FAILED [data timeout]

This article is for Amanda Enterprise (AE)

Issue Symptoms:

FAILURE SUMMARY section of the backup report either sent as an email or as viewed on the Report| Backups page shows errors such as:

natasha.company.com /home lev 1 FAILED [data timeout]
natasha.company.com /home lev 1 partial taper: successfully taped a partial dump

Issue Description:

The Amanda server is timing out the backup when data is not being received from the client for an accumulated period of time. This timeout is set as the No Data Sent timeout on the Backup| How page and tells the server how long it is allowed to wait on a client when no data is being received.

A time when no data is expected to be received by the Amanda server is the time during the initial period of a backup when tar or Zmanda Windows Client is parsing the client’s file system.  As the number of files being backed up increase, so does this No Data Sent period.

If due to file count or other reasons this duration starts reaching the No Data Sent timeout value, then the server will quit waiting for this particular backup to complete and will time out the backup of this object and continue on with the next queued object.

Resolutions:

1. Typically, doubling or tripling the No Data Sent timeout as set on the Backup| How page will give sufficient time for the backup to complete.  If the backup was succeeding previously but only recently started failing with data timeout, doubling the timeout is likely sufficient. If you are receiving this error on a newly added backup entry, be aware that when backing up data over NFS or CIFS or backing up Virtual Machines from ESX servers on AE 3.1 and earlier, an especially large No Data Sent timeout of several hours is required depending on file count and data size.
2. Decrease the number of files being backed up per backup entry. Where possible, decrease the number of files being backed up by excluding directories that do not need to be backed up or by backing up excluded directories as their own backup entries.