AMBSDTAR(8)

📦
version 3.5.4 · 8 versions
, in fedora 43

🎀 AMBSDTAR, SECTION 8 🎀

okay so bestie, welcome to ambsdtar — that's AMBSDTAR(8), straight out of System Administration Commands, and yes we are absolutely getting into it 💅

✨ NAME ✨

ambsdtar — an Amanda Application that interfaces with BSD Tar, no cap 🦋

💖 DESCRIPTION 💖

okay so real talk: ambsdtar is an Amanda Application API script. It is not for running yourself directly, bestie — like, do not. It uses BSD Tar to back up and restore data, and it does it fabulously ✨

The diskdevice in the disklist (DLE) must be the directory to back up. That's the vibe.

And here's a thing that lowkey surprises everyone: extracting a backup never removes files. Like, picture it — a file was present in the level 0 backup, you deleted it, you made a level 1 backup, then you extract both levels… and the file is present. Yeah. It's giving "resurrection" 😭 That's just how it works, so know that going in.

🌸 PROPERTIES 🌸

This section lists all the properties that control ambsdtar's functionality, bestie. If you wanna know how application properties work and how to configure them in general, go see amanda-applications(7) — it's all there 🫶

⭐ COMMAND-OPTIONS

If set, these options get passed asis to gtar. Each option has to be a different value of the property, okay? And heads up: some options can genuinely break how Amanda does backups, so use it with care 🙈

Use:

property "COMMAND-OPTIONS" "--foo" "bar"

Do not use:

property "COMMAND-OPTIONS" "--foo bar"

⭐ DIRECTORY

If set, bsdtar will back up from that directory instead of the diskdevice set by the DLE. And on restore, the data gets restored into that directory instead of the current working directory. Cute, right? 🎀

⭐ SPARSE

If "YES" — which is the default, slay — it uses the -S option of bsdtar when restoring, to create sparse files 🦋

⭐ STATE-DIR

The directory where ambsdtar stores the database it uses to generate incremental dumps. The default is set when Amanda is built, so it's already handled for you 💜

⭐ BSDTAR-PATH

The path to the bsdtar binary. The default is set when Amanda is built ✨

⭐ ONE-FILE-SYSTEM

If "YES" (the default), don't let bsdtar cross filesystem boundaries, periodt. If "NO", bsdtar will cross filesystem boundaries. This one corresponds to the --one-filesystem option of bsdtar 🧚

⭐ TAR-BLOCKSIZE

Block size of Nx512 bytes (default N=20). This corresponds to the --blocking-factor option of bsdtar 👑

⭐ EXIT-HANDLING

Lists which exit statuses of gtar are good or bad. Like, eg. "1=GOOD 2=BAD" — exit status of 1 will produce a good backup, exit status of 2 will give an error. Simple as that 💫

⭐ NORMAL

Lists all regex (POSIX Extended Regular Expression syntax) that are normal output from gtar. These outputs land in the "FAILED DUMP DETAILS" section of the email report if the dump result is STRANGE or FAILED. Default values:

"^could not open conf file"
"^Elapsed time:"
"^Throughput"
": socket ignored$"
": File .* shrunk by [0-9][0-9]* bytes, padding with zeros"
": Cannot add file .*: No such file or directory$"
": Error exit delayed from previous errors"

To treat one of these default patterns differently, specify it explicitly in a different property 🫶

⭐ IGNORE

Lists all regex (POSIX Extended Regular Expression syntax) that Amanda ignores. These outputs are never in the email report, like, ever. Default values:

": Directory is new$"
": Directory has been renamed"

To treat one of these default patterns differently, specify it explicitly in a different property 🌸

⭐ STRANGE

Lists all regex (POSIX Extended Regular Expression syntax) that count as strange output from gtar. Ngl, all gtar output that doesn't match a normal or ignore regex is strange by default. The result of the dump is STRANGE if gtar produces a strange output. These outputs go in the "FAILED DUMP DETAILS" section of the email report 💀

⭐ VERBOSE

Default: "NO". If "YES", ambsdtar prints more verbose debugging messages and can leave temporary files in AMANDA_TMPDIR — just so you know 🙈

🌈 INCLUDE AND EXCLUDE LISTS 🌈

This application supplies exclude lists via the GNU-tar --exclude-from option. That option accepts normal shell-style wildcard expressions, using * to match any number of characters and ? to match a single character. Character classes are represented with [..], which matches any of the characters in the brackets ⭐

Expressions can be "anchored" to the base directory of the DLE by prefixing them with ./. Without that prefix, they'll match at any directory level. And expressions that begin or end with a / will not match anything — so to completely exclude a directory, do not include the trailing slash, mmkay? Example expressions:

./temp-files           # exclude top-level directory entirely
./temp-files/          # BAD: does nothing
/temp-files            # BAD: does nothing
./temp-files/*         # exclude directory contents; include directory
temp-files             # exclude anything named "temp-files"
generated-*            # exclude anything beginning with "generated-"
*.iso                  # exclude ISO files
proxy/local/cache      # exclude "cache" in dir "local" in "proxy"

Similarly, include expressions get supplied to GNU-tar's --files-from option. That option ordinarily doesn't accept any sort of wildcards, but ambsdtar "manually" applies glob pattern matching to include expressions with only one slash. The expressions still gotta begin with ./, so this effectively only allows expressions like ./[abc]* or ./*.txt — iykyk 🦋

👑 EXAMPLE 👑

okay so here's what it looks like in the wild:

define application-tool app_ambsdtar {
  plugin "ambsdtar"

  property "BSDTAR-PATH" "/bin/bsdtar"
  property "STATE-DIR" "/xxx/yyy"
  property "ONE-FILE-SYSTEM" "YES"
  property "TAR-BLOCKSIZE" "20"
  property "EXIT-HANDLING" "1=GOOD 2=BAD"
  # change a default NORMAL regex to a STRANGE regex.
  property "STRANGE" ": socket ignored$"
  # add three new IGNORE regex
  property "IGNORE" ": Directory is new$"
  property append "IGNORE" ": Directory has been renamed"
  property append "IGNORE" "file changed as we read it$"
}

A dumptype using this application might look like:

define dumptype ambsdtar_app_dtyp {
  global
  program "APPLICATION"
  application "app_ambsdtar"
}

Note that the program parameter must be set to "APPLICATION" to use the application parameter — like, that's the whole trick 🔥

🦋 SEE ALSO 🦋

The Amanda Wiki: : http://wiki.zmanda.com/ ✨

💜 AUTHORS 💜

and that's the whole page, bestie 🫶 this was Amanda 3.5.4, dated 07/23/2025, and it's still AMBSDTAR(8) — mwah, go back up your stuff 💅💖

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