Backup Central

Greetings;

I have taken note that there have been no new snapshots made available in a
bit over 3 weeks now, and other than the downloads page, all of the rest of
the new web pages point to paid support.

What is the future direction of amanda?

--
Cheers, Gene
"There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty:
soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order."
-Ed Howdershelt (Author)

"World conquerors sometimes become fools, but fools never become world
conquerors."
-- "The Outer Limits: The Invisibles"

On Fri, Feb 26, 2010 at 9:53 PM, Gene Heskett <gene.heskett < at > verizon.net> wrote:
I have taken note that there have been no new snapshots made available in a
bit over 3 weeks now, and other than the downloads page, all of the rest of
the new web pages point to paid support.

The snapshots seem to be a permissions problem in a script that wasn't
noticed until you pointed it out, so thanks. Make noise earlier next
time! We'll get them working again shortly.

The demo pages that Tatjana uploaded were just a demo, and don't link
anywhere useful. The regular links on amanda.org haven't changed at
all (yet). When she uploads the new design, the links will remain
essentially unchanged.

What is the future direction of amanda?

This is a much broader question, and I won't try to answer it here,
but I will say that we are *very* close (like a day or two) to
branching for a new release, after which we'll have the usual series
of betas and release candidates.

If you have more specific concerns, please do ask!

Dustin

--
Open Source Storage Engineer
http://www.zmanda.com

On Saturday 27 February 2010, Dustin J. Mitchell wrote:
On Fri, Feb 26, 2010 at 9:53 PM, Gene Heskett <gene.heskett < at > verizon.net>
wrote:
I have taken note that there have been no new snapshots made available in
a bit over 3 weeks now, and other than the downloads page, all of the
rest of the new web pages point to paid support.

The snapshots seem to be a permissions problem in a script that wasn't
noticed until you pointed it out, so thanks. Make noise earlier next
time! We'll get them working again shortly.

Well, frankly I just thought the efforts were going into the web pages and
didn't think too much about it till I saw what appears to be a transition
from GPL to a per seat fee schedule taking shape, with the only link to the
snapshots being the old page, which can be killed with one stroke of the
enter key. Makes me a bit nervous about the continued availability of my fav
backup utility, which I have now been using for a bit over a decade. Playing
the canary in the coal mine bit with the snapshots is my way of contributing
back and helping to make a great program even better.

The demo pages that Tatjana uploaded were just a demo, and don't link
anywhere useful. The regular links on amanda.org haven't changed at
all (yet). When she uploads the new design, the links will remain
essentially unchanged.

What is the future direction of amanda?

This is a much broader question, and I won't try to answer it here,
but I will say that we are *very* close (like a day or two) to
branching for a new release, after which we'll have the usual series
of betas and release candidates.

If you have more specific concerns, please do ask!

Dustin



--
Cheers, Gene
"There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty:
soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order."
-Ed Howdershelt (Author)

Recursion is the root of computation since it trades description for time.

On Sat, Feb 27, 2010 at 11:11 AM, Gene Heskett <gene.heskett < at > verizon.net> wrote:
Well, frankly I just thought the efforts were going into the web pages and
didn't think too much about it till I saw what appears to be a transition
from GPL to a per seat fee schedule taking shape, with the only link to the
snapshots being the old page, which can be killed with one stroke of the
enter key.  Makes me a bit nervous about the continued availability of my fav
backup utility, which I have now been using for a bit over a decade.  Playing
the canary in the coal mine bit with the snapshots is my way of contributing
back and helping to make a great program even better.

First, let me be perfectly clear on a few factual issues:

** Amanda is open source software, and always will be. **

The nightly snapshots are provided as an aid to great folks like you
who test the bleeding edge for the good of the project. However, the
authoritative copy of the Amanda source is the SourceForge subversion
repository[1], which has seen no slow-down in the commit rate. When
we build Amanda for distribution to our customers, it is built from
the SourceForge repository.

As to the changes on amanda.org: the redesign process is nothing more
than a visual/graphic design change to bring the site up to modern
standards. Little, if any, text on the site will change, and
absolutely no policy change is indicated. The demo was an incomplete
example intended to garner feedback, that's all. It seems that the
incompleteness has caused some confusion, for which I apologize.

Gene, thank you for expressing your concerns. There are certainly
questions that community members can and should ask about Amanda's
development and about the work on amanda.org. I think we (Zmanda)
generally do the right thing, but if anyone disagrees, I hope they
feel welcome to challenge that assertion. Healthy discussions make
healthy communities.

Dustin

[1] http://amanda.svn.sourceforge.net/

--
Open Source Storage Engineer
http://www.zmanda.com

On Saturday 27 February 2010, Dustin J. Mitchell wrote:
On Sat, Feb 27, 2010 at 11:11 AM, Gene Heskett <gene.heskett < at > verizon.net>
wrote:
Well, frankly I just thought the efforts were going into the web pages
and didn't think too much about it till I saw what appears to be a
transition from GPL to a per seat fee schedule taking shape, with the
only link to the snapshots being the old page, which can be killed with
one stroke of the enter key. Makes me a bit nervous about the continued
availability of my fav backup utility, which I have now been using for a
bit over a decade. Playing the canary in the coal mine bit with the
snapshots is my way of contributing back and helping to make a great
program even better.

First, let me be perfectly clear on a few factual issues:

** Amanda is open source software, and always will be. **

The nightly snapshots are provided as an aid to great folks like you
who test the bleeding edge for the good of the project. However, the
authoritative copy of the Amanda source is the SourceForge subversion
repository[1], which has seen no slow-down in the commit rate. When
we build Amanda for distribution to our customers, it is built from
the SourceForge repository.

As to the changes on amanda.org: the redesign process is nothing more
than a visual/graphic design change to bring the site up to modern
standards. Little, if any, text on the site will change, and
absolutely no policy change is indicated. The demo was an incomplete
example intended to garner feedback, that's all. It seems that the
incompleteness has caused some confusion, for which I apologize.

Gene, thank you for expressing your concerns. There are certainly
questions that community members can and should ask about Amanda's
development and about the work on amanda.org. I think we (Zmanda)
generally do the right thing, but if anyone disagrees, I hope they
feel welcome to challenge that assertion. Healthy discussions make
healthy communities.

Dustin

[1] http://amanda.svn.sourceforge.net/

I am sorry Dustin, but the permissions problem alluded to earlier does not
seem to be fixed yet so the old link still shows the 20100131 versions as the
newest, and the 'download tarball' buttons on all the sourceforge pages at
the link above, while bringing up a requester asking what should firefox do
with this file, with the save button already checked, do nothing when
clicking on the ok. No file is downloaded.

Breakage that continues for over 3 weeks now, does lead to questions, and the
replies seem to intend to placate, but have done nothing of substance to
restore our ability to continue our near daily testing of the bleeding edge.
And that of course makes me wonder if I am indeed the only person doing any
test builds and actual use of that test build at all. I certainly hope not.

--
Cheers, Gene
"There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty:
soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order."
-Ed Howdershelt (Author)

"Pull the trigger and you're garbage."
-- Lady Blue

On Sat, Feb 27, 2010 at 7:34 PM, Gene Heskett <gene.heskett < at > verizon.net> wrote:
I am sorry Dustin, but the permissions problem alluded to earlier does not
seem to be fixed yet so the old link still shows the 20100131 versions as the
newest, and the 'download tarball' buttons on all the sourceforge pages at
the link above, while bringing up a requester asking what should firefox do
with this file, with the save button already checked, do nothing when
clicking on the ok.  No file is downloaded.

If I understand, you're talking about the "Download GNU Tarball" link
on the SourceForge ViewVC pages. The link works for me, but even so
it's not a very effective way to download snapshots: the resulting
tarballs will not be the usual "distribution" tarballs, as they have
not had their ./autogen scripts run. If you'd like, I can help you
modify your test scripts to build straight from subversion instead of
from snapshots.

Breakage that continues for over 3 weeks now, does lead to questions, and the
replies seem to intend to placate, but have done nothing of substance to
restore our ability to continue our near daily testing of the bleeding edge.

I don't mean to placate - we screwed up. But to be fair, you only
brought it up at 9pm on a Friday! I'm sure it'll be sorted out soon.

I don't know exactly how Jean-Louis makes the snapshot tarballs, but
I've made a distribution tarball built from the latest subversion,
which should be similar, available here:
http://djmitche.s3.amazonaws.com/amanda-2.6.2alpha.tar.gz
Let me know if you have any trouble making it work.

And that of course makes me wonder if I am indeed the only person doing any
test builds and actual use of that test build at all.  I certainly hope not.

I hope not, too! Certainly the more people who test Amanda, the more
quickly and effectively we will catch and solve bugs. I'm a big
believer in testing, both automated and manual. It *is* disconcerting
that nobody (not even you?) noticed this for, as you say, three weeks.
With luck, this thread will encourage some new folks to begin
regularly testing Amanda, especially the upcoming release.

"Given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow" [1]

Dustin

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linus'_Law

--
Open Source Storage Engineer
http://www.zmanda.com

On Sunday 28 February 2010, Dustin J. Mitchell wrote:
On Sat, Feb 27, 2010 at 7:34 PM, Gene Heskett <gene.heskett < at > verizon.net>
wrote:
I am sorry Dustin, but the permissions problem alluded to earlier does
not seem to be fixed yet so the old link still shows the 20100131
versions as the newest, and the 'download tarball' buttons on all the
sourceforge pages at the link above, while bringing up a requester asking
what should firefox do with this file, with the save button already
checked, do nothing when clicking on the ok. No file is downloaded.

If I understand, you're talking about the "Download GNU Tarball" link
on the SourceForge ViewVC pages. The link works for me, but even so
it's not a very effective way to download snapshots: the resulting
tarballs will not be the usual "distribution" tarballs, as they have
not had their ./autogen scripts run. If you'd like, I can help you
modify your test scripts to build straight from subversion instead of
from snapshots.

Breakage that continues for over 3 weeks now, does lead to questions, and
the replies seem to intend to placate, but have done nothing of substance
to restore our ability to continue our near daily testing of the bleeding
edge.

I don't mean to placate - we screwed up. But to be fair, you only
brought it up at 9pm on a Friday! I'm sure it'll be sorted out soon.

I used to see more updates on the weekends, and figured you both had other,
buys the bread, duties during the week.

I don't know exactly how Jean-Louis makes the snapshot tarballs, but
I've made a distribution tarball built from the latest subversion,
which should be similar, available here:
http://djmitche.s3.amazonaws.com/amanda-2.6.2alpha.tar.gz
Let me know if you have any trouble making it work.

Just one niggle. It was not named internally in the tarball with the
snapshot date. My build & install script depends on that, so now I have a
2.6.2alpha install that when it comes time to do a cleanup of old versions,
something I do about monthly, it will need a careful check of its file dates
else I might remove the wrong library or some such. My script also cleans
out any srcs it finds, and without the snapshot date, doesn't leave an old
version behind so I have a ready made, backup to the previous tree left in
/home/amanda that to recover to it, is a simple cd into the older directory
followed by a make install as root. I tried to rename the tarball but that
resulted in the tar.gz's deletion so I had to go get it 3 times. It did
install, and amcheck ran normally, so we'll see how tonight's run goes.

Needless to say, if I do this again, I'll overwrite this one, which isn't a
'Good Thing(TM)' so I will now rename that tree with today's date to prevent
that.

And that of course makes me wonder if I am indeed the only person doing
any test builds and actual use of that test build at all. I certainly
hope not.

I hope not, too! Certainly the more people who test Amanda, the more
quickly and effectively we will catch and solve bugs. I'm a big
believer in testing, both automated and manual. It *is* disconcerting
that nobody (not even you?) noticed this for, as you say, three weeks.
With luck, this thread will encourage some new folks to begin
regularly testing Amanda, especially the upcoming release.

"Given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow" [1]

Dustin

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linus'_Law

My test scripts are attached. Quite simple. Not even a kilobyte combined.
Syntax is:
./newmanada amandatarball-snapshotdate (without the .tar.gz) (as root)

--
Cheers, Gene
"There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty:
soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order."
-Ed Howdershelt (Author)

<|Rain|> with sane code, maybe I could figure out the renderer
<LordHavoc> rain: I'd probably be the one writing the renderer
<|Rain|> well, er, uh

On Sunday 28 February 2010, Jean-Louis Martineau wrote:
Gene,

Neither Dustin nor me had the privilege to fix the permission issue.
Permission get fixed, I uploaded the latest snapshot.

Jean-Louis

I see. I had thought that Dustin was doing his own hosting.

This one installed ok, but the amcheck got mouthier:

WARNING: shop /home: fallback_splitsize of 10240k < 0.1% of tape size and may
be used for PORT_DUMP; check your configuration

A line for every dle. Is this something I need to address before tonights
real run?

Also, where do I find the definition of a PORT_DUMP? That is a new one to
me.

Thanks.

--
Cheers, Gene
"There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty:
soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order."
-Ed Howdershelt (Author)

Your packets were eaten by the terminator

Gene,

Neither Dustin nor me had the privilege to fix the permission issue.
Permission get fixed, I uploaded the latest snapshot.

Jean-Louis

Gene Heskett wrote:
On Sunday 28 February 2010, Dustin J. Mitchell wrote:

On Sat, Feb 27, 2010 at 7:34 PM, Gene Heskett <gene.heskett < at > verizon.net>

wrote:

I am sorry Dustin, but the permissions problem alluded to earlier does
not seem to be fixed yet so the old link still shows the 20100131
versions as the newest, and the 'download tarball' buttons on all the
sourceforge pages at the link above, while bringing up a requester asking
what should firefox do with this file, with the save button already
checked, do nothing when clicking on the ok. No file is downloaded.

If I understand, you're talking about the "Download GNU Tarball" link
on the SourceForge ViewVC pages. The link works for me, but even so
it's not a very effective way to download snapshots: the resulting
tarballs will not be the usual "distribution" tarballs, as they have
not had their ./autogen scripts run. If you'd like, I can help you
modify your test scripts to build straight from subversion instead of

from snapshots.

Breakage that continues for over 3 weeks now, does lead to questions, and
the replies seem to intend to placate, but have done nothing of substance
to restore our ability to continue our near daily testing of the bleeding
edge.

I don't mean to placate - we screwed up. But to be fair, you only
brought it up at 9pm on a Friday! I'm sure it'll be sorted out soon.


I used to see more updates on the weekends, and figured you both had other,
buys the bread, duties during the week.


I don't know exactly how Jean-Louis makes the snapshot tarballs, but
I've made a distribution tarball built from the latest subversion,
which should be similar, available here:
http://djmitche.s3.amazonaws.com/amanda-2.6.2alpha.tar.gz
Let me know if you have any trouble making it work.


Just one niggle. It was not named internally in the tarball with the
snapshot date. My build & install script depends on that, so now I have a
2.6.2alpha install that when it comes time to do a cleanup of old versions,
something I do about monthly, it will need a careful check of its file dates
else I might remove the wrong library or some such. My script also cleans
out any srcs it finds, and without the snapshot date, doesn't leave an old
version behind so I have a ready made, backup to the previous tree left in
/home/amanda that to recover to it, is a simple cd into the older directory
followed by a make install as root. I tried to rename the tarball but that
resulted in the tar.gz's deletion so I had to go get it 3 times. It did
install, and amcheck ran normally, so we'll see how tonight's run goes.

Needless to say, if I do this again, I'll overwrite this one, which isn't a
'Good Thing(TM)' so I will now rename that tree with today's date to prevent
that.


And that of course makes me wonder if I am indeed the only person doing
any test builds and actual use of that test build at all. I certainly
hope not.

I hope not, too! Certainly the more people who test Amanda, the more
quickly and effectively we will catch and solve bugs. I'm a big
believer in testing, both automated and manual. It *is* disconcerting
that nobody (not even you?) noticed this for, as you say, three weeks.
With luck, this thread will encourage some new folks to begin
regularly testing Amanda, especially the upcoming release.

"Given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow" [1]

Dustin

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linus'_Law


My test scripts are attached. Quite simple. Not even a kilobyte combined.
Syntax is:
./newmanada amandatarball-snapshotdate (without the .tar.gz) (as root)