Subject: Re: Amanda on NetBSD 2.0.2/i386
To: Scott R. Burns <Scott.Burns@Netcontech.Com>
From: Greg Troxel <gdt@ir.bbn.com>
List: netbsd-users
Date: 07/31/2005 09:14:46
  Thanks. Someone else indicated that it will not restart non-holding disk
  dumps. I moved things around and was able to run it last night. Things
  worked fine with the larger holding area.

IMHO from 10 years of experience with amanda, if a dump needs to be
done directly to tape, that means more holding disk is needed, even if
it works without it.  This is particularly true with DDS (v.s. DLT),
which are prone to errors and failure when used in other than
the streaming regime.

  I am going to ask the "hackers" why this limitation is there. It looks
  fairly easy in the code to retry things for non-holding disk based dumps.

Probably because all of them think one needs more holding disk anyway,
so they didn't bother.  A complication is that the dump on the client
needs to be aborted cleanly so it can be redone.  I've never noticed
support for the server canceling an in-progress dump, but I've never
really looked for it.