AMSTAR(8)

📦
version 3.5.4 · 8 versions
, in fedora 43

💅 AMSTAR(8) — Amanda star era ✨

okay so real talk, this one lives in System Administration Commands (section 8 of the manual, iykyk), and it's called amstar 💖

🎀 NAME 🎀

amstar — the Amanda Application that interfaces with star. yeah. that's the whole vibe. 🦋

✨ DESCRIPTION ✨

Bestie, listen. amstar is an Amanda Application API script. It is not for you to run directly — like, do not just type it into a shell, okay? 🙈 It uses star to back up and restore data.

The diskdevice in the disklist (DLE) must be the directory to back up. that's the rule, no exceptions. 💅

🌸 INCLUDE - EXCLUDE 🌸

amstar does not support include. nope. not a thing. 🚫

Both exclude list and exclude file are supported tho 🫶

There's a max of 100 patterns — that's a limit of star, not us. blame star. 💀

⚠️ ok this part matters: if you move directories into or out of directories that are on the exclude list, your incremental backups will not contain the files in the moved directories until the next full backup — unless the moved files get modified after the move. so like. heads up. 😭

👑 PROPERTIES 👑

This section lists the properties that control amstar's functionality. For the tea on application properties and how they're configured, see amanda-applications(7). 🧚

🔥 ACL

If "YES" (the default), amstar will store files acl by passing the -acl argument to star. If "NO", then the -acl option is not given to star, and it will not try to back up the acl. slay either way 💖

💀 COMMAND-OPTIONS

If set, these options are passed asis to star. Each option must be a different value of the property. Some option can break how amanda do backup, so use it with care, fr fr. ⚠️

Use:

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

Do not use:

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

like. do not do the second one. 🙅‍♀️

🦋 DIRECTORY

If set, gnutar will back up from that directory instead of the diskdevice set by the DLE. On restore, the data is restored in that directory instead of the current working directory. 🎀

⭐ ONE-FILE-SYSTEM

The default is "YES". This property is deprecated and the default value can't be changed. star requires it when it works in dump mode. This corresponds to the -xdev option of star. periodt. 💅

🌈 SPARSE

If "YES" (the default), star will store sparse files efficiently. If "NO", then the -sparse option is not given to star, and it will not try to detect sparse files. 🍓

💜 STAR-DLE-TARDUMP

If "YES", amstar will use a different tardump file for each DLE. The default is "NO". This property is needed with older versions of star doing many dumps in parallel, because of a race condition in updating the tardump file. iconic but chaotic 🌀

🌸 STAR-PATH

The path to the star binary. The default is set when Amanda is built by the --with-star configure option. 🛠️

🎀 STAR-TARDUMP

The directory where star stores the database it uses to generate incremental dumps. The default is /etc/tardumps. 📁

✨ NORMAL

List all regex (POSIX Extended Regular Expression syntax) that are normal output from star. These output are 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"
"^Type of this level "
"^Date of this level "
"^Date of last level "
"^Dump record  level "
"^Throughput"
"^.*is sparse$"
"^star: dumped [0-9][0-9]* (tar )?files"
"^.*The following problems occurred during .* processing.*$"
"^.*Processed all possible files, despite earlier errors.*$"
"^.*not written due to problems during backup.*$"

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

🙈 IGNORE

List all regex (POSIX Extended Regular Expression syntax) that amanda ignore. These output are never in the email report. not even once. 💀

💖 STRANGE

List all regex (POSIX Extended Regular Expression syntax) that are strange output from star. All star output that doesn't match a normal or ignore regex are strange by default. The result of the dump is STRANGE if star produces a strange output. These output are in the "FAILED DUMP DETAILS" section of the email report.

"^Perform a level 0 dump first.*$"

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

🦋 SEE ALSO 🦋

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

👑 AUTHORS 👑

k that's the whole page bestie, go forth and back up responsibly 💅✨ this was Amanda 3.5.4, dated 07/23/2025, and it's the AMSTAR(8) manual — mwah, ily, see u in the group chat 🫶🎀

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