Hello,

The Amanda core team is pleased to announce the first beta release of Amanda 2.6.0, the 2.6.0b1 release. It has a complete rewrite of the tape handling code (Device API).

It can be dowloaded from http://www.amanda.org (not yet available) or https://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=120

We hope to release the final 2.6.0 soon. We appreciate if you can test it before the release, even a simple compilation can be useful to find problem on some hardware/software, report all compilation warning.

Here's a list of the changes for release 2.6.0b1 (from the NEWS file):
Look at the ReleaseNotes and ChangeLog file for more details.

• configure --disable-shared doesn't work because perl modules require shared libraries.  Use configure --with-static-binaries to build statically linked binaries.
• 'amverify' and 'amverifyrun' are deprecated and replaced with the new, more flexible 'amcheckdump'
• 'amdd' and 'ammt' are deprecated.
• Some Amanda files are now installed in new "amanda/" subdirectories: libraries are now installed in $libdir/amanda and internal programs are now installed in $libexecdir/amanda.
• The amandates file, previously at /etc/amandates, is now at $localstatedir/amanda/amandates.  You may want to move your existing /etc/amandates when you upgrade Amanda.
• New 'amcryptsimple', 'amgpgcrypt' - encryption plugins based on gpg.
• New 'amserverconfig', 'amaddclient' - Initial Amanda configuration tools these tools make assumptions, please see man page.
• Many bugs fixed and code rewrite/cleanup
• glib is required to compile and run amanda.
• Device API: pluggable interface to storage devices, supporting tapes, vtapes, RAIT, and Amazon S3
• New perl modules link directly to Amanda, to support writing Amanda applications in Perl.
• New 'local' security driver supports backups of the amanda server without any network connection or other configuration.
• Almost 200 unit tests are available via 'make installcheck'.
• Amanda configuration file changes
• amanda.conf changes
• flush-threshold-dumped
• flush-threshold-scheduled
• taperflush
• device_property
• usetimestamps default to yes