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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. 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 Requirements

  • 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.
  • The Amanda server must have the locale set to en_* (for example, en_US.UTF-8), C, or POSIX.
  • The amandabackup user must be added to cron.allow file. This file is usually in /etc or /etc/cron.d directory. 
  • The amandabackup user belongs to disk group on Solaris/Linux systems. Usually users belonging to disk group have read/write access to disk/tape/tape changer backup devices.  If the backup device provides read and write access only to some other user group (such as tape in Ubuntu systems), amandabackup user must be added to that group. For amandabackup user requirements for Windows and Solaris platform, see Windows section below.
  • 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 and mtx package in addition to the platform-specific dependencies listed below. 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.
  • To run the Rapid Installer, the Amanda Server requires 256MB of free memory. You should have at least 500MB of disk space, and you should not install the ZMC itself (/opt/zmanda/amanda) on an NFS partition.
  • In addition to the space required for the software itself, you should ensure that there is always 10% free 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 similar to the following:
System Error
DBD::mysql::db do failed: Incorrect key file for table
'/var/tmp/#sql_24b8_0.MYI'; try to repair it at
/opt/zmanda/zmc/bin/amreport_wrapper line 105.
    8:51:26, Mon Mar 17, 2008:ZMC Database Query failed: mysql query
failed:Incorrect key file for table '/var/tmp/#sql_24b8_0.MYI'; try to repair it
If you encounter messages like this, try increasing the amount of available disk space in the relevant directories.
  • The following TCP ports must be open:
    • Amanda server: must open inbound TCP ports 11000:11040.
    • Non-Windows Amanda clients must open inbound TCP port 10080 and outbound TCP ports 11000:11040.
    • Windows clients must open inbound TCP ports 10080 and 10081, and outbound TCP ports 700:800.
  • Internal firewalls and selinux policy must not prevent PHP processes from using HTTP over the loopback address 127.0.0.1
  • Solaris with unpatched systems may experience Apache problems, which are described (along with workaround) in this Zmanda Knowledgebase article.

Package Dependencies

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

Linux

Solaris 10

Solaris 8 and 9 

Mac OSX 

Linux

The following programs are needed for Linux backup client

  • GNU tar (version 1.15.1 or greater, except Redhat/CentOS, which supports verson 1.14 or greater)
  • xinetd
  • ssh server
  • perl (version 5.6.0 or greater)

These additional programs are required on the Linux backup server

  • ssh client
  • gnuplot
  • mailx

 

In addition to these packages, some additional libraries are required (see below).

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).

Linux Debian/Ubuntu

AEE backup server (32bit) and 32-bit backup client requires 32-bit version of following Debian package;  AEE 64-bit backup client requires the following 64-bit version Debian package

  • libcurl3-gnutls

AEE backup server requires these additional 32-bit version Debian packages:

  • ia32-libs (only needed by 64-bit Debian/Ubuntu platforms)
  • libcurl3 or libcurl4 version >=7.13.2
  • libreadline5
  • libglib2.0-0

Note for 64bit Debian/Ubuntu Amanda servers: The best way to install 32-bit version library packages on 64bit Debian/Ubuntu platforms is with getlibs, which is described in more detail in this Zmanda Knowledgebase article. Alternatively, libreadline5 32bit version can be obtained by installing lib32readline5 package.

Redhat/CentOS/SLES/OpenSuse

AEE backup server and 32-bit backup client requires the following 32-bit version package;  AEE 64-bit backup client requires the following 64-bit version package

  • curl
  • readline
  • glib2
  • termcap (not required on SLES/OpenSuse)

To run the Amanda Enterprise Backup Server (or a 32-bit Amanda client) on 64-bit RedHat/CentOS requires these same packages in 32-bit versions, ie.

  • glib2.i386
  • curl.i386
  • readline.i386
  • termcap.i386
  • libidn.i386

Solaris 10 (Both Sparc and Intel Architectures)

64-bit packages are required for Amanda Servers running Solaris10/Sparc; 32-bit packages are required for all Amanda clients, and servers running on Solaris/Intel. To account for inter-package dependencies, they should be installed in the order as listed. The following dependencies required on both client and server. The package names (i.e., what you specify when installing) are in boldface type.  This dependency list is an attempt to document all direct Amanda dependencies and indirect dependencies (Amanda depends on a package that in turn depends on other packages).

SUNW packages can be found as part of Solaris distribution. Zmanda recommends that you install the CSW packages from Blastwave (http://www.blastwave.org/; detailed instructions are in the next section). Some package dependencies are pre-bundled for your convenience  and are available at Zmanda network downloads page.  Click Select your version->Select your OS, and then download the dependencies tar ball file.

These dependencies are required on both server and client:

  1. SUNWflexruntime flexruntime - The Flex Lexer
  2. SUNWgnome-base-libs - Gnome libraries
  3. CSWgtar gtar - GNU tape archiver
  4. CSWossl openssl - Openssl meta package
  5. CSWosslrt openssl_rt - Openssl runtime libraries
  6. CSWosslutils openssl_utils - Openssl binaries and related tools
  7. CSWcurl curl - Library and tool for common Internet protocols
  8. CSWcurlrt curlrt - Library for common Internet protocols Runtime
  9. CSWggettext ggettext - GNU gettext
  10. CSWoldaprt openldap_rt - OpenLDAP runtime libraries (oldaprt)
  11. CSWreadline readline - library to enable interactive line editing
  12. CSWbdb4 berkeleydb4 - Embedded database libraries and utilities.
  13. CSWcommon common - Installs some useful standard CSW filesystem symlinks and files
  14. CSWexpat expat - XML parser toolkit
  15. CSWlibiconv libiconv - Unicode support library
  16. CSWlibidn libidn  - Implementation of the Stringprep, Punycode and IDNA
  17. CSWlibnet libnet - Packet construction library
  18. CSWlibsunmath libsunmath - Sun maths library
  19. CSWopenssl_devel openssl_devel - Open SSL developer support
  20. CSWsasl sasl - Simple Authentication and Security Layer
  21. CSWzlib zlib - Data compression library
  22. CSWlibssh2 libssh2 - A library implementing the SSH2 protocol (for sparc platform only)

The following dependencies required only on the server:

  1. CSWfindutils findutils - A set of utilities for searching a filesystem
  2. CSWgfile fileutils - GNU file utilities
  3. CSWmtx mtx - SCSI Media Changer and Backup Device Control
  4. SUNWscpu core utilities - Source Compatibility 
  5. SUNWgccruntime GCC libraries - GCC Runtime libraries 

Solaris 8 and 9 (Sparc Architecture)

The dependencies are the same as listed above for Solaris 10, with the following addition:

  • CSWperl (the default version of Perl shipped with Solaris 8 will not work with Amanda Enterprise 3.0).

Instructions for using pkgutil on Solaris 8 and 9 is different. Please see blastwave site for instructions.

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.

Libraries installed in non-standard locations

Some of the dependency packages listed above may change the location of runtime libraries when installed or updated. If this happens, backups may fail with a message indicating that a required library or file could not be found. If this happens, you must update the system search path so that Amanda Enterprise can find the file(s). The Solaris crle (Configure Runtime Linking Environment) provides a simple way to do this:

1. Run crle without any parameters and pipe the output to a file to save the original configuration:

crle > ld.config.old

2. Run crle with the -c and -l options to update the path. For example:

crle -c /var/ld/ld.config -l /lib:/usr/lib:/lib/secure:/usr/lib/secure:/usr/local/lib

Will update the /var/ld/ld.config to use /lib:/usr/lib:/lib/secure:/usr/lib/secure:/usr/local/lib as the search path. Running crle without parameters will display the current search paths in effect. Refer to the Solaris documentation for further details on crle.

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 hotfix from Microsoft:

Link to Microsoft Knowledgebase

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

Requirements for the amandabackup User on Solaris

If installing on system that doesn't have an amandabackup user, the installation will set up that user with the correct rights (roles).  If the user already exists, you may have to make these changes manually. Log in to the system as root, and type the following commands:

${BASEDIR}/usr/sbin/usermod -P "Media Backup,ZFS File System Management,ZFS Storage Management" ${amandabackup} >>${TMPFILE} 2>&1
           zfs allow -ldu amandabackup mount,create,rename,snapshot,destroy,send,receive FILESYSTEM

On systems that do not support zfs allow, you can give the amandabackup user permission to manipulate ZFS filesystems by using the following command:

usermod -P "ZFS File System Management,ZFS Storage Management" amandabackup

 

Post installation changes on Amanda Clients

  • This section is not applicable for Windows clients.
  • 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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