FC 2/3 Backup

[Tim Holmes]

> Craig White wrote:
> > On Tue, 2005-05-17 at 12:22 -0500, Les Mikesell wrote:
> >
> >>On Tue, 2005-05-17 at 10:54, Tim Holmes wrote:
> >>
> >>
> >>>Charles -- I am more than willing to try anything at this point,
> >>>however, I am new to linux, and so I will need a little guidance
> getting
> >>>through the process that you described (having cron tarbal the
files
> and
> >>>move them) -- it sounds like a valid plan, I am just gonna need
some
> >>>help getting it done.
> >>>
> >>>As far as Amanda -- I have seen it when doing installs, but I know
> >>>nothing about it,  is it a backup server or a remote client,  any
other
> >>>info would be appreciated
> >>
> >>Amanda generally wants to write directly to a tape drive on the
machine
> >>running the server.  If you are interested in an on-line disk based
> >>solution, look at backuppc:  http://backuppc.sourceforge.net/
> >
> > ----
> > Amanada has both a client and server application. Thus on the
computer
> > that has the tape drive, it would need both. Any other system would
only
> > need the client. Apparently there is a version in CVS that backs up
to
> > filesystem and judging by my experience with Amanda, they are likely
to
> > do a very good job at that. I don't believe that the version
distributed
> > with Fedora 3 will do that though.
> >
> > Craig
> >
> 
> I'm running amanda 2.4.4p2 on FC2 and it backs up to disk just fine.
It's
> backing up RH9, FC1 and FC2 clients. It supports virtual tapes on
disk,
> but
> requires a fair amount of manual configuration for the "tape changer".
> 
> It's a hairy-scary backup solution if you are used to a "real" backup
> system, though. It has it's idiosyncracies, but once you get it setup
you
> can leave it to get on with it. I've not touched the setup in the past
6
> months, it just silently backs-up the clients every night to a 250GB
USB
> drive. I wouldn't want to have to re-build a system from bare-metal
using
> an
> Amanda backup though.
> 
> --
> Nigel Wade, System Administrator, Space Plasma Physics Group,
>              University of Leicester, Leicester, LE1 7RH, UK
> E-mail :    nmw at ion.le.ac.uk
> Phone :     +44 (0)116 2523548, Fax : +44 (0)116 2523555
> 
[Tim Holmes wrote] 

Ok Folks

I am making what I think is progress here.

I have examined the logs for the remote agent (called RALUS) and found
out that one of the problems it was hitting was some missing packages,
which I have dug about and found and installed.  The agent now installs
without any complaints - either on the screen or in the logs.  The
problem now comes when I try to start it.  I issue the command 

/etc/init.d/VRTSralus.init start

it contemplates for a few seconds and then returns 

[FAILED]

there are no error messages or pointers to logs created to help me try
to diagnose the problem.

What should my next step be?

I really want to solve this because its going to prove to be a valuable
learning tool for future problems, but I am not sure how to proceede

TIM