selfcheck request failed: Connection refused

This article is for Amanda Enterprise (AE)

 Error: “selfcheck request failed: Connecetion refused”

This error can occur during the checks Amanda performs before executing backup and restore operations such as on the Backup|what page. This error can occur in older Amanda Enterprise releases.Solutions:

1. Ensure that the appropriate Amanda Enterprise client software is installed on the remote host.
2. Make sure that the Amanda Enterprise client services are running on the client.  On Linux, for instance, check that xinetd is installed and running by running “/etc/init.d/xinetd status”.  On Windows, check that the ZWC MySQL and ZWC Service services are running.
3. Make sure a firewall is not preventing the connection between client and server.    The Amanda Enterprise backup service runs on port 10080 and the restore service runs on port 10081.  Verify that a firewall is not blocking access from the backup server to these ports on the client.  On Linux, for instance, run “iptables -L” on the client to see all firewall rules.
4. Test that you can establish a connection between the backup server and the client by using telnet to telnet from the backup server to the client’s hostname on port 10080, for instance, run “telnet HostA 10080”.
5. With AE 3.0 running on some Linux distributions, incorrect IPv6 configuration of the Amanda server (such as IPv6 being blacklisted) can cause Amanda communication failures. The solution is to change Amanda server’s xinetd configuration to specify the IPv4 protocol.  Specifically, the entry that specifies flags = IPv6 should be changed to  flags = IPv4:

service amanda
{
        disable         = no
        flags           = IPv6  <<<<<< change to IPv4
        socket_type     = stream
        protocol        = tcp
        wait            = no
        user            = amandabackup
        group           = disk
        groups          = yes
        server          = /usr/lib/amanda/amandad
        server_args     = -auth=bsdtcp amdump amindexd amidxtaped
}