NOWS SBE 2.5 - Amanda backup - Backing up NSS volumes

  • 7008707
  • 06-Jun-2011
  • 26-Apr-2012

Environment

Novell Open Workgroup Suite Small Business Edition (NOWS SBE) 2.5

Situation

When running Amanda backup on a NOWS SBE 2.5 server with NSS volumes loaded, the amandabackup user does not have rights to back up NSS volumes.

Resolution

To configure Amanda backup to run as root, you need to modify the following files:

/etc/amanda/DailySet1/disklist

<hostname> <path-to-backup> root-tar

For example:
jpetersen-sbe25 /media/nss/VOL1 root-tar

for each path to be backed up.

/etc/amanda/DailySet1/amanda.conf

Change the dumpuser parameter (the 3rd parameter in the file) from "amandabackup" to "root"

/var/lib/amanda/.amandahosts

Modify the information that looks like this by default:

jpetersen-sbe25 amdump amidxtape amandaidx

To something like this:

jpetersen-sbe25 root amdump amidxtape amandaidx

Additional Information

By default, Amanda backup is set up to use the amandabackup user to run backups.  Since root is the one user on a linux system that can directly access the data on an NSS volume mounted on the server, Amanda needs to backup using root.

**It should be noted that Amanda backup is not an sms compliant backup, and that only raw file data will be backed up (not trustees, etc).