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- README for adding PC hosts to the Amanda backup system.
-
- Installation
-
- Amanda is able to back up Microsoft Windows shared disks by using
- SAMBA, a package that implements a SMB client and server for Unix.
- Releases from 1.9.18p5 up to 1.9.18p10 would log information in the tar
- files it produces, making them unusable (both the tar files and the
- releases of SAMBA :-)! If you really must, a patch that fixes the
- problem was posted to the Amanda Users mailing-list; please check the
- archives. The patch may be available in the Amanda Patches Page too.
-
- Amanda no longer supports SAMBA releases prior to 1.9.18. If you're
- using SAMBA from 1.9.18 up to 1.9.18p3, make sure you don't set a low
- logging/debugging level in smb.conf. This flag may prevent that
- estimate sizes are printed correctly. Amanda will report an estimate
- failure in this case.
-
- This problem may also occur if you have large (>2GB) filesystems to
- back up with samba. In this case, apply samba-largefs.patch, after
- making sure your C compiler supports `unsigned long long's, and that
- printf() in your C library understands that "%llu" means `unsigned
- long long'. gcc may help you getting unsigned long longs, in case
- your platform doesn't, but it will not help printf understand "%llu".
-
- After building and installing samba with the selected patches, Amanda
- must be configured with smbclient support - when you run configure,
- add the following argument:
-
- --with-smbclient=/full/path/to/smbclient
-
- If you configure --with-smbclient, amanda will try to find smbclient
- in the PATH, but if the --with-smbclient switch is not issued at all,
- amanda will *not* enable its SAMBA hooks.
-
- Setup
-
- Once Amanda is installed, the only difference is in how the backup
- disks are specified. For each PC host disk, and entry is placed in the
- disklist not for that host, but for the 'samba server' host, where the
- patched samba suite is installed. Instead of a path or a disk
- specified in the space provided in the disklist for this purpose, a
- sharename is listed.
-
- Additionally, a file must be created called /etc/amandapass, which
- includes a sharename to password mapping. Each line of input
- lists the sharename in 'Amanda format' (it is case sensitive so
- make it identical to the sharename listed in the disklist) followed
- by whitespace and then the password, which must not contain spaces.
- This file must owned by the amanda user, and without world-read
- privileges, or amcheck will complain.
-
- The share must be given full access (read/write) to the disk -
- otherwise incremental backups will not work and it will always backup
- most of the disk (Archive bits never being reset).
-
- e.g.
-
- Amanda client software, and the patched samba is installed onto a host
- 'pcserver'. A share to be backed up is called 'backupc' on host
- 'thepc'. It has a password on the share of 'f00bar'.
-
- The entry in the disklist file is:
-
- pcserver //thepc/backupc nocomp-user-gnutar
-
- ^ samba installed unix host
- ^ pc host and sharename
- ^ dumptype must include the tar option
-
- And in /etc/amandapass on the machine 'pcserver', this line must be
- present :
- //thepc/backupc f00bar
-
- If smbclient would require a workgroup specification (-W), you may add
- it as a third argument in /etc/amandapass line:
- //thepc/backupc f00bar NTGROUP
-
- This way, smbclient will be invoked with -W NTGROUP
-
-
- An example dumptype (from amanda.conf) could be:
-
- define dumptype nocomp-user-gnutar {
- program "GNUTAR"
- comment "user partitions dumped with tar and no compression"
- options no-compress
- priority medium
- }
-
- Essentially the disklist entry is a 'pseudo-disk' which contains all the
- relevant information needed by the smbclient program to backup the disk,
- but in an Amanda compatible way. The full sharename shouldn't be greater
- than 79 characters. And the password should not include any whitespace.
-
- For NT systems, or where the shares are specified with a username, the
- username it connects with is 'backup'. See bugs for some notes on
- this.
-
- amcheck does a quick check to see if smbclient exits and also tries to
- connect to any appropriate hosts. It also checks for the existence of
- /etc/amandapass, and that the permissions are set appropriately.
-
- Bugs
-
- SAMBA will not back up open files (such as PAGEFILE.SYS and registry
- files) nor Access Control List data. Furthermore, at restore time,
- smbclient is unable to overwrite read-only files. Hence, Amanda+SAMBA
- is not a perfect solution for backing up (restoring, actually) system
- disks.
-
- SAMBA does not use Windows' Backup API, so configuring the Amanda
- backup user as a member of group backup, in the Windows host, is
- useless. You will probably have to configure it as an Administrator,
- and make sure that it can read and change permission of *all* files in
- the share.
-
- It seems impossible to detect when a per-user based login fails - e.g.
- the username doesn't exist on an NT workstation. It connects but you
- can't see any files (e.g. backups backup nothing). The selfcheck code
- isn't particularly robust in this area either, so you can get no
- warnings when a disk isn't being backed up. Just check to see that
- level 0 dumps are bigger than 64K - otherwise it means the backup was
- empty. (i have code in sendsize to detect this situation, but I don't
- know how to flag it, without aborting every disk (or 'pseudo disk') on
- that host).
-
- The estimate and totals are probably a bit out, since tar pads to the
- nearest 512 bytes after each file (i think). Not sure how much of a
- problem this is.
-
- If you compile with smbclient support, gnutar support is automatically
- added too. If you aren't using the gnutar part, you may get warnings
- about the availability of /usr/local/bin/gtar (or whatever it was
- compiled with) - these can safely be ignored, unless you enable index
- generation for those filesystems.
-
- Original text by:
- Michael Zucchi
- School of Computer and Information Science
- University of South Australia
- M.Zucchi@CIS.UniSA.Edu.Au
-