http://www.osnews.com/story/12814/Open_Source_Backup_and_Archiving_Project_Amanda_Grows_Up Exploring the Future of Computing en-us Copyright 2001-2009, David Adams adam+nospam@osnews.com Sat, 21 Nov 2009 19:37:38 GMT http://www.osnews.com/images/osnews.gif http://www.osnews.com http://osnews.com/thread?66291 http://osnews.com/thread?66291 I have been using it for three years now. Works like a charm. Tue, 29 Nov 2005 09:18:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?66294 http://osnews.com/thread?66294 Ok, first off, should the title of a section be what's tossed on at the end as addendum?

Second, I don't know if I'd say linux is anti-commercial, but many of the zealots certainly are; goes with the whole open source territory. It may promote innovation, but at the cost of commercialism depending on what you want to do with it.

Third, Sleazy politics in the Commiewealth of Taxachusetts? Say it isn't so... As to the document format, I have to ask: "Does the end user REALLY give a damn?" It's something I see debated online at length that frankly the average person could really give a rats ass about one way or the other.

Finally, am I the only person who thinks "Open Source" and "Grows Up" contradict each-other? Let's be honest, the lions share of open source programmers are either career educators or full time students having their life paid for by mommy and daddy; the only money to be made IN open source is through support, something any 18 year old fresh out of highschool being paid minimum wage can do, having the sleazy business major pocket the real money and laughs his way to the bank while the programmer panhandles on streetcorners. Tue, 29 Nov 2005 09:23:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (deathshadow) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?66301 http://osnews.com/thread?66301 Did you even read the full article?

Anyway, lion share of open source programmers are paid software developers. Tue, 29 Nov 2005 09:44:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (onlinej) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?66308 http://osnews.com/thread?66308 Someone has used Amanda and Bacula and can tell us which is better? I've read about both and Bacula seems more professional, but it's only my feeling. I know Amanda is widely used, but that not means better product. Tue, 29 Nov 2005 09:57:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?66309 http://osnews.com/thread?66309 Yes, it is a energizer bunny. Good to see some new activity in the project. Tue, 29 Nov 2005 09:57:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (jamescgarcia) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?66311 http://osnews.com/thread?66311 One thing about Amanda is that it is rock-solid. Sometimes it has worked for me even in face of hardware errors. It doesn't have a pretty GUI (but I don't use GUI's anyway). I have used Bacula a bit, and didn't see a reason to switch to it. Tue, 29 Nov 2005 10:01:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (jamescgarcia) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?66315 http://osnews.com/thread?66315 "Ok, first off, should the title of a section be what's tossed on at the end as addendum?"

I think you forgot to click on "Read More". Tue, 29 Nov 2005 10:10:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (jamescgarcia) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?66318 http://osnews.com/thread?66318 I must agree with microsoft. Opensource is anti-commercial and make it impossible to make any income on software as a commercial product. Tue, 29 Nov 2005 10:12:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?66335 http://osnews.com/thread?66335 One big advantage that Amanda has over Bacula is that it uses unix native utilities for storage of data (tar and dump). So, even if Amanda engine is not working you can use your age old tools to recover. Bacula uses its own (somewhat strange) format.

This is considered a big enough advantage at our site. Tue, 29 Nov 2005 11:04:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (linuxchix2) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?66398 http://osnews.com/thread?66398 Amanda is okay for what it does. But are there any F/OSS that compare with a full-featured backup app like Veritas? Tue, 29 Nov 2005 13:31:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?66410 http://osnews.com/thread?66410 I don't know anything that compares with Veritas except TSM, that even surpases it IMHO. But both are comercial products. Tue, 29 Nov 2005 13:55:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?66417 http://osnews.com/thread?66417 Finally, am I the only person who thinks "Open Source" and "Grows Up" contradict each-other?

No. Just look at the IQ drain around here when the open source brigade and script kiddies turned up. I've seen more sensible and productive warez discussion boards than this place.

Open source versus closed source, or GPL versus proprietory, is no more than one power grab versus another. The real issues have been lost in the noise created by zealots, and is making Microsoft's position look more reasonable as time goes by. Personally, I think the issues are important and worth discussing so we can advance as a society, and the faux ethithical position of GPL advocates runs counter that as surely as any other sharp business practice. Tue, 29 Nov 2005 14:07:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?66455 http://osnews.com/thread?66455 Veritas has gone downhill while Amanda is going up. Tue, 29 Nov 2005 14:59:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Sphinx) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?66480 http://osnews.com/thread?66480 You can make money on:
1) Selling support services/contracts
2) Selling custimizations to the software
3) Selling traning class'
4) Selling books

These are just a few off the top of my head. FOSS, has a different revenue model. Its based on selling support; rather than shrink wrapped goods.

Some examples would be:
1) Snort
2) Sugar CRM
3) Red Hat

Any ways, just my .02 cents worth. Tue, 29 Nov 2005 15:38:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?66493 http://osnews.com/thread?66493 Most Veritas customers use just basic functionality but pay ridiculous money for licensing and support. Amanda is already rock solid and good enough from functionality perspective. With commercial support for Amanda there will be no need to buy IBM or Veritas backup. Tue, 29 Nov 2005 15:52:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?66495 http://osnews.com/thread?66495 I find it very interesting how another of these FREE (as in BSD) softwares get credit as the king on the market.

What is it that makes so few BSDsoftwares, in comparison to plenty of GPLsoftwares, so incredibly popular? This time it's Amanda... congrats..

Hope we'll see you on Windows soon... Tue, 29 Nov 2005 16:00:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Haicube) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?66509 http://osnews.com/thread?66509 Can Amanda backups Windows volume? It seems critical on my site. Tue, 29 Nov 2005 16:16:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?66524 http://osnews.com/thread?66524 Obviously you have no experience with enterprise class backup systems. There is no comparing Amanda to TSM or Veritas Netbackup period. Tue, 29 Nov 2005 16:29:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Smartpatrol) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?66529 http://osnews.com/thread?66529 1, 3 and 4 are all predicated on the assumption that your software is difficult to use, which is hardly a big attraction for people when there are easy-to-use commerical alternatives with just a once-off payment.

2 is also difficult, as a customisation could be considered a derivation of your product, which would put you in trouble if you used the GPL.

You could choose not to use the GPL, but then someone else could take your product, make it easier to use, and sell it one themselves under a proprietary license, essentially destroying your market.

I think open-source is great, I think being able to create dervied works is great, but I think free-of-charge distribution makes it very hard for small programming houses to make money. My ideal license would be open-source, prevent source-distribution, but still allow the distribution of patches and add-ons. That way the original author would be paid by every new user, enabling them to continue working, while a cottage industry could grow up around the product selling add-ons.

The difficulty is legally distinguishing between an add-on and an entirely new product, especially if it becomes possible to re-create the product's entire source solely from the patches/add-ons.

Open-source is good for infrastructure, indeed it's preferable. But as for end-user products I'm not convinced. The Nessus story is pretty interesting in this regard: http://it.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/11/26/1629237&tid=172&... Tue, 29 Nov 2005 16:40:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (BryanFeeney) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?66537 http://osnews.com/thread?66537 Yes Amanda can backup Windows. It uses samba to access the windows volumes to be backed up. Tue, 29 Nov 2005 16:53:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (linuxchix2) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?66549 http://osnews.com/thread?66549 That's what Sun was saying about Linux just a few years back. Today even Sun admits that 90% of their own x64 servers are running Linux and not Solaris. Tue, 29 Nov 2005 17:10:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?66562 http://osnews.com/thread?66562 I recently evaluated a bunch of different backup systems.

For enterprises, Bacula appears to be the one to beat.

For backups saved to hd, rsnapshot and rdiff-backup come out on top. Both are based on rsync, use hardlinks, and are easy to use for remote backups.

I ended up choosing rsnapshot because it is easy for scheduled backups and have been using it for about a month without any problems on Debian 3.1.

Also, NEVER trust a backup system without doing your own backup/restore testing. You'd be surprised at the number of backup systems out there that don't work produce the results you'd expect.

Speaking of which...beware of using the backup system named hdup2, it doesn't save/restore directory attributes unless you used a patched version of gnu tar (do you really want to patch tar and compile it just for this?). Tue, 29 Nov 2005 17:36:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?66580 http://osnews.com/thread?66580 Thanks. I was just reading these comments in hope of good information. I will give rsnapshot a try because I really need a backup system now that my workspace is 600 MBs, without considering other uses which could make it handle a bigger 3 GBs files or more.

I really like Rsync and rsnapshot should be good.

Now, on the "I use Windows and I love it you open source zealots". Well, we don't really have a problem with you preferring Windows. But you have a problem with we developing Open Source tools or using them. So the problem lied in you and still lies in you. You behave as your worst nightmare users for us. You know, those users that sometimes the developers like to complain about.

Few developers bite the bullet and open their firms. So it's bogus to pretend that you rule your proprietary world. Tue, 29 Nov 2005 17:50:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?66612 http://osnews.com/thread?66612 I just checked the size of my home directory:
- 48 GBs.
Damn.

I really need to think what and how about the backup. Tue, 29 Nov 2005 19:01:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?66616 http://osnews.com/thread?66616 Is anyone else having an annoying problem where save dialogs hang for a few seconds to for ever? I'm using Fedora with gnome. I have this problem on two different boxes so I'm amazed they are talking about a release since this is a pretty major usability bug. Tue, 29 Nov 2005 19:11:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (fooo) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?66843 http://osnews.com/thread?66843 Bacula has native agents for Windows
Bacula stores the catalog in a database (MySQL,PostgreSQL)
Bacula has a MUCH better architecture
Bacula is more scaleable
Restores are easy, both to latest state, and point in time.
Bacula has a very helpful mailing list and community
Bacula can span backups across multiple tapes
Bacula works with tape libraries
Bacula is in active development
Bacula is VERY configurable, but easy to set up in a small environment.
A lot of new features are being developed, like migrating data from disk-based backup to tape, synthetic full backups, and possibly "base level" backups.

Amanda has had a long run, but it's time to move forward. Bacula is it. Tue, 29 Nov 2005 23:26:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?66861 http://osnews.com/thread?66861 I think you are ignoring that robustness is the most important thing to consider while picking a backup software. This is where Amanda excels. BTW, I find Amanda community to be very helpful as well. Tue, 29 Nov 2005 23:54:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?66888 http://osnews.com/thread?66888 I agree with you 100%. Amanda is definitely the way to go. I also second the comment from another user about people paying too much money to Veritas for limited functionality needs. Wed, 30 Nov 2005 00:41:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (tomqsmith) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?67008 http://osnews.com/thread?67008 But Bacula's founder, Kern Sibbald, is committed to format stability. The format is documented and therefore I think you can read your old taped even in 10,20 years (if your hardware is in place, that is).

There are statically linked restore tools and even a rescue disk so you can do a bare-metal restore.

fs Wed, 30 Nov 2005 07:37:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?67010 http://osnews.com/thread?67010 Using Samba for Windows is not what I would consider a "Windows backup". What about sparse files? Backing up windows databases with native tools (Exchange for example)?

fs Wed, 30 Nov 2005 07:39:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?67012 http://osnews.com/thread?67012 I don't know if this is still the case but in the past Amanda was not able to perform a backup if the data doesn't fit on one tape. Bacula will handle this case and requests more tapes (or uses your autochanger to change the tape).

fs Wed, 30 Nov 2005 07:41:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?67047 http://osnews.com/thread?67047 Amanda 2.5 has tape spanning feature to go beyond one tape. Wed, 30 Nov 2005 09:36:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?67048 http://osnews.com/thread?67048 I was doing lots of things on my machine, like:
- downloading a Linux ISO;
- compiling and installing lots of programs with a custom script;
- running rsnapshot with cron;
- had just turned on Samba;

Anyway, something weird happened and my ethernet card is not being detected and I can't login normally, I had to enter in single user mode (recover mode).

After I reinstall my system (I'm just doing a last backup before doing that), I'm testing Amanda. :-) Wed, 30 Nov 2005 09:44:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?67050 http://osnews.com/thread?67050 Not to forget the transport encryption feature: All traffic between all Bacula daemons can be encrypted with TLS. Data encryption is being worked on.

fs Wed, 30 Nov 2005 09:57:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Felix Schwarz) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?67197 http://osnews.com/thread?67197 Amanda 2.5 has encryption as well... Wed, 30 Nov 2005 17:24:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?67517 http://osnews.com/thread?67517 It's great that Amanda is finally getting the support and momentum it needs! Thu, 01 Dec 2005 09:09:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (VineetBuch) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?68008 http://osnews.com/thread?68008 In my expirience, Bacula is far more mature project. I spent whole month making Amanda work something, untill one guy suggested to try Bacula.

Amanda is ok for simple backups (when I say simple I don't mean backup your home dir), but when you need full hard time working backup (couple of sets of tapes, prexec & postexec scripts, different conditional backups, etc...) it's Bacula. Bacula is even better then some fancy solutions that cost a lot of $$. Fri, 02 Dec 2005 16:16:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments