gaphical frontend (GUI) for amanda?

[Lorenzo Canovi]

Hi there.

Anyone is working on this topic?

I know that we are all "command-line" oriented, here :-) but when I try to
propose amanda to my customers this is the main question (not "reiable?" or
"scalable?" ... strange people) ...

[Jon LaBadie]

Post by Lorenzo Canovi
Hi there.
Anyone is working on this topic?
I know that we are all "command-line" oriented, here :-) but when I try to
propose amanda to my customers this is the main question (not "reiable?" or
"scalable?" ... strange people) ...

Not that I know of, but I'd be glad to have you contribute one.

[Christophe Kalt]

On Jul 09, Lorenzo Canovi wrote:
| Anyone is working on this topic?

http://sourceforge.net/projects/amanda-gui/

(don't get your hopes too high;)

| I know that we are all "command-line" oriented, here :-) but when I try to
| propose amanda to my customers this is the main question (not "reiable?" or
| "scalable?" ... strange people) ...

most ppl (including vendors) don't understand that what is
important about backups aren't backups, so i can't say i'm
surprised to hear about them asking for a GUI.. ;)

what would be interesting to know is why they ask for a GUI.
People who don't know/understand amanda think that things like
defining backup schedules (as in level 0s on this day, 1 on
that day, ..) is critical, and for that you may want a GUI.
(Note the may, i remember spending hours defining backup
schedules with a really really stupid GUI of a now defunct
product.) With amanda, the administration part of backups is
rather limited, so may be if you make your customers understand
that they won't care so much anymore.

[Gene Heskett]

Post by Lorenzo Canovi
Hi there.
Anyone is working on this topic?
I know that we are all "command-line" oriented, here :-) but when
I try to propose amanda to my customers this is the main question
(not "reiable?" or "scalable?" ... strange people) ...

While I can see a use for a "gui" for amanda, if I were writing it
(which I can't just yet) I would have it do the disklist,
amanda.conf, .amandahosts and the appropriate crontab entries plus
any kerberos related setups for the networking aspect of it. In
other words, a one-time setup, or modify setup utility.

Would I try to make it a one-time cli generator so folks could do a
backup anytime they felt like it? No way hosea. Amanda isn't
really designed to be run "interactively" , she wants a fixed,
reasonably consistent set of rules to go by so she knows what she
did last night, and can adjust what she does tonight accordingly.

Reliable?

I've now used amanda for 3 recoveries, each of which went exactly
as the man pages said they should. I'd call that 100% reliability.
Others can testify about it in the same vein once its properly
configured and running, which does take some hand-holding from time
to time for the configure to fit your system part. But thats what
the net (and this list) is for.

Scalable?

ISTR a message went thru here a few weeks back claiming that users
responsiblility was a terrabyte plus but its not in my history
here. Terrabyte + ? I'd call that scalable, so whats the problem?

If folks want a backup with a gui, send them off to arkeia, its
right purty, but warn them about the 4 digit price in USD for a
typical small businesses system requirements. And the first digit
isn't a 0 or a 1... I ran the freebie for a few months, on a
single tape drive. When I needed the recovery, even dd couldn't
read the tape I needed, the drive had gone south I think. It went
in the bin and arkiea was never re-installed because they wouldn't
even think of talking to a home user about their library code
package and I had already bought this changer. I think that will
put your questioners view of reliability under a somewhat brighter
lamp.

BRU is a bit more reasonably priced, but in 3 installs of the latest
as of 4 months ago trial download, I failed to get it to talk to a
Seagate CTL-96 3 times, using 2 different samples of that changer.

Both of them are working great with amanda FWTW although I did have
to junk one cheap adaptec scsi card before it worked on the second
drive...

[Benjamin Lewis]

Post by Lorenzo Canovi
Anyone is working on this topic?

The amanda-win32 project (port Amanda clients to WinNT/2000 for native
NTFS support) has a python based GUI for amrecover that looks pretty snazzy.
I didn't have much luck with the other parts last time I tried it (they've
made another release recently that I didn't try), but the GUI bit seemed
to work. I hacked on it a bit and was able to get it running on one of
my FreeBSD boxes without too much trouble.

http://sourceforge.net/projects/amanda-gui/

A search on Sourceforge turns up a few other projects that I don't have
personal experience with:

"amrec gui"
http://sourceforge.net/projects/amrecgui/ (recently released)

"Amanda GUI"
http://sourceforge.net/projects/amanda-gui/ (test release May 1, 2001)

"Amanda Admin" -- Webmin module
http://sourceforge.net/projects/amandaadm/ (no releases)

Post by Lorenzo Canovi
| Lorenzo Canovi

-Ben

[Gene Heskett]

Post by Benjamin Lewis

Post by Lorenzo Canovi
Anyone is working on this topic?

The amanda-win32 project (port Amanda clients to WinNT/2000 for
native NTFS support) has a python based GUI for amrecover that
looks pretty snazzy. I didn't have much luck with the other parts
last time I tried it (they've made another release recently that
I didn't try), but the GUI bit seemed to work. I hacked on it a
bit and was able to get it running on one of my FreeBSD boxes
without too much trouble.
http://sourceforge.net/projects/amanda-gui/
A search on Sourceforge turns up a few other projects that I don't
"amrec gui"
http://sourceforge.net/projects/amrecgui/ (recently released)

A gui for amrecover? I guess I'll not know, I can only get 39% of
the file after5 tries. Mmm, &^%$# konqi, it doesn't handle some
web pages writers idea of download links. Now the world knows why
I'm a mozilla fan. Now if I could just train kmail to use mozilla
for url opening. But I did get it eventually.

First, there is a missing #include <time.h> in date.h, the addition
of which will get you to this point:

g++ -o amrecgui cstring.o configfile.o idstring.o messageclient.o
propertiesfile.o date.o stdiofile.o file.o globalstring.o
coloring.o stringtokenizer.o lineiterator.o stdiostring.o
unique_access.o guielement.o xapplication.o modaldialog.o dialog.o
labelledtextfield.o label.o textfield.o button.o labelledfield.o
textcontrol.o view.o guimanager.o mainframe.o popupmenuhandle.o
labelleddatetextfield.o selectionlist.o frame.o shellinterface.o
hierarchicaltreelist.o waitcursor.o filebutton.o messagedialog.o
datetextfield.o commonlistbox.o graphicallist.o
graphicalobjectcontext.o fileselectiondialog.o toolbar.o
iconbutton.o dataspooler.o table.o tableobject.o
tableobjectversion.o record.o field.o dataenvironment.o
dataspoolerrootdialog.o datasetconfiguration.o editdiskdialog.o
recoverview.o amrecguimain.o datasetmanager.o recoveraskdialog.o
amrecguimainframe.o editdatasetdialog.o recovertreebox.o -lm
-L/usr/X11R6/lib -lX11 -lXm -lXmu -lXt

view.o: In function `CSimpleObjectList<CIdString>::in(CIdString
const &) const':
/root/amrecgui-0.0.2/simplelist.h(.CSimpleObjectList<CPopupMenuContext>::gnu.linkonce.t.in(CPopupMenuContext
const &) const+0x26): undefined reference to
`CPopupMenuContext::Manager(void) const'
/root/amrecgui-0.0.2/simplelist.h(.CSimpleObjectList<CPopupMenuContext>::gnu.linkonce.t.in(CPopupMenuContext
const &) const+0x31): undefined reference to
`CPopupMenuContext::Manager(void) const'
collect2: ld returned 1 exit status
make: *** [amrecgui] Error 1

Another missing #inlude statement? Dunno... Anybody???

[Benjamin Lewis]

Post by Gene Heskett

Post by Benjamin Lewis
"amrec gui"
http://sourceforge.net/projects/amrecgui/ (recently released)

First, there is a missing #include <time.h> in date.h, the addition

That one didn't bite me, but other includes were missing in several
files for me (gcc/g++ 2.95.2 on Solaris 8). Eventually, I managed to
get it compiled and it ran. I didn't do any more with it after I
saw the initial windows.

I also got it compiled on FreeBSD 4.6 with no source changes at all.
However, it coredumped immediately after I got through the
initial configuration steps. I have not attempted to debug further.

I don't have any insight into the linker error you saw. Perhaps the
author might be able to help.

-Ben

[Gene Heskett]

Post by Benjamin Lewis

Post by Gene Heskett

Post by Benjamin Lewis
"amrec gui"
http://sourceforge.net/projects/amrecgui/ (recently released)

First, there is a missing #include <time.h> in date.h, the

That one didn't bite me, but other includes were missing in
several files for me (gcc/g++ 2.95.2 on Solaris 8). Eventually,
I managed to get it compiled and it ran. I didn't do any more
with it after I saw the initial windows.
I also got it compiled on FreeBSD 4.6 with no source changes at
all. However, it coredumped immediately after I got through the
initial configuration steps. I have not attempted to debug
further.
I don't have any insight into the linker error you saw. Perhaps
the author might be able to help.

I've emailed him with the output shown here, about half an hour ago.