i386.rpm
Loaded plugins: fastestmirror
Loading mirror speeds from cached hostfile
* addons: updates.interworx.info
* base: mirrors.adams.net
* extras: mirrors.adams.net
* updates: mirrors.easynews.com
Setting up Install Process
Examining amanda-backup_server-3.1.0-2.rhel5.i386.rpm: amanda-
backup_server-3.1.0-2.rhel5.i386

1 As of this writing, the latest is 3.1.0.

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 …
Need enterprise level support for Amanda? Upgrade to Amanda
Enterprise Edition: http://www.zmanda.com/amanda-enterprise-
edition.html
Jun 11 2010 16:15:23: === Amanda backup server installation
complete. ===
Amanda installation log can be found in
'/var/log/amanda/install.log' and errors (if any) in
'/var/log/amanda/install.err'.

Installed:
amanda-backup_server.i386 0:3.1.0-2.rhel5

Complete!
[root@quartz ~]#
3. As root set a password for user amandabackup on Quartz
[root@quartz]# passwd amandabackup
Changing password for user amandabackup.
New UNIX password:
Retype new UNIX password:
passwd: all authentication tokens updated successfully.
4. Later, you may wish to back up Quartz or to recover files on Quartz. In fact later on we
will recover some data on Quartz. To recover on a Linux client, you must first specify
the tape device on the server to use. In each Linux clients we change the file
/etc/amanda/amanda-client.conf. Change this line:
tapedev "tape:/dev/YOUR-TAPE-DEVICE-HERE" # your tape device
to this:
tapedev "file://data/amanda/vtape/DailySet1" # your tape device

5 Installing the Amanda Clients

5.1 Installing Amanda Client RPM on Iron (Fedora 13)
1. Log in as root on Iron.
2. Install the Amanda backup client RPM. We use yum to check for and install
dependencies, in this case xinetd. As a part of the installation a user named
amandabackup is created who belongs to the group disk.
[root@iron ~]# yum --nogpgcheck install amanda-backup_client-3.1.0-
1.fc12.i686.rpm
Loaded plugins: presto, refresh-packagekit
Setting up Install Process
Examining amanda-backup_client-3.1.0-1.fc12.i686.rpm: amanda-
backup_client-3.1.0-1.fc12.i686

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 …
Installed:
amanda-backup_client.i686 0:3.1.0-1.fc12

Dependency Installed:
xinetd.i686 2:2.3.14-30.fc13

Complete!
[root@iron ~]#
3. As root set password for user amandabackup on Iron
[root@iron]# passwd amandabackup
Changing password for user amandabackup.
New UNIX password:
Retype new UNIX password:
passwd: all authentication tokens updated successfully.
4. To recover on a Linux client, you must first specify the tape device on the server to use.
In each Linux clients we change the file /etc/amanda/amanda-client.conf.
Change this line:
tapedev "tape:/dev/YOUR-TAPE-DEVICE-HERE" # your tape device
to this:
tapedev "file://data/amanda/vtape/DailySet1" # your tape device

5.2 Installing Amanda Client RPM on Copper (SLES 11)

1. Log in as the root user on Copper, your SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 11 client.
2. Get the client RPM.
3. Install the Amanda backup client RPM. As a part of the installation a user named
amandabackup is created who belongs to the group disk.
copper:~ # rpm -ivh amanda-backup_client-3.1.0-2.sles11.i586.rpm
Preparing...
########################################### [100%]
Jun 17 2010 14:48:34: Preparing to install: Amanda Community Edition
- version 3.1.0
Jun 17 2010 14:48:34: Checking for 'amandabackup' user...
Jun 17 2010 14:48:34:
Jun 17 2010 14:48:34: The 'amandabackup; user account has been
successfully created.
Jun 17 2010 14:48:34: Furthermore, the account has been
automatically locked for you
Jun 17 2010 14:48:34: for security purposes. Once a password for
the 'amandabackup'
Jun 17 2010 14:48:34: account has been set, the user can be
unlocked by issuing

Page 8 of 18
 …
Need enterprise level support for Amanda? Upgrade to Amanda
Enterprise Edition: http://www.zmanda.com/amanda-enterprise-
edition.html
Jun 17 2010 14:48:43: Setting ownership and permissions for
'/var/lib/amanda/.profile'
Jun 17 2010 14:48:44: === Amanda backup client installation
complete. ===
Amanda installation log can be found in
'/var/log/amanda/install.log' and errors (if any) in
'/var/log/amanda/install.err'.
copper:~ #
4. As root set password for user amandabackup on Copper
copper:~ # passwd amandabackup
Changing password for amandabackup.
New Password:
Reenter New Password:
Password changed.
5. To recover on a Linux client, you must first specify the tape device on the server to use.
In each Linux clients we change the file /etc/amanda/amanda-client.conf.
Change this line:
tapedev "tape:/dev/YOUR-TAPE-DEVICE-HERE" # your tape device
to this:
tapedev "file://data/amanda/vtape/DailySet1" # your tape device

5.3 Installing Amanda Client on Uranium (Windows XP)

1. Navigate to the directory where you downloaded the Amanda Client package.
2. Double click on the file, e.g.: ZWC-Community-3.1.beta-32bit.zip. Then click
on “extract all files”. Click on “OK”, then on “Next”.
3. Click on the newly created directory, e.g.: ZWC-Community-3.1.beta-32bit.
Double-click the setup.exe to install the Windows client.

6 Configuring the Backup Server

Amanda's quantum unit of backup is the disk list entry, or DLE. DLEs are entered into one or
more configurations. We will build three DLEs, one for each machine we back up. A machine
can have multiple DLEs, but DLEs do not span computers. We will build one configuration. By
custom, Amanda examples use the configuration DailySet1.
Should you ever need to edit the configuration, its files are usually found in
/etc/amanda/DailySet1/. For example, later on we will add two dumptypes to our
configuration so that we can use the Zmanda Windows Client.

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6.1 Configuring the Server
We will specify a number of parameters on the command line. There is more on these in the wiki
and in the man page for amserverconfig. There are other options, but the defaults will do
just fine for now. There is a brief description of the parameters we set initially in the Glossary, on
page 18.
We will back up all our clients to Quartz in the /data directory. Ensure that we are logged-in
to Quartz as user root.
1. Create a directory for our vtapes, and set its ownership and permissions:
[root@quartz ~]# mkdir -p /data/amanda/vtape/DailySet1
[root@quartz ~]# chown amandabackup:disk
/data/amanda/vtape/DailySet1
[root@quartz ~]# chmod -R 750 /data/amanda/vtape/DailySet1
2. Change to the amandabackup user:
[root@quartz ~]# su – amandabackup
3. As amandabackup user, run amserverconfig to create a vtape configuration:
-sh-3.2$ amserverconfig DailySet1 --template harddisk --tapedev
/data/amanda/vtape/DailySet1 --mailto root@localhost --dumpcycle
1week --runspercycle 5 --tapecycle 12 --runtapes 1
Logging to /var/log/amanda/amserverconfig.20100621131218.debug
/etc/amanda/template.d directory created
/var/lib/amanda/gnutar-lists directory exists
/etc/amanda/DailySet1/advanced.conf created and updated
curinfo and index directory created
tapelist file created
disklist file created
Creating custom configuration using templates
custom amanda.conf created
creating vtape directory
amlabel vtapes
changer is reset
/var/lib/amanda/example/xinetd.amandaserver contains the latest
Amanda server daemon configuration.
Please merge it to /etc/xinetd.d/amandaserver.
/var/lib/amanda/.ssh/client_authorized_keys created. Please append
to /var/lib/amanda/.ssh/authorized_keys file on Amanda clients
DONE.
Note the creation of SSH keys, useful for backups over SSH. It is up to you to manually
(and securely) add the public key to the client amandabackup user's
authorized_keys file.

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6.2 Adding Client Iron (Fedora 13)
Use amaddclient to enable backups of client iron:
-sh-3.2$ amaddclient --config DailySet1 --client iron.example.com
--diskdev /home/sunil --dumptype comp-user-tar
Logging to /var/log/amanda/amaddclient.20100621133307.debug
/etc/amanda/DailySet1/disklist updated
updating /var/lib/amanda/.amandahosts on quartz.example.com
Attempting to update /var/lib/amanda/.amandahosts on
iron.example.com
.amandahosts 100% 76 0.1KB/s
00:00
.amandahosts.tmp 100% 112 0.1KB/s
00:00
iron.example.com:/var/lib/amanda/.amandahosts updated successfully
Creating amanda-client.conf for iron.example.com
Creating /etc/amanda/DailySet1 on iron.example.com
amanda-client.conf-iron.example.com 100% 380
0.4KB/s 00:00
Copy /var/lib/amanda/amanda-client.conf-iron.example.com to
iron.example.com successfully
File /var/lib/amanda/example/xinetd.amandaclient contains the latest
Amanda client daemon configuration.
Please merge it to /etc/xinetd.d/amandaclient.

6.3 Adding Client Copper (SLES 11)

Use amaddclient to enable backups of client copper:
-sh-3.2$ amaddclient --config DailySet1 --client copper.example.com
--diskdev /srv/www/htdocs/ --dumptype comp-user-tar
Logging to /var/log/amanda/amaddclient.20100622120516.debug
/etc/amanda/DailySet1/disklist updated
updating /var/lib/amanda/.amandahosts on quartz.example.com
Attempting to update /var/lib/amanda/.amandahosts on
copper.example.com
.amandahosts 100% 76 0.1KB/s
00:00
.amandahosts.tmp 100% 112 0.1KB/s
00:00
copper.example.com:/var/lib/amanda/.amandahosts updated successfully
Creating amanda-client.conf for copper.example.com
Creating /etc/amanda/DailySet1 on copper.example.com
amanda-client.conf-copper.example.com 100% 380
0.4KB/s 00:00
Copy /var/lib/amanda/amanda-client.conf-copper.example.com to
copper.example.com successfully

Page 11 of 18
 File /var/lib/amanda/example/xinetd.amandaclient contains the latest
Amanda client daemon configuration.
Please merge it to /etc/xinetd.d/amandaclient.

6.4 Adding Client Uranium (Windows XP)

Use amaddclient to enable backups of the Windows XP client (ZWC) Uranium:
1. Before running amaddclient, append the following dumptype definitions to the file
/etc/amanda/template.d/dumptypes. These definitions are needed to backup
ZWC clients.
define dumptype zwc-normal {
global
program "DUMP"
}

define dumptype zwc-compress {

global
compress client fast
program "DUMP"
}
2. Run amaddclient for Uranium. You will notice several error messages indicating
that our user does not have SSH access to Uranium. Most of the time, this is probably a
good idea. For now it means amaddclient cannot copy an xinetd configuration file
and an Amanda client configuration file onto Uranium for us. Usually, the fallback is for
us to copy them manually, as the error message indicates. However, Uranium is a
Windows machine, and doesn't run xinetd. The Zmanda client handles the issues for us.
So we can ignore the error.
-bash-3.00$ amaddclient --config DailySet1 --client
uranium.zmanda.com --diskdev C:/Data --dumptype zwc-compress
Logging to /var/log/amanda/amaddclient.20080813095400.debug
/etc/amanda/DailySet1/disklist updated
updating /var/lib/amanda/.amandahosts on quartz.zmanda.com
/var/lib/amanda/.amandahosts contains uranium.zmanda.com root, file
not updated
Attempting to update /var/lib/amanda/.amandahosts on
uranium.zmanda.com
ssh: connect to host uranium.zmanda.com port 22: Connection refused
WARNING: scp from uranium.zmanda.com not successful.
Check uranium.zmanda.com :/var/lib/amanda/.amandahosts file.
If entry 'quartz.zmanda.com amandabackup' is not present,
append the entry to the file manually.
Creating amanda-client.conf for uranium.zmanda.com
Creating /etc/amanda/DailySet1 on uranium.zmanda.com
ssh: connect to host uranium.zmanda.com port 22: Connection refused
WARNING: Cannot create /etc/amanda/DailySet1 on uranium.zmanda.com

Page 12 of 18
 Please copy /var/lib/amanda/amanda-client.conf-uranium.zmanda.com
to uranium.zmanda.com manually
File /var/lib/amanda/example/xinetd.amandaclient contains the latest
Amanda client daemon configuration.
Please merge it to /etc/xinetd.d/amandaclient.

7 Verification and Backup

We will test the backup configuration for all three clients and then kick-off a backup run. Ensure
that we are logged-in to Quartz as user amandabackup.
1. As amandabackup, run the amcheck command to test validity of the configuration and
connectivity between client and server
-sh-3.2$ amcheck DailySet1
Amanda Tape Server Host Check
-----------------------------
slot 1: volume 'DailySet1-1'
Will write to volume 'DailySet1-1' in slot 1.
NOTE: skipping tape-writable test
NOTE: host info dir /etc/amanda/DailySet1/curinfo/iron.example.com
does not exist
NOTE: it will be created on the next run.
NOTE: index dir /etc/amanda/DailySet1/index/iron.example.com does
not exist
NOTE: it will be created on the next run.
NOTE: host info dir /etc/amanda/DailySet1/curinfo/copper.example.com
does not exist
NOTE: it will be created on the next run.
NOTE: index dir /etc/amanda/DailySet1/index/copper.example.com does
not exist
NOTE: it will be created on the next run.
NOTE: host info dir
/etc/amanda/DailySet1/curinfo/uranium.example.com does not exist
NOTE: it will be created on the next run.
NOTE: index dir /etc/amanda/DailySet1/index/uranium.example.com does
not exist
NOTE: it will be created on the next run. Server check took 2.118
seconds

Amanda Backup Client Hosts Check

--------------------------------
Client check: 2 hosts checked in 7.400 seconds. 0 problems found.

(brought to you by Amanda 3.1.0)

2. The amcheck command should not generate any errors. The NOTE messages we see
here are normal for DLEs that have not yet been backed up. If we see the expected “0
problems found” result, we can now initiate the first full backup:

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 [amandabackup@quartz ~]$ amdump DailySet1
3. Once the backup run is complete, the root user should receive an e-mail with the backup
summary on the Amanda server.
4. We can now create a cron job for user amandabackup that will execute amdump and
initiate the backups automatically. Execute the crontab command to create the job:
[amandabackup@quartz ~]$ crontab –e
and add this line to the file to run backups daily Monday through Friday at 1 AM:
0 1 * * 1-5 /usr/sbin/amdump DailySet1

8 Recovery
Finally, we will perform a recovery of some of the data we have backed-up. This is a crucial step
– always verify a backup system to confirm that you can recover data.
The recovery procedure for windows client is different from that for a Linux client. ZWC
Community Edition does not yet support direct restore on a client. Instead, first restore data on
your Amanda server (or another client), and then copy it to the client.

8.1 Recovery of Linux client (Copper)

1. On the host Copper, as the user root, run amrecover to initiate the data recovery
process. Here we recover to a temporary directory. Any empty directory will do.
copper:~/tmp/amanda # amrecover DailySet1
AMRECOVER Version 3.1.0. Contacting server on quartz.example.com ...
220 quartz AMANDA index server (3.1.0) ready.
Setting restore date to today (2010-06-22)
200 Working date set to 2010-06-22.
200 Config set to DailySet1.
501 Host copper is not in your disklist.
Trying host copper.example.com ...
200 Dump host set to copper.example.com.
Use the setdisk command to choose dump disk to recover
2. The list of commands below will demonstrate a recovery of a set of different files and
directories to the "/tmp" directory.
amrecover> listdisk
200- List of disk for host copper.example.com
201- /srv/www/htdocs/
200 List of disk for host copper.example.com
amrecover> setdisk /srv/www/htdocs/
200 Disk set to /srv/www/htdocs/.
amrecover> ls
2010-06-22-14-14-31 robots.txt
2010-06-22-14-14-31 index.html
2010-06-22-14-14-31 favicon.ico

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2010-06-22-14-14-31 apache_pb22_ani.gif
2010-06-22-14-14-31 apache_pb22.png
2010-06-22-14-14-31 apache_pb22.gif
2010-06-22-14-14-31 apache_pb.png
2010-06-22-14-14-31 apache_pb.gif
2010-06-22-14-14-31 .
amrecover> add *
Added file /robots.txt
Added file /index.html
Added file /favicon.ico
Added file /apache_pb22_ani.gif
Added file /apache_pb22.png
Added file /apache_pb22.gif
Added file /apache_pb.png
Added file /apache_pb.gif
amrecover> extract

Extracting files using tape drive file://data/amanda/vtape/DailySet1

on host quartz.example.com.
The following tapes are needed: DailySet1-1

Extracting files using tape drive file://data/amanda/vtape/DailySet1

on host quartz.example.com.
Load tape DailySet1-1 now
Continue [?/Y/n/s/d]?
Restoring files into directory /root/tmp/amanda
All existing files in /root/tmp/amanda can be deleted
Continue [?/Y/n]? y

./apache_pb.gif
./apache_pb.png
./apache_pb22.gif
./apache_pb22.png
./apache_pb22_ani.gif
./favicon.ico
./index.html
./robots.txt
amrecover> exit
200 Good bye.
Note that in the listing in amrecover, the dates are those of the backup, not necessarily
those of the underlying files.
3. We can now verify that the files have been recovered successfully by running tree,
find, ls -R, or any other suitable command.
copper:~/tmp/amanda # ll -R
total 40
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 2010-06-22 14:55 .

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 drwxr-xr-x 3 root root 4096 2010-06-22 14:53 ..
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 2205 2005-12-14 09:25 apache_pb22_ani.gif
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 2410 2005-12-14 09:25 apache_pb22.gif
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 1502 2005-12-14 09:25 apache_pb22.png
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 2326 2004-11-20 13:16 apache_pb.gif
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 1385 2004-11-20 13:16 apache_pb.png
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 302 2008-07-23 10:08 favicon.ico
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 44 2004-11-20 13:16 index.html
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 26 2010-05-05 08:43 robots.txt

8.2 Recovery of ZWC client (Uranium)

The procedure to recover backup of windows client Uranium is as follows.
1. Log in as root on quartz, the Amanda Server, and create a directory, where you will
restore the data. Make user amandabackup the owner of the directory.
[root@quartz amanda]# mkdir /restore
[root@quartz amanda]# chown amandabackup:disk /restore/
2. As user amandabackup confirm the type of backup that you want to restore using the
command amadmin. In our case we will be restoring a full and an incremental backup,
both dated dated 13 August 2008. Syntax for amadmin is amadmin
<BackupSetName> find <hostname> <disk>
[root@quartz amanda]# su - amandabackup
-sh-3.2$ amadmin DailySet1 find uranium

date host disk lv tape or file file part stat

2010-06-22 14:14:31 uranium "C:/Data" 0 DailySet1-1 1 1/1 OK
3. Change directory to /restore
-sh-3.2$ cd /restore/
4. Use amfetchdump to extract the contents from full backup (2008-08-13
10:23:07).Syntax of the command is amfetchdump <BackupSetName>
<client> <disk> <YYYYMMDDHHMMSS>
sh-3.2$ amfetchdump DailySet1 uranium "C:/Data" 20100622141431
1 volume(s) needed for restoration
The following volumes are needed: DailySet1-1
Press enter when ready

amfetchdump: 1: restoring split dumpfile: date 20100622141431 host

uranium disk "C:/Data" part 1/UNKNOWN lev 0 comp N program pkzip
5. Now you can see the data set in /restore.
-sh-3.2$ ls
uranium.C__Data.20100622141431.0

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 -sh-3.2$ file uranium.C__Data.20100622141431.0
uranium.C__Data.20100622141431.0: Zip archive data, at least v2.0 to
extract
6. You can test the file locally.
-sh-3.2$ unzip -t uranium.C__Data.20100622141431.0
Archive: uranium.C__Data.20100622141431.0
testing: ZWCBackupInfo
error: invalid compressed data to inflate
testing: ZWC-Community-3.1.beta-32bit.zip OK
At least one error was detected in uranium.C__Data.20100622141431.0.
The error on ZWCBackupInfo is normal, and will not affect your ability to extract the
payload.
7. Move the file to the Windows system where you want to restore and extract the data
using Compressed Folders utility in Windows XP or programs such as Winzip or Pkzip.
Or you can extract it locally with unzip.
[root@quartz restore]# unzip uranium.C__Data.20100622141431.0
Archive: uranium.C__Data.20100622141431.0
skipping: ZWCBackupInfo volume label
inflating: ZWC-Community-3.1.beta-32bit.zip
Note the difference in the two recovery clients. amfetchddump recovers a complete dump as a
zip file while amrecover extracts files from the storage medium. Use amfetchdump where
you may have ownership or permissions issues. For example, we might use amfetchdump to
recover our Windows machines because Windows and Linux have different permissions
schemes.
Note also that Amanda uses operating system utilities (tar, dump, zip, etc.) to create the dumps;
this means you are not dependent on proprietary programs to recover your data.
Note well the implications for security: with proper (or improper!) access permissions, anyone
can recover data for any client on any other client.

9 Conclusion
As we have just seen, backing-up and restoring files with Amanda is incredibly easy. Setup is
also very quick. For more information, there is a wealth of documentation and examples
available on the Amanda Wiki. There is also a large community ready to respond to ideas and
requests for help on the Amanda Forums. As you explore the features and flexibility of Amanda,
you will find that there is much more power to be harnessed from building your backup and
recovery solution around Amanda.

10 Request for Feedback

Did this paper help you in your configuration? What did we not cover well? What could we have
done better? Please provide feedback on this paper to community@zmanda.com. Your feedback,
however brief, is very much appreciated.

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11 Glossary
DLE: Disk List Entry, the quantum unit of Amanda backup.
dumpcycle: The number of days in the backup cycle, whether you run backups on all of those
days or not. Each DLE will be backed up in its entirety at least once during this period.
Specify per DLE in amanda.conf.
dumptype: A definition of a dump. It specifies whether the client or server will compress or
encrypt the dump (and with which program), what exclusions to apply (e.g. excluding a
package cache under /var), and other characteristics.
holding disk: an intermediate storage area for caching backup data. Specify per DLE in
amanda.conf.
mailto: One or more email addresses to send reports to. Specify per DLE in amanda.conf.
runspercycle: How many dumps per cycle. In our example (see Section 6, Configuring the
Backup Server, on page 9), we have a dump cycle of a week, but only five runs per week.
Later, we will set this up as a cron job to run Monday through Friday (see Section 7,
Verification and Backup, on page 13). Specify per DLE in amanda.conf.
runtapes: The maximum number of tapes per a single run. You can span tapes (use multiple
tapes per run) with this parameter, but we are going to keep our calculations simple by
ignoring that capability. Specify per DLE in amanda.conf.
tapecycle: How many tapes we will have. With physical tapes, of course, a physical count is
the maximum. With virtual tapes, we can change this count on the fly according to disk
usage. We will run five dumps a week. With 12 tapes, we keep a week of old backups in
reserve, and still have two spares. The reserve week ensures that we always have at least
one full backup for each DLE on hand. Spares are more important for physical tapes, but
it's good practice to have them even with virtual tapes. Specify per DLE in
amanda.conf.
tapedev: The actual backup device. Normally this is a tape drive, e.g. /dev/st0; in this
case a directory we will build. Specify per DLE in amanda.conf.
template: Specify the type of backup medium, in this case virtual tapes on a hard drive.
Specify per DLE in amanda.conf.

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