4. How to test

Don't wait for AMANDA's run each night to test! Just do something like

su amanda cd /dumps/amanda1 /usr/lib/amanda/runtar --create --directory 
/dos/e --listed-incremental /var/lib/amanda/gnutar-lists/midas_dos_e.new 
--incremental --newer-mtime "2000-12-23 2:00:53 GMT" --sparse 
--one-file-system --ignore-failed-read --totals --file /dev/null . 

(don't forget the "." at the end, it's essential!). To test tar itself, do:

/bin/gtar --create --directory /dos/c --incremental --newer-mtime 
"2000-12-24 6:02:05 GMT" --sparse --one-file-system --ignore-failed-read 
--totals --file /dev/null .

and then

tar -tf _dos_f.1.tar

to see the contents of the tar file. This is a nice method to test the effects of --listed-incremental, --newer, --newer-mtime between successive mounts/unmounts of the vfat filesystem (/dos/e in the above example).

Also check the log file /var/lib/amanda/gtar-wrapper.log (the location of the log file is set in the gtar-wrapper script). Here is a part of it - you can see that gtar-wrapper itself is called with all options, but tar is called by gtar-wrapper with the aproppriate set, depending on the filesystem. For /usr/src:

gtar-wrapper: start: Thu Nov 15 14:05:02 CET 2001 
gtar-wrapper: args: --create --directory /usr/src --listed-incremental 
/var/lib/amanda/gnutar-lists/midas_usr_src_0.new --incremental 
--newer-mtime 1970-01-01 0:00:00 GMT --sparse 
--one-file-system --ignore-failed-read --totals --file /dev/null 
--exclude-from=/var/lib/amanda/gnutar-lists/exclude-list-3 . 
... 
gtar-wrapper: running /bin/gtar --create --directory /usr/src --listed-incremental 
/var/lib/amanda/gnutar-lists/midas_usr_src_0.new --sparse --one-file-system 
--ignore-failed-read --totals --file 
/dev/null --exclude-from=/var/lib/amanda/gnutar-lists/exclude-list-3 . 

And for /dos/h:

gtar-wrapper: args: --create --directory /dos/h --listed-incremental 
/var/lib/amanda/gnutar-lists/midas_dos_h_1.new --incremental 
--newer-mtime 2001-11-07 22:22:11 GMT --sparse --one-file-system 
--ignore-failed-read --totals --file - . 
... 
gtar-wrapper: running /bin/gtar --create --directory /dos/h --incremental 
--newer-mtime 2001-11-07 22:22:11 GMT 
--sparse --one-file-system --ignore-failed-read --totals --file - . 

To see the inode numbers do:

ls -lsi /dos/g/original/