Pre-Installation

Pre-Installation Requirements

This page describes the environmental requirements you should verify before running the install program. The Amanda Enterprise components required on each are described in Downloading and Installing Amanda Enterprise Components.

Throughout this document, The Amanda Client refers the system being backed up by the Amanda Enterprise Server,which also called the Amanda Server or backup server.

• Identify the hosts and filesystems to be protected using Amanda software. The list of hosts to be protected are the Amanda backup clients. The Amanda backup clients and the filesystems or directories to be backed up on each client will need to be specified during Amanda configuration.

• Identify the Amanda backup server. The Amanda backup server should have access to the media (tape, disk, changers) where the Amanda client backups will be stored on tapes or the backup process is managed (in case of NDMP). Any Amanda client can also act as an Amanda server, and it is recommended that every Amanda server also be a backup client. In selecting your Amanda backup server machine, keep in mind that the server might use a significant amount of memory during backup runs, and that it must have good network connectivity to all Amanda clients.

Amanda Enterprise Server Requirements

Backup server performs various CPU, Memory, Network, and Disk intensive operations. While hardware requirements will vary based on your backup environment, we recommend a server with at least 4GB of memory and a modern quad-core server-class CPU. The bandwidth of the network link between backup server and your network switch is also very critical. If network bonding is supported by your switch, we recommend providing a bonded connection to the backup server.

• You should have at least 2 GB of disk space on the disk where Amanda Enterprise software is being installed.
• The Amanda server and clients must have the latest service packs or updates to the distribution installed.
• Amanda server and client cannot be installed on an NFS-mounted file systems. For example: You should not install the Amanda Enterprise ZMC (/opt/zmanda/amanda) on an NFS partition.
• The Amanda server must have the locale set to en_* (for example, en_US.UTF-8), C, or POSIX.
• In addition to the space required for the software itself, you should ensure that there is always 10% free space in the Zmanda installation and temporary directories, defined here. If Amanda Enterprise runs out of space on either of these directories while a backup is in progress, the backup will fail with MySQL errors. Also ZMC will print warnings messages when there is insufficient disk space.
• The amandabackup user should have privileges to have crontab entries to perform scheduled backups. In some distributions, the amandabackup user must be added to cron.allow file. This file is usually in /etc or /etc/cron.d directory. 
• The amandabackup user should have permissions to read and write to disk and tape devices (if they are used for backup). The amandabackup user is automatically added to disk user group on Linux systems.  In case of Ubuntu/Debian/RHEL 6/Oracle Enterprise Linux 6 platforms, the amandabackup user must be manually added to tape user group also. It is important to restart ZMC server processes (Run /etc/init.d/zmc_aee restart) after adding amandabackup user to the tape user group.
• If you intend to back up an Oracle server, the amandabackup user must have permission to write to the $ORACLE_HOME directory.
• The amandabackup user should have permission to write to the /tmp directory on the Amanda server.
• If a tape changer is the intended backup media, the backup server also requires both the mt-st and mtxpackage in addition to the platform-specific dependencies listed below.  Please note mt-st package is not required for Suse/SLES distribution. If a tape drive is the intended backup media, mt is required. Without the appropriate packages, ZMC will return an error message when you try to view these devices.
• The directories /etc/amanda and /etc/zmanda must be on the same file system.

• Amanda clients must have open inbound TCP ports 10080 and 10081.
• Internal firewalls and selinux policy must not prevent PHP processes from using HTTP over the loopback address 127.0.0.1

Package Dependencies

The following packages are required on the Amanda backup server and clients:

Linux 

Solaris 10/11 and Open Solaris 

Mac OS X 

Linux

Program Dependencies: The following programs are needed for Linux backup server and client

• GNU tar (version 1.15.1 or greater, except Red Hat/CentOS/Oracle Enterprise Linux, which supports version 1.14 or greater)
• xinetd
• ssh server
• perl version 5.8.8
• Schily tar (star 1.5final) - Required only if file system extended attributes have to be backed up.
• Gnu GPG - if data encryption is being perfomed

These additional programs are required on the Linux backup server

• ssh client
• gnuplot
• gettext
• mailx
• redhat-lsb (for Redhat Enterprise/Cent OS/Oracle Enterprise Linux)
• lsb-release (for Debian/Ubuntu)
• mt-st, mtx and lsscsi commands for tape backups.

Library Dependencies: The server packages are 32bit, so 32bit libraries are required. Native 32bit systems already have the required libraries. 64bit systems require the 32bit compatibility libraries. They are available for RHEL/CentOS/SLES/Oracle Enterprise/Fedora/Open Suse Linux platforms. On Ubuntu/Debian platforms, they may not be available for older platforms.  On Ubuntu/Debian platforms, they may not be available for older platforms. See Linux Debian/Ubuntu for more details.

These packages are installed by default on most Linux distributions. If you need to add them, you can use yum, apt-get, or yast. Packages can be obtained from the distribution media or from a distribution repository (run either as root):

#yum install package_name

or

#apt-get install package_name

or

#yast -i package_name

In the case of yast on SLES, you can also use the YaST Online Update (YOU) to install new package and to keep the SLES distribution updated (which is recommended).

For example:

Amanda server installation on 64bit RHEL 6/CentOS 6/Oracle Enterprise Linux will require the following packages:

# yum install compat-libstdc++-33.i686 curl glib2.i686 glibc.i686 gnupg libcurl.i686 libgcc.i686 libidn.i686 libstdc++.i686 libXp.so.6 mailx ncurses ncurses-libs.i686 readline.i686 tar xinetd zlib.i686 openldap24-libs.i386

Amanda server installation on 64bit Debian 6 will require the following packages:

# apt-get install gettext gnuplot ia32-libs lib32gcc1:i386 libcurl3:i386 libcurl3-gnutls:i386 libglib2.0-0:i386 libidn11:i386 libpcre3:i386 libreadline6:i386 libssh2-1:i386 lsb-release lsscsi mailutils mt-st mtx xinetd

Amanda server installation on 64bit Debian 7 will require the following packages:

# apt-get install lib32stdc++6 bsd-mailx gcc-4.7-base:i386 gettext libc6:i386 libffi5:i386 libgcc1:i386 libglib2.0-0:i386 libncurses5:i386 libpcre3:i386 libreadline5:i386 libselinux1:i386 lsb-release lsscsi mt-st mtx xinetd zlib1g:i386

Amanda server installation on 64bit Debian 8 will require the following packages:

# apt-get install bsd-mailx gcc-4.9-base:i386 gettext libc6:i386 libffi6:i386 libgcc1:i386 libglib2.0-0:i386 libncurses5:i386 libpcre3:i386 libreadline5:i386 libselinux1:i386 lsb-release lsscsi mt-st mtx xinetd zlib1g:i386 libstdc++6:i386

Amanda Enterprise server installation on 64bit Ubuntu 14.04 will require the following packages:

# apt-get install gcc-4.9-base:i386 libc6:i386 libstdc++6:i386 libgcc1:i386 libglib2.0-0:i386 libffi6:i386 libncurses5:i386 libpcre3:i386 libreadline5:i386 libreadline6:i386 libselinux1:i386 zlib1g:i386 lsb-release lsscsi mt-st mtx bsd-mailx mailutils xinetd

Note: To install 32bit packages on 64bit Debian 7 or Debian 8, please run

# dpkg --add-architecture i386

# apt-get update

Package Dependencies

The following packages are required on the Amanda clients:

Linux Debian/Ubuntu

The Amanda backup client requires 32-bit version of following Debian packages;  Amanda 64-bit backup client requires the following 64-bit version Debian packages

• libcurl3-gnutls
• libglib2.0-0
• libpcre3
  
• libidn11
  
• libssh2-1
• libcurl3 or libcurl4 version >=7.13.2
• libreadline5 or libreadline6 (depending on the platform)
• libswitch-perl
• libjson-perl
• libencode-locale-perl

Redhat/CentOS/Oracle Enterprise Linux/SLES/Fedora/OpenSuse

The AE 32bit client requires the following 32-bit packages;  AE 64-bit backup client requires the following 64-bit packages

• curl
• readline
• xinetd

• glib2
• termcap (not required on SLES/OpenSuse and RHEL/CentOS 6)
  
• perl-Switch
• perl-JSON
• perl-Encode-Locale
• perl-Data-Dumper

For RHEL/CentOS 5 and earlier versions and Fedora, please install the following packages:

• glib2.i386 or glib2.i686
  
• curl.i386 or curl.i686
  
• readline.i386 or readline.i686
  
• termcap.noarch 
• libidn.i386 or libidn.i686
  
• openldap24-libs.i386

• ncurses.i686

• libgcc.i686 (for fedora platforms only)

For RHEL/CentOS 6, please install the following packages:

• glib2.i686
• xinetd
• ncurses-libs.i686 
  
• libstdc++.i686
• readline.i686 
• glibc.i686
• zlib.i686
• perl-Switch
• perl-JSON
• perl-Encode-Locale
• perl-Data-Dumper

For example: In case of 64bit RHEL6/CentOS 6/Oracle Enterprise Linux, following yum command line should be used (this list includes direct Amanda Enterprise and indirect dependencies)

# yum install glibc.i686 xinetd nss-softokn-freebl.i686 glib2.i686 libselinux.i686 gamin.i686 readline.i686 ncurses-libs.i686 zlib.i686 libstdc++.i686 libgcc.i686 perl-Switch perl-JSON perl-Encode-Locale perl-Data-Dumper 

On 64bit SLES 11 platforms, these packages are called

• glibc-32bit
• glib2  (includes both 32 a 64-bit libraries)
• libcurl4-32bit
• libreadline5-32bit
• libidn-32bit
• libncurses5-32bit

Solaris 10/11 and OpenSolaris

32-bit packages for dependencies are required for all Amanda Solaris server and clients. 

It is easier to install dependencies by using Solaris pkgutil tool available at the http://www.opencsw.org/get-it/pkgutil/ It automatically get all indirect dependencies. Use the following pkgutil command to install dependencies on Solaris server (you can install gnupg2 instead of gnupg):

pkgutil -i gtar gnupg gawk libgcc_s1 mtx

Use the following pkgutil command to install dependencies on Solaris Client (you can install gnupg2 instead of gnupg):

pkgutil -i perl gtar gnupg libcurl4

Mac OSX (Client only)

Download and install the package dependencies available from the Zmanda Network download page when you select Mac OSX as the client platform.

Windows (2003 Server, XP, and Vista) clients

The amandabackup user must exist, and be added to the Users, Backup Operators, and Administrators groups. Windows clients must open inbound TCP ports 10080 and 10081, and outbound TCP ports 700:800. Windows application backups (licensed as separate agents) require that the Volume Shadow Copy Service be enabled and started. To prevent excessive memory consumption on application backup clients, Zmanda also recommends that you install the following VSS hotfix from Microsoft:

Link to Microsoft Knowledgebase

See the The Zmanda Windows Client User's Manual for further details on Windows client installation.

Post installation changes on Linux/Mac OS X/Solaris Amanda Clients

• This section is not applicable for Windows clients.
• Make sure there is a reverse name lookup record in the DNS for the Amanda server (FQDN if FQDN is used in the Amanda configuration files).
• The .amandahosts file for the amandabackup user (~amandabackup/.amandahosts) on the client must authorize the Amanda server to run a backup.
• The /etc/amanda/amanda-client.conf file must be edited on the client (if the client and server do not reside on the same machine). Specifically, the following entries must be edited:

index_server "localhost"        # your amindexd server
tape_server  "localhost"        # your amidxtaped server

Change "localhost" to match to the hostname of the  Amanda backup server.

• If secure communication is required for restoration, ssh must be used for restoration. ssh is also required when restoring to a a MacOS X/Unix/Linux system that is not running the Zmanda Client software. To force the restore process to use ssh, edit /etc/xinetd.d/zmrecover on Linux systems to include the following line:

disable = yes

On MacOSX systems, run the following command: launchctl unload -w /Library/LaunchDaemons/org.amanda.zmrecover.plist. To re-enable the standard client restore mechanism, enter: launchctl load -w /Library/LaunchDaemons/org.amanda.zmrecover.plist.

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