Backup Central

I'd like to put in an update to this thread, for anyone interested.

The backup server had been running Debian Etch. The version of amanda on
Etch was giving the errors described in this thread.

I upgraded the server to Debian Lenny. The problems still occured with the
version in Lenny.

Then I noticed that the version of amanda in Lenny dates from 2007. It
gives its version as:

1:2.5.2p1-4

When I look at the amanda.org download page and compare version numbers I
see this:

2.5.2p1 June 6 2007


Right, so the LATEST most up-to-date version of Debian uses a 3 year old
version of amanda. Fantastic, thanks Debian for keeping things so 'stable'.

I downloaded the actual latest stable version of amanda (2.6.1p2 from
November 2009), compiled it and tested it.

No bug.

Thanks, Debian package maintainer. Not.

Backup software is mission critical. Failing to track the upstream to this
extent is simply unforgivable. I'm revising my opinion of Debian.




Steve Wray wrote:
Dustin J. Mitchell wrote:
On Thu, Jan 21, 2010 at 5:05 PM, Jean-Louis Martineau
<martineau < at > zmanda.com> wrote:
xinetd is still configured to accept a tcp connection, but amandad
expect a
udp packet, so amandad do nothing and the server fail while waiting
for an
ACK.

Right - it was the failure I expected to see, not Steve's bug.

I'm not able to replicate Steve bug, many fix have been committed since
2.5.0p2.

Good point. By my back-of-the-envelope calculations, we've fixed
something like 500 bugs in the 4 years since 2.5.0 was released. Of
course, we *introduced* some of of those bugs in those 4 years, too

Steve: if you don't see something obvious that I missed in my
replication effort, can you give this a try with a 2.6.1p2 server?

I'm not able to make this test yet, perhaps later in the week.

However, I've discovered that the amcheck problem may not actually
reflect a genuine problem that affects backup.

The other day, the cronjob amcheck reported these errors -- so for one
thing its clearly intermittent.

But the thing is that the backup job that ran that very night completed
with no problems at all.




--
Please remember that an email is just like a postcard; it is not
confidential nor private nor secure and can be read by many other people
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is not realistic. Please hold no higher expectation of email.

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encryption. PGP is Pretty good for this.

On Wed, Mar 3, 2010 at 1:58 PM, Steve Wray <steve.wray < at > cwa.co.nz> wrote:
Right, so the LATEST most up-to-date version of Debian uses a 3 year old
version of amanda. Fantastic, thanks Debian for keeping things so 'stable'.

To be fair, that's exactly the intent, and maintaining a Linux
distribution is *not* easy. All of the binary-only distros are
"behind the times" to varying degrees, although Debian is usually
bringing up the rear of the bunch.

I downloaded the actual latest stable version of amanda (2.6.1p2 from
November 2009), compiled it and tested it.

No bug.

Yay!

Thanks, Debian package maintainer. Not.

Backup software is mission critical. Failing to track the upstream to this
extent is simply unforgivable. I'm revising my opinion of Debian.

I hear from a *lot* of folks on #amanda in exactly the same situation as you.

Please do consider contacting the maintainer, or perhaps other Debian
maintainers that might be able to poke the maintainer more
effectively. I, as an upstream developer, don't have much impact on
distro maintainers - apparently "why don't you ship the latest
release?!" is a common refrain from upstreams. Distros aren't
democracies, but they do listen to their users, and if enough people
are asking "why hasn't Amanda been bumped in 3 years?" then someone
with commit access will step up to take care of it.

If there are Amanda bugs that are holding back a version bump, please
let me know. At the moment, I only see two open bugs, one from 2006
and one from 2008, neither of which is blocking a bump.

http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=500364
http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=370319

Dustin

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

On Tuesday 09 March 2010, Dustin J. Mitchell wrote:
On Wed, Mar 3, 2010 at 1:58 PM, Steve Wray <steve.wray < at > cwa.co.nz> wrote:
Right, so the LATEST most up-to-date version of Debian uses a 3 year old
version of amanda. Fantastic, thanks Debian for keeping things so
'stable'.

To be fair, that's exactly the intent, and maintaining a Linux
distribution is *not* easy. All of the binary-only distros are
"behind the times" to varying degrees, although Debian is usually
bringing up the rear of the bunch.

I downloaded the actual latest stable version of amanda (2.6.1p2 from
November 2009), compiled it and tested it.

No bug.

Yay!

Thanks, Debian package maintainer. Not.

Backup software is mission critical. Failing to track the upstream to
this extent is simply unforgivable. I'm revising my opinion of Debian.

I hear from a *lot* of folks on #amanda in exactly the same situation as
you.

Amanda is not one of the distros favorite applications, having its own
security model that has been at odds with the constraints of the packaging
systems. Rpm in particular broke it regularly, and I long ago gave up helping
the rpm folks who were determined to bend amanda to suit them.

The tarball, OTOH, lends itself to the enterprising bash script writer, who
can then install and test check the latest version of amanda in about 3,
maybe 4 minutes on a fast machine using ccache. In fact I just installed the
20100308 snapshot of amanda-3.2alpha. And I used the same pair of scripts
that has been installing amanda for me since about 2.5.1.

Please do consider contacting the maintainer, or perhaps other Debian
maintainers that might be able to poke the maintainer more
effectively. I, as an upstream developer, don't have much impact on
distro maintainers - apparently "why don't you ship the latest
release?!" is a common refrain from upstreams. Distros aren't
democracies, but they do listen to their users, and if enough people
are asking "why hasn't Amanda been bumped in 3 years?" then someone
with commit access will step up to take care of it.

or you could build the tarball, which very nicely auto-configures amanda to
run optimally on _your_ system. You have to setup a couple of files, maybe
3, and then just let the crontab of the amanda user take over from there. If
configured to send the operator an email, you can 'read all about it' the
next morning with your first cuppa. Whats not to like?

My scripts are available, just ask. They are not 'big' scripts either.

If there are Amanda bugs that are holding back a version bump, please
let me know. At the moment, I only see two open bugs, one from 2006
and one from 2008, neither of which is blocking a bump.

http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=500364
http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=370319

Dustin

I'm on your side here Dustin. The distros, debian in particular need
prodding. What you use for a prod is up to you.

I go back 11+ years with amanda, usually running the bleeding edge as now.
Considering that I build the new snapshot and use it nightly several times a
week, the number of real bugs has been almost vanishingly small even when its
labeled as alpha, not for production use. FWIW, 90% of those were tar's
fault, not amanda's. There are several tar versions about, not all of which
are even compatible with themselves. Amanda is compatible with itself with
one exception, a format change a good 8 or 9 years ago. Folks like Dustin
and Jean-Louis write tight, and correct code. I mentally salute them as I
toss last nights printout on top of the stack (should, heaven forbid, I need
to consult it) every morning.

--
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)

Visits always give pleasure: if not on arrival, then on the departure.
-- Edouard Le Berquier, "Pensees des Autres"

Gene Heskett wrote:
On Tuesday 09 March 2010, Dustin J. Mitchell wrote:
On Wed, Mar 3, 2010 at 1:58 PM, Steve Wray <steve.wray < at > cwa.co.nz> wrote:
Right, so the LATEST most up-to-date version of Debian uses a 3 year old
version of amanda. Fantastic, thanks Debian for keeping things so
'stable'.
To be fair, that's exactly the intent, and maintaining a Linux
distribution is *not* easy. All of the binary-only distros are
"behind the times" to varying degrees, although Debian is usually
bringing up the rear of the bunch.

I downloaded the actual latest stable version of amanda (2.6.1p2 from
November 2009), compiled it and tested it.

No bug.
Yay!

Thanks, Debian package maintainer. Not.
[snip]
If there are Amanda bugs that are holding back a version bump, please
let me know. At the moment, I only see two open bugs, one from 2006
and one from 2008, neither of which is blocking a bump.

http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=500364
http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=370319

Dustin

I'm on your side here Dustin. The distros, debian in particular need
prodding. What you use for a prod is up to you.

The problem I have with submitting bug reports to Debian on this sort of
thing is this:

If the bug is not security related then its extremely unlikely to be fixed
until the NEXT stable release.

In Debian, stability means making sure that non-security bugs are
maintained throughout the lifetime of the release. The bugs are *part* of
the stability. The theory is that people may have implemented workarounds
for these bugs. If you go fixing the bug then you break their workaround.

Since, due to this (and other ongoing concerns with the 'stability'
problems of Debian), I will not be using the next stable release.

So why would I bother to point out to them that, "hey, maybe when you
release the next Debian version you use the current version of Amanda?" if
I am not going to be using that version? This would be purely altruistic...
and if Debian can't figure this out for themselves well... to be frank, I
have no time for that.


I go back 11+ years with amanda, usually running the bleeding edge as now.
Considering that I build the new snapshot and use it nightly several times a
week, the number of real bugs has been almost vanishingly small even when its
labeled as alpha, not for production use. FWIW, 90% of those were tar's
fault, not amanda's. There are several tar versions about, not all of which
are even compatible with themselves. Amanda is compatible with itself with
one exception, a format change a good 8 or 9 years ago. Folks like Dustin
and Jean-Louis write tight, and correct code. I mentally salute them as I
toss last nights printout on top of the stack (should, heaven forbid, I need
to consult it) every morning.

That reminds me; in one release of Debian the version of tar and of amanda
were incompatible! It was the 'tar gives exit status 1 if a file changed
while being read' problem IIRC.

This was NEVER fixed in that 'stable' release. I should have seen the
writing on the wall, really.



--
Please remember that an email is just like a postcard; it is not
confidential nor private nor secure and can be read by many other people
than the intended recipient. A postcard can be read by anyone at the mail
sorting office and expecting what is written on it to be private and secret
is not realistic. Please hold no higher expectation of email.

If you need to send confidential information in an email you need to use
encryption. PGP is Pretty good for this.

On Tuesday 09 March 2010, Steve Wray wrote:
Gene Heskett wrote:
On Tuesday 09 March 2010, Dustin J. Mitchell wrote:
On Wed, Mar 3, 2010 at 1:58 PM, Steve Wray <steve.wray < at > cwa.co.nz> wrote:
Right, so the LATEST most up-to-date version of Debian uses a 3 year
old version of amanda. Fantastic, thanks Debian for keeping things so
'stable'.

To be fair, that's exactly the intent, and maintaining a Linux
distribution is *not* easy. All of the binary-only distros are
"behind the times" to varying degrees, although Debian is usually
bringing up the rear of the bunch.

I downloaded the actual latest stable version of amanda (2.6.1p2 from
November 2009), compiled it and tested it.

No bug.

Yay!

Thanks, Debian package maintainer. Not.

[snip]

If there are Amanda bugs that are holding back a version bump, please
let me know. At the moment, I only see two open bugs, one from 2006
and one from 2008, neither of which is blocking a bump.

http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=500364
http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=370319

Dustin

I'm on your side here Dustin. The distros, debian in particular need
prodding. What you use for a prod is up to you.

The problem I have with submitting bug reports to Debian on this sort of
thing is this:

If the bug is not security related then its extremely unlikely to be fixed
until the NEXT stable release.

In Debian, stability means making sure that non-security bugs are
maintained throughout the lifetime of the release. The bugs are *part* of
the stability.

What? Crazy theory, but probably correct, in the debian camp that is.

The theory is that people may have implemented workarounds
for these bugs. If you go fixing the bug then you break their workaround.

Since, due to this (and other ongoing concerns with the 'stability'
problems of Debian), I will not be using the next stable release.

I probably will. For one thing, the 6.06 release and the accompanying
releases of emc, which run my milling machine, haven't been getting all the
loving that the 8.04 LTS version is getting, and at some point I'll have to
update just so I can use the newer versions of EMC. OTOH, so far it is doing
everything I ask it to do, soo.....

So why would I bother to point out to them that, "hey, maybe when you
release the next Debian version you use the current version of Amanda?" if
I am not going to be using that version? This would be purely altruistic...
and if Debian can't figure this out for themselves well... to be frank, I
have no time for that.

Can't say as I blame you. Stone walls aren't much fun to talk to.

I go back 11+ years with amanda, usually running the bleeding edge as
now. Considering that I build the new snapshot and use it nightly several
times a week, the number of real bugs has been almost vanishingly small
even when its labeled as alpha, not for production use. FWIW, 90% of
those were tar's fault, not amanda's. There are several tar versions
about, not all of which are even compatible with themselves. Amanda is
compatible with itself with one exception, a format change a good 8 or 9
years ago. Folks like Dustin and Jean-Louis write tight, and correct
code. I mentally salute them as I toss last nights printout on top of
the stack (should, heaven forbid, I need to consult it) every morning.

That reminds me; in one release of Debian the version of tar and of amanda
were incompatible! It was the 'tar gives exit status 1 if a file changed
while being read' problem IIRC.

This was NEVER fixed in that 'stable' release. I should have seen the
writing on the wall, really.

Yeah, we had to jump a tar version there, in addition to beating the tar
folks about the brow, which I did at the time. They said they weren't gonna
fix it, but then the crowd roar got to them and they did eventually.

--
Cheers Dustin, 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)

For most men life is a search for the proper manila envelope in which to
get themselves filed.
-- Clifton Fadiman