Appendix A: Backing Up and Restoring Solaris ZFS

When Solaris is the file system type selected  in the Backup What page, the Advanced Options displayed after clicking the link include an Extended Attributes checkbox, which selects the archive program used for backing up the ZFS file system.

When the option is disabled (the default), Amanda Enterprise uses (and requires) amgtar as the archive program.

When the option is enabled amsuntar(8) is used for backup. The amandabackup user should be set with the Media backup profile. The profile is set correctly if the amandabackup user is created by the installation program; if the user exists prior to installation its profile should be manually set with the following command:

usermod -P "Media Backup" amandabackup

amsuntar supports only level 0 (in other words, full) backups, as there is no support for incrementals in the native archive tool. Also the native tools only restore in raw mode. The result after restoring through the ZMC is a compressed raw tar ball in the specified destination location. To complete the restore, you must manually run the Solaris tar utility to retrieve the desired files and directories.  For example:

tar xvf RestoredRawTarBallName

If ZFS ACLs are part of the tarball, Solaris tar will restore them by default.

Important Note: Special files such as device files, named pipes, sockets, etc. can cause errors from the native backup and restore tools. They should be excluded from the backup using Exclude specifications.