Im currently Running amanda and we have a policy that the current incremental and the full backup for each disk is taken off site.

The problem ive got is finding the full backup. I have nothing against amandas system of load balencing i just need an easy way to find the full backups.

I know amanda has the information as it states where they are when it creates a new backup.

Can anybody help?

Take a look at amadmin command (use find option). See http://wiki.zmanda.com/man/3.3.0/amadmin.8.html for man page.

We use a Zmanda server, I got really close on Amanda config, but the Zmanda server & client makes backup up Linux distro's a lot less complex. I have had to restore files/data in emergency situations and it worked like a champ.

Have you taken a look at the documentation on how to configure Disk to Disk to Tape? (zmanda.com) Like rhbegin we use the zmanda backup and recovery tools here, which is a nice gui put on top of amanda. Sorry I can't really be more help unless you're using zmanda as well, in which case you should have a support contract and contact them directly (they really are quite patient and helpful when you need them.)

I agree Zmanda support is GREAT, the front end for Zmanda makes creating a backup profile for a Linux client 100 times easier.

I am thankful this is one item the company pays for, it makes my job a lot less stressful.

I did have to use the commandline on the Zmanda server in the past. I had to recover some data the other day from a 20G+ vtape and I recovered it in about 10 minutes (only needed about 50M) from it.

They do recommend splitting out the data in different vtapes in your configuration, however it was on an email server and having thousands of entries for mailboxes would be a mess.
It saved my bacon.

Did anyone notice that the original post asking the question was from 2008?

In 2008, the answer would have been, take all your tapes offsite. The incremental and full backups of various drives (Disk List Entries, or DLEs) are intermixed on the tapes, because the full backups are distributed over the backup cycle. So, if your official policy says the latest for each disk must be offsite, that means the whole backup cycle of tapes. You can also find this information for any DLE by starting amrecover and asking for history. You can exit the amrecover without actually extracting the backups.

In 2012 (or 2011 or 2010) the answer could be to use the archive mechanism. Generate new tapes with the information that is to be taken offsite. The disk to disk to tape mentioned by Travisdh1 is the same idea.