AFSERVER(8)

NAME
afserver - the server program of the afbackup package

SYNOPSIS
afserver [ -b ] [<configuration-file>]

DESCRIPTION
The server program. It must be started by the inetd-superdaemon. The configuration-file is read as @serverlibdir@/@serverconf@ if not given explicitly.

-b  Turns off buffering mode. This reduces performance but seems to be necessary on some OSes

FILES

@serverlibdir@/@serverconf@
    Server configuration file (See: afserver.conf(8))

@serverlogdir@
    The directory for logging the server actions

@servervardir@
    Save internal state information of the server here

@servervardir@/status
    This file is updated, whenever a notable server status change occurs. The file is always removed and created again as status changes occur often and they are not worth keeping. This file only serves the purpose to get an information about what is currently going on. While reading or writing the current throughput is reported here about every 5 seconds. Logging of errors or warnings goes to the configured logfile

@servervardir@/pref_client
    This file is maintained to prevent colliding client accesses. The clients should have a chance to get the server always again, when querying several times within a certain interval. The previously served client and a timestamp is saved here to grant this client preferred service within a certain interval

@servervardir@/bytes_on_tape
    The persistent counters of the server side. A maximum number of bytes per tape can be configured and the server must remember, how much he had written to all the tapes. It makes no sense to count them all each time a cartridge is loaded. The format of the lines is:
     <cartridge-number>: <number-of-bytes-on-tape>

@servervardir@/tapepos
    The name of this file can be configured in the serverside configuration file, but i think, noone will ever change it. This file contains pairs of tape position numbers. Each pair consists of a cartridge number and a file number. The first pair in this file tells the current access position (read or write). The number of the following pairs depends on how many cartridge sets are configured. For each cartridge set the writing position is stored here. So the first and always present pair contains the cartridge number and the file number, where the server will write to tape the next time for cartridge set number 1. The next pair does the same job for cartridge set number 2 and so on

@servervardir@/precious_tapes
    This file contains a line for each client, listing which cartridges the client needs for restoring everything it saved and it wants access to. All cartridges listed here are considered read-only, if they have no more space on tape to write to. If they have free space, new data is appended at the end of the last file on tape during write

@servervardir@/readonly_tapes
    This file contains lists of cartridge numbers, that should not be written to anymore. This file can be edited or modified sending an appropriate server message (See: afclient, option -M). The format of this file is simply numbers, ranges or comma-separated numbers of cartridges. A range can be given as [<start-number>]-[<end-number>], e.g. 2-4, -2 or 8-. In the last example the number of cartridges configured in the server configuration file will be applied for the end of the list

@servervardir@/readonly_tapes
    The server must remind, what tape follows which other one, because their order no longer follows the number of the cartridge and the server no longer starts writing the first one after the last one is full. Tapes can be set read-only or marked crucial for restoring some client. So it may occur, that the server must skip one or more tapes to find a writable one. In this file the order is saved, what tape must be read, when one is exhausted. It should be save to some other location, because it is crucial for restore

SEE ALSO
afclientconfig(8), xafclientconfig(8), full_backup(8), incr_backup(8), afverify(8), afrestore(8), xafrestore(8), update_indexes(8), copy_tape(8), afclient.conf(8), afserver(8), afmserver(8), afserver.conf(8), cartis(8), cartready(8), label_tape(8), tar(1)

AUTHOR
afbackup was written by Albert Fluegel (af@muc.de). This manpage was extracted from the text docs by Christian Meder (meder@isr.uni-stuttgart.de).