Amanda howto for openhabian and NAS

Hardware Server
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32

I am very sorry and I can understand that you are annoyed.

Thanks for your help, but I’m newbie on the linux domain.

That’s why I had initially asked for a “step by step” tutorial.
I tried to get to know myself. I try to read a lot and certainly do not ask because I do not want to inform myself.
But it is really hard to get involved here.

Again, I am very sorry that I annoyed you.

Could anybody explain me, how to mount a NFS Share after I run the openhabian Amanda install guide, and forgot to mount my NFS share before?
I am not sure what all I forgot und lost on configuration, in that case.

Thank you so much.

33

That’s basic Linux knowledge and a quick Google search for ‘Linux mount’ should get you an answer like this one.
As I said in my previous post, properly mount the disk and then re-run Amanda install from openHABian menu.

34

I like to learn, but in this way,it makes no sense for me.
Now I know how the Linux share mount works, but neither I know, where to set the mountpoint to point, still I know whether then amanda maybe would have to work.
Unfortunately, this is not a big help for me.

Now for me it is time to deactivate the Cronjob (/etc/cron.d/amanda) and continue to read and have to wait, that maybe someone could helps me.

@mstormi: Thanks for your “help”

35

I read this thread with some interest. I have had problems with my install as well.

Given the stated openhab objective of “Simpler setup and configuration possibilities for “regular” i.e. not tech-savvy users” one would expect the Readme would contain at least some guidance as to what needs to be done. As is I don’t think the current README does that. I have some suggestions to fix that

In this post I provide my experiences with installing AMANDA using the existing README. Note that these comments are based on a NAS backup so some or all of these comments may not apply if using the USB attached storage option (which I did not try). While there is a lot of detail I have provided this as I think it would be useful feedback for the maintainers. I have not provided details of the exact linux commands I used as I figured anybody using a NAS would know how to access man pages and Google for more details.

Firstly, I read the Amanda README several times in great detail trying to get a feel for what was going on. In this respect I found the introduction section to be excellent background information. Was a bit confused as to how to actually do it so I just dived right in.

Since I would be using a Synology NAS I mounted it on the Pi and tested it. It later transpired that I should have given the “backup” user permissions on the mount on the Pi and this is not in the README nor is it obvious (at least it wasn’t to me anyway). And BTW you cannot switch to backup user unless you know the backup users password – which is not in the README. I found out how to change that via Google and an Amanda users group!

In respect of mounting the NAS I had read this thread and knew that I had to place the mount at “/mnt/NAS” before running install but this is NOT mentioned in the README and is only obvious if you look at the config files (more on that later).

On installation users will get a step which asks them the mount location. A non tech savvy user may think that answering this step will create the mount which of course it doesn’t.

I tried to open the config files but it seems that I am not logged in as backup user. Change to backup user and I cannot traverse the directory structure because backup is not in the sudoer group. Fixed that but this is getting frustrating. Entered my email details but left everything else alone.

So I then ran the install and it asked me how many tapes or slots I wanted. The concept of tapes or slots is not described in the README . I had no clue so I aborted the install and went to read the docs at Amanda.org. Still no clue. I initially entered four and then it wants to know the size of the tapes. Back to Amanda.org. Still no clue so entered size of the SD card (32GB). I still don’t know if this is optimal but I have heaps of space on my NAS. In this respect I suggest the Readme should briefly explain how Amanda uses slots to emulate physical tapes and how these are used by the installed configuration. This does not have to be complicated and for a NAS backup I was thinking something like.

  • “ For a NAS backup the installed configuration will set up a number of slots in the storage directory. Each of these slots will emulate a physical tape. The default/recommended number of slots (tapes) is 15 but this can be changed during the installation process. The installation process will ask for the size of the storage directory and each slot will be allocated that size divided by the number of slots. The suggested/recommended size required for a full openhabian backup is XXXXXMB. The installation will run a full [not sure if its a full back up or incremental?] backup (amdump) at midnight and that backup will be stored in the first non-empty slot. The next day’s backup will be stored in the next available slot and so on until each slot is full at which time the first slot will be overwritten. All of these actions can be changed via the Amanda configuration files– see amanda.org manual pages for further details”

By the way it appears the Amanda config files are only accessible AFTER you have actually installed Amanda. Which means users have no idea what the default configuration is until after the install - by which time they have changed it and may already have entered sub optimal values for tapes and tape size and it doesn’t work. They then have to go back and edit and its starts to get messy. Similarly you cannot see the adopted backup strategy set out by Cron and Disks configuration files until after you have installed Amanda . This means it’s more difficult to figure out what is going on before you install and thus there is more chance of not setting it up properly. As a suggestion could a section be added to the README which sets out the questions the installation process will ask and also gives some model answers based on a standard openhabian backup.

Anyway in my situation I left the config files as is and only changed the email address field. I had already set up EXIM4 email on the pi.

Also when I mounted my NAS It was not clear that I did not have to create a slots directory with the required number of slots in it because the installation process does that for you.

Ok so I had the installation finished and I try to run it and it fails. I had to wait 5 hours before amdump reported a fail and I found that out – (again not mentioned in the readme but is mentioned in several forum posts so I was expecting it).

So after accessing the detail of the default config files (from a post on the forum because you cannot access them until after the installation is finished) I change the file back to default configuration with 15 slots and re-entered my email details

I ran Amcheck and it just hangs with the display of - Slot:0 volume”” with no response to keybd input on Putty (ctrl C to stop it) which is when I figured out I needed to give backup user permissions on the mount folder. Ahh …. Now it seems to work. Amcheck runs ok. Amreport says nothing found so we do an Amdump. Which works. Finally - after four days (a large portion of which was trying to understand Amanda! and what it wanted/needed).

Now I go to sort out cloning an SD card. I used my NAS as the temporary storage location which worked OK. However, I note that the Readme instructions for the amfetch are misleading as they use “openhab” rather than the default “openhab-dir” as the dump to fetch! They are also referencing a different user name and directories than would be found in a normal openhabian setup. This was a bit confusing.

So in summary I got it working but it took quite a while. For the benefit of others I have provided a suggested checklist for using the NAS option (with comments questions): but please note I have simply listed the steps I followed to get it to work. There may be a more optimal approach:

  • Before trying to install Amanda from the config console decide on the backup strategy, tape numbers and sizes .
  • Make sure there is a NAS (NFS type) local mount in the location that is expected by Amanda (which is /mnt/NAS?). Test the mount to make sure any local changes are reflected in the remote location. Also give ‘backup’ user permissions on the mount location on the Pi. Configure the NAS to allow NFS access by the Pi.
  • Install Amanda using the config console
  • Change the backup users password (the default password is ???)
  • Add backup user to the sudo group. You need to do this or you will not be able to edit any config files.
  • If you want email notifications from Amanda set up and enable an email system on the Raspberry pi (Exim4?) and amend the Amanda config file to enter your email address.
  • Run amcheck on the configuration see Amanda.org for troubleshooting
  • Run amreport see Amanda.org for troubleshooting
  • Run amdump on the configuration. Note: this may take a number of hours
  • Check wherever the backup went to and that it has actually backed up the files
  • Run amrestore to check that functionality
  • If backing up the SD card image make a clone of the SD card. [Add some sub steps on how to do that such as mount second card or add second mount for temp NAS location or whatever]

Finally: and on a more positive note I think this is a very good backup solution. Thanks for that. I feel the README just needs a bit of tweaking to provide a little more background and some high-level steps for using the NAS option. Also while I did not appreciate it at the time I have learned a lot about Linux while debugging the install.

6 Likes
36

As I have read a lot about users having problems with Amanda setup you may have some time to contribute your findings to the docs?

37

Thanks for your constructive input. I’ve reworked the README, find the updated working copy here and tell me what else you feel I should add or change therein.

I’m a little irritated by a couple of things though, such as what you write on that backup user part.
There should not have been a backup user prior to running the Amanda installation menu option (IIRC, it’s created as part of the package install). You then were asked to enter its password during installation, so backup user’s default password is what you’re entering. Also, you can switch to become the ‘backup’ user without a need to enter its password. Also no need to have backup in the sudo group as the backup user is not meant to be used to edit Amanda config files (doesn’t do harm but you don’t need it).
You can use sudo to become root from your ordinary user (“pi” or whatever you usually login as) and edit files or in order to switch over to become ‘backup’. You just have to be ‘backup’ to run amdump etc.
I added switching user IDs as an example to the tutorial.
There’s also no need to use /mnt/NAS as THE mountpoint. You can use anything here as long as you specify the directory (asked for during Amanda installation) to have the name of the mountpoint that you have previously mounted the NAS disk on.

As a general comment, it’s still amazing me every day how naive most users approach an important and complex topic like this one.
As a spare time enthusiast-only maintainer, I cannot write documentation that educates each-and-every user on everything on-the-fly, you have to start somewhere above Zero, we cannot start teaching the Linux basics.
And it seems one cannot write an installation routine to anticipate every possible queer user move or a documentation without a possibility to misunderstand given hints and explanations.
I admit that it wasn’t obvious that you need to mount your storage dir BEFORE you run the Amanda installation routine, but if you did, it should have set the proper permissions and links. I think I now made that clearer in the new version.

Actually, ALL people to report problems (at least all I remember ATM) were Windows people with little or no UNIX experience that tried to apply Windows concepts and failed simply because you cannot apply Windows concepts to a UNIX box:
There’s people trying to use CIFS (i.e. Windows sharing protocol) to share a disk from a UNIX NAS to a UNIX client (openHABIan) instead of properly using NFS for that task.
There’s people asking how to edit a file.
There’s people to interrupt the installation or to run it twice or even more often and wonder why that makes a difference.
There’s people to enter <server-ip>:<remote-dir-on-server> when they were asked to enter a directory.

People’s problems with most of this is a general understanding thing, and while I agree on a need for and welcome any enhancements to the tutorial, this cannot really be fully solved inside openHABian/Amanda code or docs.
And most users pay little attention themselves … I bet you and others haven’t carefully read the text in the windows.
Find below the code copied right from the installation routine. It’s showing what you (the user) were asked at Amanda installation time. I don’t feel this to be ambiguous or unclear, but if you feel so, please tell me how to change it.

dir=$(whiptail --title "Storage directory" --inputbox "What's the directory to store backups into?\nYou can specify any locally accessible directory, no matter if it's located on the internal SD card, an external USB-attached device such as a USB stick or HDD, or a NFS or CIFS share mounted off a NAS or other server in the network." 10 60 3>&1 1>&2 2>&3)
        tapes=$(whiptail --title "Number of virtual storage containers in rotation" --inputbox "How many virtual containers will you setup inside the storage dir ?" 10 60 3>&1 1>&2 2>&3)
size=$(whiptail --title "Storage capacity" --inputbox "What's your backup storage area capacity in megabytes ?" 10 60 3>&1 1>&2 2>&3)

and

 if (whiptail --title "Backup raw SD card ?" --yes-button "Backup SD" --no-button "Do not backup SD" --yesno "Do you want to create raw disk backups of your SD card ? Only recommended if it's 8GB or less, otherwise this can take too long. You can always add/remove this by editing ${confdir}/disklist." 15 80) then

A locally accessible directory is a local directory, so nobody should feel encouraged to enter <server-ip>:/<remote-dir> or similar there, right ?
It’s also asking “How many virtual containers will you setup inside the storage dir ?”, what’s wrong with understanding that ?
The backup storage area is the area (and no tape or subdir or anything else), so what’s unclear about that this question is asking to specify the total amount of storage to be used by Amanda ?

It’s asking you to enter the backup user’s password. How do you come to ask its default password afterwards ?
And it’s asking you whether you want to backup your raw SD card and even gives a warning that doing so will take long.

Seriously… I’m not trying to ‘bark back’ but I’d really like to understand how I need to change the docs to make you understand them better .

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I’ve reworked the README once more. Link is still this.

All, please read this and let me know what you believe is missing or wrong.

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Markus

Thanks for listening. I have been out all day but I had a very quick look at the new README and my first impression is what an outstanding job. I am very impressed.

Now I need to apologize about my backup password comments but in my defence I just looked at my log (I keep a note of what I do or did so I can remember how to do it again) and it seems I did set an initial password in response to the installation prompt. But I also have a note that it would not recognize that password and I had to enter a new one. More on that later.

I also see in your new README that if you have your mount set up the Amanda install should recognise that and set permissions on the mount folder. That does not seem to have happened in my case because even though I had the mount working before I did the install it would not work until I gave the backup user the proper permission.

Now contrary to what you may think you lose your bet because I did read the install prompts before I responded to them. I even abandoned the install because I did not know how to answer them and went to amanda.org to try and work out what I was being asked. Having read the new README I have a better (but still incomplete) understanding but that was not the case a couple of days ago.

I see you are not understanding why I am confused about virtual containers. Try and see this from the point of view of somebody who does not know that much about Amanda (and did not have the benefit of the explanation in the new README). So I get asked “How many virtual containers will you setup inside the storage dir”. I have no clue how many I want but I am able to understand (from the Amanda docs) that this relates to how many tapes I want to emulate. Well looking at this from a logical point of view I know what a tape is and how it can store data but to work out how many I want I need to know how these tapes are being used by the installed configuration of Amanda. So when it asks me how many tapes - I ask myself how can I answer that when I don’t know how the tapes are being used because I do not know how the installation has been configured and even if I did would I understand it. Anyhow I can figure out from the README that we are doing a backup every day but is it a full backup or incremental? And how is the backup being put onto the tapes. For example Is the backup being duplicated across tapes to provide redundancy (so for example identical backup data is saved to tape 1 and tape 2). Or is the backup being spread across tapes. When will the tapes be overwritten. What happens if I specify too many tapes or not enough. If it is a small backup related to the size of the tape will it continue to write until that tape is full or will the system switch to a new tape every day. I had no idea so I tried to decode the information at Amanda.org - How to Set Up Virtual Tapes - and it looks like I need a whole bunch of data which I don’t know - like number of incremental dumps per full dump, size of incremental dumps, total tapecycle etc etc. So I still cant’ answer the question. In the end I just used the default of 15.

Then it asks me “What’s your backup storage area capacity in megabytes”. This is rather obvious question which I can answer because I am dumping to a NAS and there are currently 2.6TB of available space. However, I suspect that what it really wants to know is not how much space I have but how much space I will let Amanda use which is an entirely different thing isn’t it. I am still not sure what to put here. I will have another read of the new information shortly. BTW I realize that I could answer this if I had a dedicated disk or partition but I don’t. One of the reasons I have not done this is I don’t understand how big a disk/partition I would NEED. Again I will read the new information and see if that helps.

I hear what you are saying when you say “ one cannot write an installation routine to anticipate every possible queer user move” but with the greatest of respect I think you will agree there is a fine point in achieving a balance between providing nothing and trying to cover everything anybody could possibly do. In this respect your new README looks like it has achieved a better balance. While I have not read it in great detail my first impression is it looks exactly like enough information to point people in the right direction.

In respect of the new README and given the couple of issues I experienced (see second and third paras) I am going to reinstall openhabian on my Raspberry Pi 3B (not to worry I have a clone on standby -courtesy Amanda) and reinstall Amanda (using the new README as a guide) to see if I can recreate those issues. This might take a couple of days and I will get back to you after I have done that with any further suggestions on the README.

Thanks for your efforts in providing a robust back up solution and your quick turnaround of my suggestions

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Possibly so. While it was intended to work without write access, I have changed that code to set ownership and group write rights of the storage directory for the backup user.

Ok, yes this is misleading. I meant to ask for the total amount of space but actually used the input as the number of tapes.
Will remove that question on the number of containers for the directory and S3 storage variants.
Reason it was there is that I also plan for a variant to use removable SD cards, and these you have to specify in number and size. Unfortunately this requires Amanda 3.4+ which is not yet available as a Raspian package.
Will change the size question to make clear it is about the total amount of space you want to dedicate to amanda on your storage area.

The updated (but untested) version of the install routine is here, awaiting review.
If you know how to replace openhabian-setup.sh script before you execute it to setup your next box, please do and let me know if it works.

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Marcus

Sorry I do not know how to change the install script so I cannot test your new install. If you need someone to do this I am happy to act as a test case but you will need to tell me how to do it. You can PM me if you wish.

OK so I had a look at the README ( I will provide comments on it separately) and I then started a fresh openhabian install on my Rapberry PI 3B.

Now you stated that “There should not have been a backup user prior to running the Amanda installation menu option’. So to test this and after first boot had completed I executed sudo cat/etc/passwd to see if there was an existing ‘backup user”. There WAS a backup user
Details > backup:x:34:34:backup:/var/backups:/usr/sbin/nologin
I ignored this.

I then prepared a share on my NAS and created a /mnt/NAS folder on the pi. Went into fstab and added the line [192.168.1.37:/volume1/homes/Tom/Rpi301 /mnt/NAS nfs defaults 0 0]

Tested that with a sudo mount -a and then checked the directory to see if some test files had been shared. Everything OK so onto to an Amanda install. BTW I ignored all the intermediate set up steps such as setting up mail, samba adjusting locale and time zones etc.

Provided password, set containers to 15 and available space to 15000MB (three times the image size) chose not to backup SD card or use AWS
.
Everything seems to have worked so switch to backup user and do amcheck openhab-dir. Same problem as yesterday the installation does not seem to have granted permissions on the mounted share and it hangs with slot 0 volume “ “.

Ctrl C to exit and run an Amreport on openhab-dir and it says parse error; could not open config file “etc/Amanda/openhab-dir/Amanda.conf; No such file etc. I ran into this issue yesterday with the previous install. So while still backup user I tried to edit the Amanda.conf file and that generated a Security Exception “this will be reported”. OK change back to openhabian user and try to edit the Amanda config file. But it will not even let me CD into the directory (unless I use sudo -s). So to change Amanda config files I have to be root user not the normal openhabian. Is this how it’s supposed to work?

As I already have a working backup system (even though it may not optimised) I aborted the install. However despite what it told me on pi when I went to the NAS it HAD already created the required slots! Huh?

Yesterday, I fixed both of these issues by adding backup to the Sudoers group and granting permissions on the mount folder using “Sudo chmod -R 777 /mnt”. Now bearing in mind what you said about not needing to add backup to sudoer group would there have been alternative way of fixing these issues?

Anyway I know you have an updated installation script but I just though this might be useful info for you.

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Marcus

My comments on the README by sections. If there is no comment I thought it was very good .

Amanda Background Section.
This does a good job of explaining what a dumpcycle and a tapecycle are. The explanation of how data will get a full backup and then incremental backups is easy to understand.

After the words “Amanda will store into each tape subdirectory as (storage size) / (number of tapes)’ may I suggest you add the following (or something along these lines) “ The Amanda installation will by default do a backup every day at 0100 hrs. The first backup will be a full backup into slot 1 directory. On the second day an incremental backup will be placed in slot 2 and this will continue until all slots are full at which time Amanda will start to overwrite the slots starting at slot1. If you have selected SD card image backup the whole image will be backed up every day”. (Edit I see you have said this later on but I think this information needs to be provided sooner and I suggest it be in this section -and I do not see any harm in it being duplicated later)

Installation Section (mounting part)
Personally, I would have been happy to just see a reminder to mount the NAS and or SD card and leave it at that.

I see you have pasted your session onto the page and in this respect can I suggest you split the graphic into two parts and move the introductory text to suit. Eg: procedure1 for NAS with graphic then procedure 2 for SD card with graphic. Sorry if this sounds a bit pedantic but it might make it a bit easier to understand.

I can follow the mount procedure for the NAS quite well as I did it almost the same way as what you show.

I can’t comment on the USB section as I did not try it. Also to be honest to understand what you have done I am going to have to google each of the commands to see what you have done in detail. Now in this respect that’s OK with me - I can do that; but I fear other’s expectations might be a bit higher because of all the help they get when they install openhabian. Have another look at the install instructions for openhabian itself and how detailed they are and I think you will see what I mean.

Installation Section (after console paste)
In the first bullet point in the part that says “This is where you have mounted your USB storage or NAS disk share (see above).’ May I suggest you change this to “This is where you have mounted your USB storage or NAS disk share (which in above example for the NAS is /storage/server and for the usb stick is ……).

In the second bullet point there is a typo “typecycles” should be “tapecycles” . You have not suggested a number or told us how to work it out . I do not think a novice user would be that bothered about changing this so I suggest this prompt be left out of the install and you just set the default to 15. As an alternative may I suggest you add the words “the default is 15 and it is suggested to leave this at 15 unless you have a really good understanding of Amanda”

Further Comments
I suggest a separate section or sub section setting out when the backup user should be used and when the normal user is used… This is mentioned but I think this should be given a bit more visibility by having its own paragraph (probably somewhere after installation). This was one of the areas where I got myself confused.

Overall Impressions
A very nice detailed explanation of Why What and How. Thanks Marcus.

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Mmh, I guess you should be able to upload it to your openHABian box, go into shell, make it executable (chmod a+x ) and just run it. Assuming your openHABian box is connected to the inet, you can also download it FROM your box using wget https://github.com/mstormi/openhabian/blob/patch-11/openhabian-setup.sh
If that does not work for some reason (environments settings or other), you would need replace the openhabian-setup.sh on your box with my copy. Attach your card writer to your pi, put in your openHABian image SD, find it (fdisk -l) and mount the proper partition, then copy it there.

Ok. So it’s not created on Amanda package installation. The command actually is
/usr/sbin/chpasswd <<< "${backupuser}:${password}"
So it should not make a difference WHEN the user was created.

Yes.

Well, the whole openHABian-setup script isn’t built to be transaction-safe, so if you interrupt it, you get a partial installation. There is no builtin routine to do the cleanup.

Now that’s what I’ve changed in the install script update, so if you did use that one, it should work right away and you would not need to do this.

Well, sudoers group defines which users are allowed to execute sudo commands.
Now as per lets say general good UNIX practice, you shouldn’t use functional users (such as “backup”) for administration tasks but use your personal user instead (which should have been created at the beginning of openHABian install, if I recall correctly). That user should already be part of the sudoers group, i.e. no need to edit it.

44

Thanks for reviewing. I’ve changed the working copy (link see above) to reflect your input.

I intentionally placed the info like that as it does not apply to Amanda in general but only to our specific openHABian installation instance, so it should not be part of the ‘background’ section.

Me, too. But I believe to not show that example set of commands would result in a number of people give up on this.
On the other hand, to give fool-proof examples for each and every type of storage is desirable but impossible.
So I fought against myself … and lost :slight_smile:, so I came up with this compromise.

done.

I removed that from the install routine of the “directory” (NAS or USB mount) and AWS storage variants.

I added a paragraph at the end of the Amanda background section.

Now that’s a typo of yours, but you’re forgiven.

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Markus

First up apologies for spelling your name incorrectly. Sorry.

Personally, I am comfortable understanding what you have written. I do have a few questions about Amanda but I am going to try and sort them out myself by using your install as a lever.

The one question I do have relates to the various users. In the background section you talk about the various users and suggest to use the personal user and sudo (if left as is during the default install the personal user would be openhabian@openHABianPi). I am comfortable with that and I tried to use it to open the /etc/Amanda directory and I get “permission denied”. I got around this using sudo -s which makes me the root user root@opeHABianPi. So now I can get access to the Amanda configuration. However, if (as opehabain and not root) I try to access other config files in the /etc directory (like for instance int or network) then moving into them (using CD) DOES work without having to use sudo-s. So if I understand it I have to use root to change the Amanda configuration files but I can just use the personal user and sudo for other config files for equally important functions. Unless I am missing something this inconsistency is going to confuse new users (like me).

I do have a minor suggestion which relates to the storage preparation section. Now when I went to mount my drive I googled how to do it. There were a lot of examples and most of them did not work. The reason they didn’t work was because the answers provided were not specific to the Debian/Raspberry Pi system or the NFS file system. Now I know the objective of the README is NOT to teach people how to Google but if might help if you added a sentence after CAN DESTROY YOR SYSTEM that said something like. “Google is your friend, so you are encouraged to use it to find out how to mount a disk. However, when searching you should include the operating system you are using in the search terms. So don’t just type “how to mount a NAS disk” type “how to mount a NAS disk on a debian raspberry pi”. If you don’t do this you will get answers related to mounting using Redhat or ubuntu and the commands may not work or may actually harm your system”. I will leave it up to you if you take this suggestion up as I agree it is a matter of balance in how much you have to say – and it’s not me who is answering newbie questions.

BTW I didn’t have the confidence to attempt testing your install. I could probably get it started but I figured I would not know enough to gauge the effectivity of the results.

46

Well, this is one of the subtleties of UNIX … I don’t feel it to be inconsistent, so if it is confusing you, this is not because of the Amanda install but UNIX in general. I’ve changed the install script, though, to add the openhabian user to the backup group so you at least get (…mostly…) the same rights w.r.t. Amanda config as the “backup” user has.

changed that a little.

Well it’s meant to be a replacement, so you should run it instead of the original one (at least when it comes to the Amanda installation part) and afterwards, compare the system it created to your expectations. Probably easiest to go through your install notes you took last time and see if the irritations/issues are still there.

47

As the script changes were just merged into the repository, I believe you should be able to obtain them when you select the openHABian ‘update’ menu option (sorry, none at hand to try it myself).

48

Markus

OK I figured that would be easy to test.
Steps taken
reflash clean SD card
Let openhabian install
Update
Ugrade
Mount remote storage
Run sudo openhabian-config
Install Amanda backup using prompts. Only tested with the files and not a SD card image and not AWS either or backing up to an SD card.

AND

Test it with amcheck - no issues
Run amdump - worked fine

So looks like any bugs are no longer there. I even tested trying to run it as a normal user (no not on purpose) and it told me to change to backup user so that works as well.

Cheers and Thanks

Tom

2 Likes
49

Very interesting topic guys, reading the to and fro between you has been useful. I have but one ‘newbie’ question.
I first tried to install Amanda months ago but gave up for another non-automated backup solution, my question is can I uninstall amanda and clean everything up for the fresh install without creating a new SD card. I have a stable system and prefer not to rock the boat right now.

Thanks

PS I think I’d done the original install before mounting any NAS redirect so there won’t be any mounts to worry about.

50

Hard to answer as we don’t know about the Amanda leftovers on your system and there is no ‘uninstall’ routine.
Then again, if you choose to install it again (from the openHABian menu), it should overwrite existing config.
I’m positive that’ll work out.
Worst thing to happen I guess is that you still have the old cron job in existence, so backups might be started twice a day, but you can easily correct that (deduplicate lines in /etc/cron.d/amanda).

51

I have the same problem. I run into that problem because of the openhabian menu entries.

grafik

This entry is not enough. It should be changed to:

51: Mount a backup/restore drive (You could show here fstab? Or a readme/link what to do)
52: Setup Amanda Backup (What to backup: complete SD or USB or only config files and data (for users who know what they are doing))
53: Start Backup (for testing purpose)
54: Restore Backup (It should show me all backup versions and allow me to select one)

As a newbie I would expect a functionality like that.

I know that for entry 54 I may have to make a new install of openhabian first.

With the last comments on this topic I learned a lot more about amanda and the specific problems.

A big thanks goes to TCB1 from me for showing the problem a nomal user is confronted with when starting up with amanda. I did not find the entry point, but now it looks a lot clearer.

I still have a mounting question with a nas. When the nas is not used it normaly falls a sleep. What happens with the nas when it is mounted to a 24/7 running raspberry pi. Will it fall to sleep mode after the amanda backup? Or will it stay running all the time? If yes, how could I avoid this?