bacula · what is bacula? 1.1 who needs bacula? 1.2 bacula components or services 1

Bacula® is a registered trademark of Kern Sibbald

The Leading Open SourceBackup Solution

Bacula Main Reference

Kern Sibbald

September 23, 2020This manual documents Bacula version 9.6.6 (20 September 2020)

Copyright © 2000-2018, Kern SibbaldBacula is a registered trademark of Kern Sibbald.

This Bacula documentation by Kern Sibbald with contributions from manyothers,

a complete list can be found in the License chapter. Creative Commons

Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International Licensehttp://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

Contents

1 What is Bacula? 11.1 Who Needs Bacula? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11.2 Bacula Components or Services . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11.3 Bacula Configuration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31.4 Conventions Used in this Document . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41.5 Quick Start . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41.6 Terminology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41.7 What Bacula is Not . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71.8 Interactions Between the Bacula Services . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7

2 New Features in 9.6.0 92.0.1 Building 9.6.4 and later . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 92.0.2 Docker Plugin . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 92.0.3 Real-Time Statistics Monitoring . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9

3 New Features in 9.4.0 133.0.1 New Commands, Resource, and Directives for Cloud . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 153.0.2 WORM Tape Support . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19

4 New Features in 9.2.0 214.0.1 Enhanced Autochanger Support . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 214.0.2 New Prune Command Option . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 224.0.3 BConsole Features . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 224.0.4 Tray Monitor Restore Screen . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23

5 New Features in 9.0.0 255.0.1 Enhanced Autochanger Support . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 255.0.2 Source Code for Windows . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 265.0.3 Maximum Virtual Full Interval Option . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 265.0.4 Progressive Virtual Full . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 265.0.5 TapeAlert Enhancements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 275.0.6 New Console ACL Directives . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 305.0.7 New Bconsole “list” Command Behavior . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 305.0.8 New Console ACL Directives . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 305.0.9 Client Initiated Backup . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 315.0.10 Configuring Client Initiated Backup . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 325.0.11 New Tray Monitor . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 335.0.12 Schedule Jobs via the Tray Monitor . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 345.0.13 Accurate Option for Verify “Volume Data” Job . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 375.0.14 FileDaemon Saved Messages Resource Destination . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 375.0.15 Minor Enhancements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 375.0.16 Bconsole “list jobs” command options . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 385.0.17 Minor Enhancements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 385.0.18 Bconsole “list jobs” command options . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 385.0.19 New Bconsole ”Tee All” Command . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 385.0.20 New Job Edit Codes %I . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 395.0.21 Communication Line Compression . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 405.0.22 Deduplication Optimized Volumes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 405.0.23 baculabackupreport . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40

i

ii CONTENTS

5.0.24 New Message Identification Format . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41

6 New Features in 7.4.0 436.1 New Features in 7.4.3 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43

6.1.1 RunScripts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 436.2 New Features in 7.4.0 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43

6.2.1 Verify Volume Data . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 436.2.2 Bconsole “list jobs” command options . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 456.2.3 Minor Enhancements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 456.2.4 Windows Encrypted File System (EFS) Support . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 456.2.5 SSL Connections to MySQL . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 456.2.6 Max Virtual Full Interval . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 456.2.7 New List Volumes Output . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45


7.1.1 New Job Edit Codes %E %R . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 477.1.2 Enable/Disable commands . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47

7.2 Bacula 7.2 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 477.2.1 Snapshot Management . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 477.2.2 Minor Enhancements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 517.2.3 Data Encryption Cipher Configuration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 517.2.4 Read Only Storage Devices . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 527.2.5 New Resume Command . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 537.2.6 New Prune “Expired” Volume Command . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 537.2.7 New Job Edit Codes %P %C . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 537.2.8 Enhanced Status and Error Messages . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 537.2.9 Miscellaneous New Features . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 537.2.10 FD Storage Address . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 547.2.11 Maximum Concurrent Read Jobs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 547.2.12 Incomplete Jobs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 547.2.13 The Stop Command . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 547.2.14 The Restart Command . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 557.2.15 Job Bandwidth Limitation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 557.2.16 Always Backup a File . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 567.2.17 Setting Accurate Mode at Runtime . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 567.2.18 Additions to RunScript variables . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 577.2.19 LZO Compression . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 577.2.20 Purge Migration Job . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 577.2.21 Changes in the Pruning Algorithm . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 587.2.22 Ability to Verify any specified Job . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58


8.1.1 Storage daemon to Storage daemon . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 598.1.2 SD Calls Client . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 598.1.3 Next Pool . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 608.1.4 status storage . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 608.1.5 status schedule . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 608.1.6 Data Encryption Cipher Configuration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 618.1.7 New Truncate Command . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 618.1.8 Migration/Copy/VirtualFull Performance Enhancements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 618.1.9 VirtualFull Backup Consolidation Enhancements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 628.1.10 FD Storage Address . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 628.1.11 Job Bandwidth Limitation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 638.1.12 Maximum Concurrent Read Jobs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 648.1.13 Director job Codes in Message Resource Commands . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 648.1.14 Additions to RunScript variables . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 648.1.15 Read Only Storage Devices . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 658.1.16 New Prune “Expired” Volume Command . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65

CONTENTS iii

8.1.17 Hardlink Performance Enhancements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65

8.1.18 DisableCommand Directive . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65

8.1.19 Multiple Console Directors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66

8.1.20 Restricted Consoles . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66

8.1.21 Configuration Files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66

8.1.22 Maximum Spawned Jobs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66

8.1.23 Progress Meter . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66

8.1.24 Scheduling a 6th Week . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66

8.1.25 Scheduling the Last Day of a Month . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66

8.1.26 Improvements to Cancel and Restart bconsole Commands . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66

8.1.27 bconsole Performance Improvements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67

8.1.28 New .bvfs decode lstat Command . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67

9 New Features in 5.2.13 69

9.0.1 Additions to RunScript variables . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69

9.1 New Features in 5.2.1 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69

9.1.1 LZO Compression . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69

9.1.2 New Tray Monitor . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71

9.1.3 Purge Migration Job . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71

9.1.4 Changes in Bvfs (Bacula Virtual FileSystem) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71

9.1.5 Changes in the Pruning Algorithm . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 74

9.1.6 Ability to Verify any specified Job . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 74

9.1.7 Additions to RunScript variables . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75

9.1.8 Additions to the Plugin API . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75

9.1.9 ACL enhancements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 78

9.1.10 XATTR enhancements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 78

9.1.11 Class Based Database Backend Drivers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 78

9.1.12 Hash List Enhancements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79

9.2 Release Version 5.0.3 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79

9.3 Release Version 5.0.2 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79

9.4 New Features in 5.0.1 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80

9.4.1 Truncate Volume after Purge . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80

9.4.2 Allow Higher Duplicates . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80

9.4.3 Cancel Lower Level Duplicates . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80

9.5 New Features in 5.0.0 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81

9.5.1 Maximum Concurrent Jobs for Devices . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81

9.5.2 Restore from Multiple Storage Daemons . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81

9.5.3 File Deduplication using Base Jobs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81

9.5.4 AllowCompression = . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 819.5.5 Accurate Fileset Options . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 82

9.5.6 Tab-completion for Bconsole . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 82

9.5.7 Pool File and Job Retention . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83

9.5.8 Read-only File Daemon using capabilities . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83

9.5.9 Bvfs API . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83

9.5.10 Testing your Tape Drive . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83

9.5.11 New Block Checksum Device Directive . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 84

9.5.12 New Bat Features . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 84

9.5.13 Bat on Windows . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87

9.5.14 New Win32 Installer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87

9.5.15 Win64 Installer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87

9.5.16 Linux Bare Metal Recovery USB Key . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87

9.5.17 bconsole Timeout Option . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87

9.5.18 Important Changes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87

9.5.19 Misc Changes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 88

iv CONTENTS

10 Released Version 3.0.3 and 3.0.3a 8910.1 New Features in Released Version 3.0.2 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 89

10.1.1 Full Restore from a Given JobId . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8910.1.2 Source Address . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8910.1.3 Show volume availability when doing restore . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9010.1.4 Accurate estimate command . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 90

10.2 New Features in 3.0.0 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9010.2.1 Accurate Backup . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9110.2.2 Copy Jobs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9110.2.3 ACL Updates . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9310.2.4 Extended Attributes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9410.2.5 Shared objects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9510.2.6 Building Static versions of Bacula . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9510.2.7 Virtual Backup (Vbackup) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9610.2.8 Catalog Format . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9710.2.9 64 bit Windows Client . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9710.2.10 Duplicate Job Control . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9810.2.11 TLS Authentication . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9910.2.12 bextract non-portable Win32 data . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9910.2.13 State File updated at Job Termination . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9910.2.14 MaxFullInterval = . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9910.2.15 MaxDiffInterval = . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9910.2.16 Honor No Dump Flag = . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9910.2.17 Exclude Dir Containing = . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10010.2.18 Bacula Plugins . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10010.2.19 The bpipe Plugin . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10110.2.20 Microsoft Exchange Server 2003/2007 Plugin . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10210.2.21 libdbi Framework . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10410.2.22 Console Command Additions and Enhancements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10510.2.23 Bare Metal Recovery . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10610.2.24 Miscellaneous . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 107

11 The Current State of Bacula 11311.1 What is Implemented . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11311.2 Advantages Over Other Backup Programs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11511.3 Current Implementation Restrictions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11611.4 Design Limitations or Restrictions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11611.5 Items to Note . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 116

12 System Requirements 117

13 Supported Operating Systems 119

14 Supported Tape Drives 12114.1 Unsupported Tape Drives . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12214.2 FreeBSD Users Be Aware!!! . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12214.3 Supported Autochangers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12314.4 Tape Specifications . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 123

15 Getting Started with Bacula 12515.1 Understanding Jobs and Schedules . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12515.2 Understanding Pools, Volumes and Labels . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12515.3 Setting Up Bacula Configuration Files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 126

15.3.1 Configuring the Console Program . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12615.3.2 Configuring the Monitor Program . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12615.3.3 Configuring the File daemon . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12715.3.4 Configuring the Director . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12715.3.5 Configuring the Storage daemon . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 128

15.4 Testing your Configuration Files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12815.5 Testing Compatibility with Your Tape Drive . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12815.6 Get Rid of the /lib/tls Directory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 129

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15.7 Running Bacula . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12915.8 Log Rotation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12915.9 Log Watch . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12915.10Disaster Recovery . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 129

16 Installing Bacula 13116.1 Binary Release Packages . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13116.2 Building Bacula from Source . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13116.3 Source Release Files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13116.4 Upgrading Bacula . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13216.5 Releases Numbering . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13316.6 Dependency Packages . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13416.7 Supported Operating Systems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13516.8 Building Bacula from Source . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13616.9 What Database to Use? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13816.10Quick Start . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13816.11Configure Options . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13916.12Recommended Options for Most Systems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14416.13Red Hat . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14416.14Solaris . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14516.15FreeBSD . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14616.16Win32 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14616.17One File Configure Script . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14616.18Installing Bacula . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14616.19Building a File Daemon or Client . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14616.20Auto Starting the Daemons . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14716.21Other Make Notes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14716.22Modifying the Bacula Configuration Files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 148

17 Critical Items to Implement Before Production 14917.1 Critical Items . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14917.2 Recommended Items . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 150

18 A Brief Tutorial 15118.1 Before Running Bacula . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15118.2 Starting the Database . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15218.3 Starting the Daemons . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15218.4 Using the Director to Query and Start Jobs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15218.5 Running a Job . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15318.6 Restoring Your Files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15718.7 Quitting the Console Program . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15818.8 Adding a Second Client . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15918.9 When The Tape Fills . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16018.10Other Useful Console Commands . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16118.11Debug Daemon Output . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16218.12Patience When Starting Daemons or Mounting Blank Tapes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16218.13Difficulties Connecting from the FD to the SD . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16218.14Daemon Command Line Options . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16318.15Creating a Pool . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16318.16Labeling Your Volumes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16418.17Labeling Volumes with the Console Program . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 164

19 Customizing the Configuration Files 16719.1 Character Sets . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16819.2 Resource Directive Format . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 168

19.2.1 Comments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16819.2.2 Upper and Lower Case and Spaces . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16819.2.3 Including other Configuration Files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16919.2.4 Recognized Primitive Data Types . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 169

19.3 Resource Types . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17019.4 Names, Passwords and Authorization . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 171

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19.5 Detailed Information for each Daemon . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 171

20 Configuring the Director 17320.1 Director Resource Types . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17320.2 The Director Resource . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17420.3 The Job Resource . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17720.4 The JobDefs Resource . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19520.5 The Schedule Resource . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19520.6 Technical Notes on Schedules . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19820.7 The FileSet Resource . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19820.8 FileSet Examples . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21120.9 Backing up Raw Partitions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21420.10Excluding Files and Directories . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21520.11Windows FileSets . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21520.12Testing Your FileSet . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21720.13The Client Resource . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21720.14The Storage Resource . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22020.15The Autochanger Resources . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22320.16The Pool Resource . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 224

20.16.1 The Scratch Pool . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23120.17The Catalog Resource . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23120.18The Messages Resource . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23220.19The Console Resource . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23220.20The Counter Resource . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23420.21Example Director Configuration File . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 234

21 Client/File daemon Configuration 23721.1 The Client Resource . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23721.2 The Director Resource . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23921.3 The Message Resource . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24021.4 Example Client Configuration File . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 240

22 Storage Daemon Configuration 24322.1 Storage Resource . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24322.2 Director Resource . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24522.3 Device Resource . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24522.4 Edit Codes for Mount and Unmount Directives . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25322.5 Devices that require a mount (USB) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25322.6 Capabilities . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25422.7 Messages Resource . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25422.8 Sample Storage Daemon Configuration File . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 255

23 Messages Resource 257

24 Console Configuration 26124.1 General . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26124.2 The Director Resource . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26124.3 The ConsoleFont Resource . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26124.4 The Console Resource . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26224.5 Console Commands . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26424.6 Sample Console Configuration File . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 264

25 Monitor Configuration 26525.1 The Monitor Resource . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26525.2 The Director Resource . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26525.3 The Client Resource . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26625.4 The Storage Resource . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26625.5 Tray Monitor Security . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26725.6 Sample Tray Monitor configuration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 267

25.6.1 Sample File daemon’s Director record. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26725.6.2 Sample Storage daemon’s Director record. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 267

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25.6.3 Sample Director’s Console record. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 268

26 The Restore Command 26926.1 General . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26926.2 The Restore Command . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 269

26.2.1 Restore a pruned job using a pattern . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27326.3 Selecting Files by Filename . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27426.4 Replace Options . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27526.5 Command Line Arguments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27526.6 Using File Relocation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 276

26.6.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27626.6.2 RegexWhere Format . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 277

26.7 Restoring Directory Attributes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27726.8 Restoring on Windows . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27826.9 Restoring Files Can Be Slow . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27826.10Problems Restoring Files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27926.11Restore Errors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27926.12Example Restore Job Resource . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28026.13File Selection Commands . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28026.14Restoring When Things Go Wrong . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 281

27 Automatic Volume Recycling 28727.1 Automatic Pruning . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28827.2 Pruning Directives . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28827.3 Recycling Algorithm . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29027.4 Recycle Status . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29127.5 Making Bacula Use a Single Tape . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29227.6 Daily, Weekly, Monthly Tape Usage Example . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29227.7 Automatic Pruning and Recycling Example . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29427.8 Manually Recycling Volumes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 295

28 Basic Volume Management 29728.1 Key Concepts and Resource Records . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 297

28.1.1 Pool Options to Limit the Volume Usage . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29828.1.2 Automatic Volume Labeling . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29828.1.3 Restricting the Number of Volumes and Recycling . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 299

28.2 Concurrent Disk Jobs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30028.3 An Example . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30028.4 Backing up to Multiple Disks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30328.5 Considerations for Multiple Clients . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 304

29 Automated Disk Backup 30729.1 The Problem . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30729.2 The Solution . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30729.3 Overall Design . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 307

29.3.1 Full Pool . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30829.3.2 Differential Pool . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30829.3.3 Incremental Pool . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 309

29.4 The Actual Conf Files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 309

30 Migration and Copy 31330.0.1 Storage daemon to Storage daemon . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 314

30.1 Migration and Copy Job Resource Directives . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31430.2 Migration Pool Resource Directives . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31630.3 Important Migration Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31730.4 Example Migration Jobs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31830.5 Virtual Backup Consolidation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 319

30.5.1 Manually Specify Jobs to Consolidate . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 321

31 File Deduplication using Base Jobs 323

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32 Backup Strategies 32532.1 Simple One Tape Backup . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 325

32.1.1 Advantages . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32532.1.2 Disadvantages . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32532.1.3 Practical Details . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 325

32.2 Manually Changing Tapes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32532.3 Daily Tape Rotation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 326

32.3.1 Advantages . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32632.3.2 Disadvantages . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32632.3.3 Practical Details . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 327

33 Autochanger Support 33133.1 Knowing What SCSI Devices You Have . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33233.2 Example Scripts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33233.3 Slots . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33333.4 Multiple Devices . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33333.5 Device Configuration Records . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 333

34 Autochanger Resource 33534.1 An Example Configuration File . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33634.2 A Multi-drive Example Configuration File . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33734.3 Specifying Slots When Labeling . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33734.4 Changing Cartridges . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33834.5 Dealing with Multiple Magazines . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33834.6 Simulating Barcodes in your Autochanger . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33934.7 The Full Form of the Update Slots Command . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33934.8 FreeBSD Issues . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33934.9 Testing Autochanger and Adapting mtx-changer script . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34034.10Using the Autochanger . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34134.11Barcode Support . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34234.12Use bconsole to display Autochanger content . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34234.13Bacula Autochanger Interface . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 343

35 Supported Autochangers 345

36 Data Spooling 34936.1 Data Spooling Directives . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34936.2 !!! MAJOR WARNING !!! . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35036.3 Other Points . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 350

37 ANSI and IBM Tape Labels 35137.1 Director Pool Directive . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35137.2 Storage Daemon Device Directives . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 351

38 The Windows Version of Bacula 35338.1 Windows Installation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35338.2 Post Windows Installation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35738.3 Uninstalling Bacula on Windows . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35738.4 Dealing with Windows Problems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35738.5 Windows Compatibility Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35938.6 Volume Shadow Copy Service . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36038.7 VSS Problems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36138.8 Windows Firewalls . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36138.9 Windows Port Usage . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36238.10Windows Disaster Recovery . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36238.11Windows Restore Problems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36238.12Windows Ownership and Permissions Problems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36338.13Manually resetting the Permissions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36338.14Backing Up the Windows System State . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36538.15Fixing the Windows Boot Record . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36638.16Considerations for Filename Specifications . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 366

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38.17Windows Specific File daemon Command Line . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36638.18Shutting down Windows Systems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 367

39 Disaster Recovery Using Bacula 36939.1 General . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36939.2 Important Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36939.3 Steps to Take Before Disaster Strikes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36939.4 Bare Metal Recovery on Linux with a Rescue CD . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37039.5 Requirements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37039.6 Restoring a Client System . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37039.7 Boot with your Rescue CDROM . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37139.8 Restoring a Server . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37239.9 Linux Problems or Bugs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37339.10Bare Metal Recovery using a LiveCD . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37339.11FreeBSD Bare Metal Recovery . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37439.12Solaris Bare Metal Recovery . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37539.13Preparing Solaris Before a Disaster . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37539.14Bugs and Other Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37639.15Disaster Recovery of Win32 Systems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37639.16Ownership and Permissions on Win32 Systems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37739.17Alternate Disaster Recovery Suggestion for Win32 Systems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37739.18Restoring to a Running System . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37739.19Additional Resources . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 378

40 Bacula TLS – Communications Encryption 37940.1 TLS Configuration Directives . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37940.2 Creating a Self-signed Certificate . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38040.3 Getting a CA Signed Certificate . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38140.4 Example TLS Configuration Files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 381

41 Data Encryption 38341.1 Building Bacula with Encryption Support . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38341.2 Encryption Technical Details . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38441.3 Decrypting with a Master Key . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38441.4 Generating Private/Public Encryption Keys . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38441.5 Example Data Encryption Configuration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 385

42 Using Bacula to Improve Computer Security 38742.1 The Details . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38742.2 Running the Verify . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38842.3 What To Do When Differences Are Found . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38942.4 A Verify Configuration Example . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 390

43 Installing and Configuring MySQL 39343.1 Installing and Configuring MySQL – Phase I . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39343.2 Installing and Configuring MySQL – Phase II . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39443.3 Re-initializing the Catalog Database . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39543.4 Linking Bacula with MySQL . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39543.5 Installing MySQL from RPMs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39643.6 Upgrading MySQL . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39643.7 MySQL Configuration Caution . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 396

44 Installing and Configuring PostgreSQL 39744.1 Installing PostgreSQL . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39744.2 Configuring PostgreSQL . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39844.3 Re-initializing the Catalog Database . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40044.4 Installing PostgreSQL from RPMs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40044.5 Converting from MySQL to PostgreSQL . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40144.6 Upgrading PostgreSQL . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40144.7 Tuning PostgreSQL . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40144.8 Credits . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 401

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45 Catalog Maintenance 40345.1 Setting Retention Periods . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40345.2 Compacting Your MySQL Database . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40445.3 Repairing Your MySQL Database . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40445.4 MySQL Table is Full . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40545.5 MySQL Server Has Gone Away . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40545.6 MySQL Temporary Tables . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40645.7 Repairing Your PostgreSQL Database . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40645.8 Database Performance Issues . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40645.9 Performance Issues Indexes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 406

45.9.1 PostgreSQL Indexes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40745.9.2 MySQL Indexes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 407

45.10Compacting Your PostgreSQL Database . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40745.11Migrating from SQLite to MySQL or PostgreSQL . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40845.12Backing Up Your Bacula Database . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40845.13Security considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40945.14Backing Up Third Party Databases . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40945.15Database Size . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 409

46 Bacula Security Issues 41146.1 Backward Compatibility . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41246.2 Configuring and Testing TCP Wrappers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41246.3 Running as non-root . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 413

47 The Bootstrap File 41547.1 Bootstrap File Format . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41547.2 Automatic Generation of Bootstrap Files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41847.3 Bootstrap for bscan . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41847.4 A Final Bootstrap Example . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 418

48 Bacula Copyright, Trademark, and Licenses 42148.1 CC-BY-SA . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42148.2 GPL . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42148.3 LGPL . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42148.4 Public Domain . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42148.5 Trademark . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42148.6 Fiduciary License Agreement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42248.7 Disclaimer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42248.8 Authors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42248.9 Table of Contents . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43548.10GNU LESSER GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43548.11Preamble . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43548.12TERMS AND CONDITIONS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43648.13How to Apply These Terms to Your New Libraries . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 440

49 Thanks 44349.1 Bacula Bugs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 445

Chapter 1

What is Bacula?

Bacula is a set of computer programs that permits the system administrator to manage backup, recovery,and verification of computer data across a network of computers of different kinds. Bacula can also runentirely upon a single computer and can backup to various types of media, including tape and disk.

In technical terms, it is a network Client/Server based backup program. Bacula is relatively easy to use andefficient, while offering many advanced storage management features that make it easy to find and recoverlost or damaged files. Due to its modular design, Bacula is scalable from small single computer systems tosystems consisting of hundreds of computers located over a large network.

1.1 Who Needs Bacula?

If you are currently using a program such as tar, dump, or bru to backup your computer data, and you wouldlike a network solution, more flexibility, or catalog services, Bacula will most likely provide the additionalfeatures you want. However, if you are new to Unix systems or do not have offsetting experience with asophisticated backup package, the Bacula project does not recommend using Bacula as it is much moredifficult to setup and use than tar or dump.

If you want Bacula to behave like the above mentioned simple programs and write over any tape that youput in the drive, then you will find working with Bacula difficult. Bacula is designed to protect your datafollowing the rules you specify, and this means reusing a tape only as the last resort. It is possible to ”force”Bacula to write over any tape in the drive, but it is easier and more efficient to use a simpler program forthat kind of operation.

If you would like a backup program that can write to multiple volumes (i.e. is not limited by your tape drivecapacity), Bacula can most likely fill your needs. In addition, quite a number of Bacula users report thatBacula is simpler to setup and use than other equivalent programs.

If you are currently using a sophisticated commercial package such as Legato Networker. ARCserveIT,Arkeia, or PerfectBackup+, you may be interested in Bacula, which provides many of the same features andis free software available under the Affero GPL Version 3 software license.

1.2 Bacula Components or Services

Bacula is made up of the following five major components or services: Director, Console, File, Storage, andMonitor services.

1

2 Bacula Version 9.6.6

BaculaApplicationInteractions

Admin

bconsole: Command line interfacetool to manage backup and restoreoperations

BAT: Graphical User Interface forbackup and restore operationsmanagement

BWeb: Webinterface includes backupand restore operations managementand reporting as well

Database server

PostgreSQL

MySQL

Meta-datastorage

Bacula Director

Runs,schedules,authenticatesconnectionsand controls backup andrestore operations

The FileDaemonreads filesfrom sourceand sends them to thestorage server.

AIXAIX

Bacula Client

Writes data to the devicesduring backup operations

Bacula Storage Server

Disk array,Autoloaders,VTL,NAS / SAN

(thanks to Aristedes Maniatis for this graphic and the one below)

Bacula Director

The Bacula Director service is the program that supervises all the backup, restore, verify and archiveoperations. The system administrator uses the Bacula Director to schedule backups and to recover files.For more details see the Director Services Daemon Design Document in the Bacula Developer’s Guide. TheDirector runs as a daemon (or service) in the background.

Bacula Console

The Bacula Console service is the program that allows the administrator or user to communicate with theBacula Director Currently, the Bacula Console is available in three versions: text-based console interface, QT-based interface, and a wxWidgets graphical interface. The first and simplest is to run the Console programin a shell window (i.e. TTY interface). Most system administrators will find this completely adequate. Thesecond version is a GNOME GUI interface that is far from complete, but quite functional as it has most thecapabilities of the shell Console. The third version is a wxWidgets GUI with an interactive file restore. Italso has most of the capabilities of the shell console, allows command completion with tabulation, and givesyou instant help about the command you are typing. For more details see the Bacula Console DesignDocument (Chapter 1 on the preceding page) .

Bacula File

The Bacula File service (also known as the Client program) is the software program that is installed onthe machine to be backed up. It is specific to the operating system on which it runs and is responsible for

Bacula Version 9.6.6 3

providing the file attributes and data when requested by the Director. The File services are also responsiblefor the file system dependent part of restoring the file attributes and data during a recovery operation. Formore details see the File Services Daemon Design Document in the Bacula Developer’s Guide. This programruns as a daemon on the machine to be backed up. In addition to Unix/Linux File daemons, there is aWindows File daemon (normally distributed in binary format). The Windows File daemon runs on currentWindows versions (NT, 2000, XP, 2003, and possibly Me and 98).

Bacula Storage

The Bacula Storage services consist of the software programs that perform the storage and recovery of thefile attributes and data to the physical backup media or volumes. In other words, the Storage daemon isresponsible for reading and writing your tapes (or other storage media, e.g. files). For more details see theStorage Services Daemon Design Document in the Bacula Developer’s Guide. The Storage services runs asa daemon on the machine that has the backup device (usually a tape drive).

Catalog

The Catalog services are comprised of the software programs responsible for maintaining the file indexesand volume databases for all files backed up. The Catalog services permit the system administrator or userto quickly locate and restore any desired file. The Catalog services sets Bacula apart from simple backupprograms like tar and bru, because the catalog maintains a record of all Volumes used, all Jobs run, andall Files saved, permitting efficient restoration and Volume management. Bacula currently supports threedifferent databases, MySQL, and PostgreSQL one of which must be chosen when building Bacula.

The two SQL databases currently supported (MySQL, and PostgreSQL) provide quite a number of features,including rapid indexing, arbitrary queries, and security. Although the Bacula project plans to support othermajor SQL databases, the current Bacula implementation interfaces only to MySQL, and PostgreSQL. Forthe technical and porting details see the Catalog Services Design Document in the developer’s documented.

The packages for MySQL and PostgreSQL are available for several operating systems. Alternatively, in-stalling from the source is quite easy, see the Installing and Configuring MySQL chapter of this documentfor the details. For more information on MySQL, please see: www.mysql.com . Or see the Installing andConfiguring PostgreSQL chapter of this document for the details. For more information on PostgreSQL,please see: www.postgresql.org .

Bacula Monitor

A Bacula Monitor service is the program that allows the administrator or user to watch current status ofBacula Directors, Bacula File Daemons and Bacula Storage Daemons. Currently, only a GTK+ versionis available, which works with GNOME, KDE, or any window manager that supports the FreeDesktop.orgsystem tray standard.

To perform a successful save or restore, the following four daemons must be configured and running: theDirector daemon, the File daemon, the Storage daemon, and the Catalog service (MySQL, or PostgreSQL).

1.3 Bacula Configuration

In order for Bacula to understand your system, what clients you want backed up and how, you must createa number of configuration files containing resources (or objects). The following presents an overall pictureof this:

http://www.mysql.comhttp://www.postgresql.org


Console configuration( bconsole.conf )

Describeswhich directors

this console canconnect to.

Director {

}

Resourcesdefinition

at a glance

Director configuration( bacula-dir.conf )

Storage to useVolumes (size,

number of)RetentionRecycling

Pool {

}

Client (who)File Set (what)

Schedule (when)Pool (where)

Storage (where)

Job {

}

Name, Address,

Password

Director {

}

Logical storageto use

Points to thecorresponding

device on StorageDaemon

Storage {

}

NameAddress

PortPassword

of the client toback up

Client {

}

NameAddress

DatabaseUsername,

Passwordto store meta-data

Catalog {

}

Files and directoriesto back up

Files and directoriesto exclude

Plugins to use

File Set {

}

Defineswhen this job will

be run.May contain pool,

level andother information

Schedule {

}

Messages sentbetweendaemons

or servicesEmails

Console messages

Messages {

}

Client configuration( bacula-fd.conf )

Nameand general

configuration

File Daemon {

}

Messages sentbetweendaemons

or servicesEmails

Console messages

Messages {

}

Name, Authentication

parameters

Director {

}

Storage daemon configuration( bacula-sd.conf )

One resourcefor general setup:

NameAuthentication

Storage {

}

Messages sentback to

the director

Messages {

}

One per deviceDevice's

characteristics/dev/xxx

Device {

}

Name, Authentication

parameters

Director {

}

1.4 Conventions Used in this Document

Bacula is in a state of evolution, and as a consequence, this manual will not always agree with the code. If anitem in this manual is preceded by an asterisk (*), it indicates that the particular feature is not implemented.If it is preceded by a plus sign (+), it indicates that the feature may be partially implemented.If you are reading this manual as supplied in a released version of the software, the above paragraph holdstrue. If you are reading the online version of the manual, www.bacula.org , please bear in mind that thisversion describes the current version in development (in the git repository) that may contain features not inthe released version. Just the same, it generally lags behind the code a bit.

1.5 Quick Start

To get Bacula up and running quickly, the author recommends that you first scan the Terminology sectionbelow, then quickly review the next chapter entitled The Current State of Bacula, then the Getting Startedwith Bacula, which will give you a quick overview of getting Bacula running. After which, you shouldproceed to the chapter on Installing Bacula, then How to Configure Bacula, and finally the chapter onRunning Bacula.

1.6 Terminology

Administrator The person or persons responsible for administrating the Bacula system.

Backup The term Backup refers to a Bacula Job that saves files.

Bootstrap File The bootstrap file is an ASCII file containing a compact form of commands that allowBacula or the stand-alone file extraction utility (bextract) to restore the contents of one or moreVolumes, for example, the current state of a system just backed up. With a bootstrap file, Bacula canrestore your system without a Catalog. You can create a bootstrap file from a Catalog to extract anyfile or files you wish.

http://www.bacula.org


Catalog The Catalog is used to store summary information about the Jobs, Clients, and Files that werebacked up and on what Volume or Volumes. The information saved in the Catalog permits the admin-istrator or user to determine what jobs were run, their status as well as the important characteristicsof each file that was backed up, and most importantly, it permits you to choose what files to restore.The Catalog is an online resource, but does not contain the data for the files backed up. Most of theinformation stored in the catalog is also stored on the backup volumes (i.e. tapes). Of course, thetapes will also have a copy of the file data in addition to the File Attributes (see below).

The catalog feature is one part of Bacula that distinguishes it from simple backup and archive programssuch as dump and tar.

Client In Bacula’s terminology, the word Client refers to the machine being backed up, and it is synonymouswith the File services or File daemon, and quite often, it is referred to it as the FD. A Client is definedin a configuration file resource.

Console The program that interfaces to the Director allowing the user or system administrator to controlBacula.

Daemon Unix terminology for a program that is always present in the background to carry out a designatedtask. On Windows systems, as well as some Unix systems, daemons are called Services.

Directive The term directive is used to refer to a statement or a record within a Resource in a configurationfile that defines one specific setting. For example, the Name directive defines the name of the Resource.

Director The main Bacula server daemon that schedules and directs all Bacula operations. Occasionally,the project refers to the Director as DIR.

Differential A backup that includes all files changed since the last Full save started. Note, other backupprograms may define this differently.

File Attributes The File Attributes are all the information necessary about a file to identify it and all itsproperties such as size, creation date, modification date, permissions, etc. Normally, the attributes arehandled entirely by Bacula so that the user never needs to be concerned about them. The attributesdo not include the file’s data.

File Daemon The daemon running on the client computer to be backed up. This is also referred to as theFile services, and sometimes as the Client services or the FD.

FileSet A FileSet is a Resource contained in a configuration file that defines the files to be backed up.It consists of a list of included files or directories, a list of excluded files, and how the file is to bestored (compression, encryption, signatures). For more details, see the FileSet Resource definition inthe Director chapter of this document.

Incremental A backup that includes all files changed since the last Full, Differential, or Incremental backupstarted. It is normally specified on the Level directive within the Job resource definition, or in aSchedule resource.

Job A Bacula Job is a configuration resource that defines the work that Bacula must perform to backupor restore a particular Client. It consists of the Type (backup, restore, verify, etc), the Level (full,incremental,...), the FileSet, and Storage the files are to be backed up (Storage device, Media Pool).For more details, see the Job Resource definition in the Director chapter of this document.

Monitor The program that interfaces to all the daemons allowing the user or system administrator tomonitor Bacula status.

Resource A resource is a part of a configuration file that defines a specific unit of information that isavailable to Bacula. It consists of several directives (individual configuration statements). For example,the Job resource defines all the properties of a specific Job: name, schedule, Volume pool, backup type,backup level, ...

Restore A restore is a configuration resource that describes the operation of recovering a file from backupmedia. It is the inverse of a save, except that in most cases, a restore will normally have a small setof files to restore, while normally a Save backs up all the files on the system. Of course, after a diskcrash, Bacula can be called upon to do a full Restore of all files that were on the system.


Schedule A Schedule is a configuration resource that defines when the Bacula Job will be scheduled forexecution. To use the Schedule, the Job resource will refer to the name of the Schedule. For moredetails, see the Schedule Resource definition in the Director chapter of this document.

Service This is a program that remains permanently in memory awaiting instructions. In Unix environ-ments, services are also known as daemons.

Storage Coordinates The information returned from the Storage Services that uniquely locates a fileon a backup medium. It consists of two parts: one part pertains to each file saved, and the otherpart pertains to the whole Job. Normally, this information is saved in the Catalog so that the userdoesn’t need specific knowledge of the Storage Coordinates. The Storage Coordinates include the FileAttributes (see above) plus the unique location of the information on the backup Volume.

Storage Daemon The Storage daemon, sometimes referred to as the SD, is the code that writes theattributes and data to a storage Volume (usually a tape or disk).

Session Normally refers to the internal conversation between the File daemon and the Storage daemon.The File daemon opens a session with the Storage daemon to save a FileSet or to restore it. A sessionhas a one-to-one correspondence to a Bacula Job (see above).

Verify A verify is a job that compares the current file attributes to the attributes that have previously beenstored in the Bacula Catalog. This feature can be used for detecting changes to critical system filessimilar to what a file integrity checker like Tripwire does. One of the major advantages of using Baculato do this is that on the machine you want protected such as a server, you can run just the File daemon,and the Director, Storage daemon, and Catalog reside on a different machine. As a consequence, ifyour server is ever compromised, it is unlikely that your verification database will be tampered with.

Verify can also be used to check that the most recent Job data written to a Volume agrees with whatis stored in the Catalog (i.e. it compares the file attributes), *or it can check the Volume contentsagainst the original files on disk.

*Archive An Archive operation is done after a Save, and it consists of removing the Volumes on whichdata is saved from active use. These Volumes are marked as Archived, and may no longer be used tosave files. All the files contained on an Archived Volume are removed from the Catalog. NOT YETIMPLEMENTED.

Retention Period There are various kinds of retention periods that Bacula recognizes. The most importantare the File Retention Period, Job Retention Period, and the Volume Retention Period. Each ofthese retention periods applies to the time that specific records will be kept in the Catalog database.This should not be confused with the time that the data saved to a Volume is valid.

The File Retention Period determines the time that File records are kept in the catalog database. Thisperiod is important for two reasons: the first is that as long as File records remain in the database,you can ”browse” the database with a console program and restore any individual file. Once the Filerecords are removed or pruned from the database, the individual files of a backup job can no longer be”browsed”. The second reason for carefully choosing the File Retention Period is because the volumeof the database File records use the most storage space in the database. As a consequence, you mustensure that regular ”pruning” of the database file records is done to keep your database from growingtoo large. (See the Console prune command for more details on this subject).

The Job Retention Period is the length of time that Job records will be kept in the database. Note,all the File records are tied to the Job that saved those files. The File records can be purged leavingthe Job records. In this case, information will be available about the jobs that ran, but not the detailsof the files that were backed up. Normally, when a Job record is purged, all its File records will alsobe purged.

The Volume Retention Period is the minimum of time that a Volume will be kept before it is reused.Bacula will normally never overwrite a Volume that contains the only backup copy of a file. Underideal conditions, the Catalog would retain entries for all files backed up for all current Volumes. Oncea Volume is overwritten, the files that were backed up on that Volume are automatically removedfrom the Catalog. However, if there is a very large pool of Volumes or a Volume is never overwritten,the Catalog database may become enormous. To keep the Catalog to a manageable size, the backupinformation should be removed from the Catalog after the defined File Retention Period. Baculaprovides the mechanisms for the catalog to be automatically pruned according to the retention periodsdefined.


Scan A Scan operation causes the contents of a Volume or a series of Volumes to be scanned. TheseVolumes with the information on which files they contain are restored to the Bacula Catalog. Oncethe information is restored to the Catalog, the files contained on those Volumes may be easily restored.This function is particularly useful if certain Volumes or Jobs have exceeded their retention period andhave been pruned or purged from the Catalog. Scanning data from Volumes into the Catalog is doneby using the bscan program. See the bscan section (section 1.7 on page 10) of the Bacula CommunityUtility programs for more details.

Volume A Volume is an archive unit, normally a tape or a named disk file where Bacula stores the datafrom one or more backup jobs. All Bacula Volumes have a software label written to the Volume byBacula so that it identifies what Volume it is really reading. (Normally there should be no confusionwith disk files, but with tapes, it is easy to mount the wrong one.)

1.7 What Bacula is Not

Bacula is a backup, restore and verification program and is not a complete disaster recovery system in itself,but it can be a key part of one if you plan carefully and follow the instructions included in the DisasterRecovery Chapter of this manual.

With proper planning, as mentioned in the Disaster Recovery chapter, Bacula can be a central componentof your disaster recovery system. For example, if you have created an emergency boot disk, and/or a BaculaRescue disk to save the current partitioning information of your hard disk, and maintain a complete Baculabackup, it is possible to completely recover your system from ”bare metal” that is starting from an emptydisk.

If you have used the WriteBootstrap record in your job or some other means to save a valid bootstrap file,you will be able to use it to extract the necessary files (without using the catalog or manually searching forthe files to restore).

1.8 Interactions Between the Bacula Services

The following block diagram shows the typical interactions between the Bacula Services for a backup job.Each block represents in general a separate process (normally a daemon). In general, the Director overseesthe flow of information. It also maintains the Catalog.


Director

Console

FileDaemon

CatalogSQL DBMS

StorageDaemon

Files attributes+

Data

Files attributes+

Data

Commands

UserCommands

Commands

AuthorizationCatalog requests

File attributesStorage location

Physical media

File attributesStorage location

Chapter 2

New Features in 9.6.0

2.0.1 Building 9.6.4 and later

Version 9.6.4 is a major security and bug fix release. We suggest everyone to upgrade as soon as possible.One significant improvement in this version is for the AWS S3 cloud driver. First the code base has been

brought much closer to the Enterprise version (still a long ways to go). Second major change is that thecommunity code now uses the latest version of libs3 as maintained by Bacula Systems. The libs3 code isavailable as a tar file for Bacula version 9.6.4 at:

http://www.bacula.org/downloads/libs3-20200523.tar.gz

Note: Version 9.6.4 must be compiled with the above libs3 version or later. To build libs3:

- Remove any libs3 package loaded by your OS

- Download above link

- tar xvfz libs3-20200523.tar.gz

- cd libs3-20200523

- make # should have no errors

- sudo make install

Then when you do your Bacula ./configure ¡args¿ it should automatically detect and use the libs3. Theoutput from the ./configure will show whether or not libs3 was found during the configuration. E.g.

S3 support: yes

in the output from ./configure.

2.0.2 Docker Plugin

Containers is a relatively new system level virtualization concept that has less overhead than traditionalvirtualation. This is true because Container use the underlying operating system to provide all the neededservices thus eliminating the need for multiple operating systems.Docker containers rely on sophisticated file system level data abstraction with a number of read-only imagesto create templates used for container initialization.With its Docker Plugin, the Bacula will save the full container image including all read-only and writablelayers into a single image archive.It is not necessary to install a Bacula File daemon in each container, so each container can be backed upfrom a common image repository.The Bacula Docker Plugin will contact the Docker service to read and save the contents of any system imageor container image using snapshots (default behavior) and dump them using the Docker API.The Docker Plugin whitepaper provides more detailed information.

2.0.3 Real-Time Statistics Monitoring

All Bacula daemons can now collect internal performance statistics periodically and provide mechanisms tostore the values to a CSV file or to send the values to a Graphite daemon via the network. Graphite is anenterprise-ready monitoring tool (https://graphiteapp.org).

To activate the statistic collector feature, simply define a Statistics resource in the daemon of yourchoice:

9

http://www.bacula.org/downloads/libs3-20200523.tar.gzhttps://graphiteapp.org


Figure 2.1: Graphite Examples

Statistics {

Name = "Graphite"

Type = Graphite

# Graphite host information

Host = "localhost"

Port = 2003

}

It is possible to change the interval that is used to collect the statistics with the Intervaldirective (5 mins by default), and use the Metrics directive to select the data to collect (all bydefault).

If the Graphite daemon cannot be reached, the statistics data are spooled on disk and are sentautomatically when the Graphite daemon is available again.

The bconsole statistics command can be used to display the current statistics in various formats(text or json for now).

*statistics

Statistics available for:

1: Director

2: Storage

3: Client

Select daemon type for statistics (1-3): 1

bacula.dir.config.clients=1

bacula.dir.config.jobs=3

bacula.dir.config.filesets=2

bacula.dir.config.pools=3

bacula.dir.config.schedules=2

...

*statistics storage

...

bacula.storage.bac-sd.device.File1.readbytes=214

bacula.storage.bac-sd.device.File1.readtime=12

bacula.storage.bac-sd.device.File1.readspeed=0.000000

bacula.storage.bac-sd.device.File1.writespeed=0.000000

bacula.storage.bac-sd.device.File1.status=1

bacula.storage.bac-sd.device.File1.writebytes=83013529

bacula.storage.bac-sd.device.File1.writetime=20356

...

The statistics bconsole command can accept parameters to be scripted, for example it ispossible to export the data in JSON, or to select which metrics to display.

*statistics bacula.dir.config.clients bacula.dir.config.jobs json

[

{


"name": "bacula.dir.config.clients",

"value": 1,

"type": "Integer",

"unit": "Clients",

"description": "The number of defined clients in the Director."

},

{

"name": "bacula.dir.config.jobs",

"value": 3,

"type": "Integer",

"unit": "Jobs",

"description": "The number of defined jobs in the Director."

}

]

The .status statistics command can be used to query the status of the Statistic collector thread.

*.status dir statistics

Statistics backend: Graphite is running

type=2 lasttimestamp=12-Sep-18 09:45

interval=300 secs

spooling=in progress

lasterror=Could not connect to localhost:2003 Err=Connection refused

Update Statistics: running interval=300 secs lastupdate=12-Sep-18 09:45

*

Chapter 3

New Features in 9.4.0

Cloud Backup

A major problem of Cloud backup is that data transmission to and from the Cloud is veryslow compared to traditional backup to disk or tape. The Bacula Cloud drivers provide ameans to quickly finish the backups and then to transfer the data from the local cache to theCloud in the background. This is done by first splitting the data Volumes into small parts thatare cached locally then uploading those parts to the Cloud storage service in the background,either while the job continues to run or after the backup Job has terminated. Once the partsare written to the Cloud, they may either be left in the local cache for quick restores or theycan be removed (truncate cache).

Cloud Volume Architecture

Figure 3.1: Bacula Cloud Architecture

The picture shown above shows two Volumes (Volume0001 and Volume0002) with their partsin the cache. Below the cache, one can see that Volume0002 has been uploaded or synchronizedwith the Cloud.

13


Note: Regular Bacula disk Volumes are implemented as standard files that reside in the userdefined Archive Directory. On the other hand, Bacula Cloud Volumes are directories thatreside in the user defined Archive Directory. Each Cloud Volume’s directory contains thecloud Volume parts which are implemented as numbered files (part.1, part.2, ...).

Cloud Restore

During a restore, if the needed parts are in the local cache, they will be immediately used,otherwise, they will be downloaded from the Cloud as needed. The restore starts with partsalready in the local cache but will wait in turn for any part that needs to be downloaded. TheCloud part downloads proceed while the restore is running.

With most Cloud providers, uploads are usually free of charge, but downloads of data fromthe Cloud are billed. By using local cache and multiple small parts, you can configure Baculato substantially reduce download costs.

The MaximumFileSize Device directive is still valid within the Storage Daemon and defines thegranularity of a restore chunk. In order to limit volume parts to download during restore(specially when restoring single files), it might be useful to set the MaximumFileSize to a valuesmaller than or equal to the MaximumPartSize.

Compatibility

Since a Cloud Volume contains the same data as an ordinary Bacula Volume, all existing typesof Bacula data may be stored in the cloud – that is client encrypted, compressed data, plugindata, etc. All existing Bacula functionality, with the exception of deduplication, is availablewith the Bacula Cloud drivers.

Deduplication and the Cloud

At the current time, Bacula Global Endpoint Backup does not support writing to the cloudbecause the cloud would be too slow to support large hashed and indexed containers of dedu-plication data.

Virtual Autochangers and Disk Autochangers

If you use a Bacula Virtual Autochanger you will find it compatible with the new Bacula Clouddrivers. However, if you use a third party disk autochanger script such as Vchanger, unless oruntil it is modified to handle Volume directories, it may not be compatible with Bacula Clouddrivers.

Security

All data that is sent to and received from the cloud by default uses the HTTPS protocol,so your data is encrypted while being transmitted and received. However, data that residesin the Cloud is not encrypted by default. If you wish extra security of your data while itresides in the cloud, you should consider using Bacula’s PKI data encryption feature duringthe backup.

Cache and Pruning

The Cache is treated much like a normal Disk based backup, so that in configuring Cloud theadministrator should take care to set ”Archive Device” in the Device resource to a directorywhere he/she would normally start data backed up to disk. Obviously, unless he/she uses thetruncate/prune cache commands, the Archive Device will continue to fill.

The cache retention can be controlled per Volume with the “CacheRetention” attribute. Thedefault value is 0, meaning that the pruning of the cache is disabled.

The “CacheRetention” value for a volume can be modified with the “update” command orvia the Pool directive “CacheRetention” for newly created volumes.


3.0.1 New Commands, Resource, and Directives for Cloud

To support Cloud, in Bacula Enterprise 8.8 there are new bconsole commands, new StorageDaemon directives and a new Cloud resource that is specified in the Storage Daemon’s Deviceresource.

New Cloud Bconsole Commands

• Cloud The new cloud bconsole command allows you to do a number of things with cloudvolumes. The options are the following:

– None. If you specify no arguments to the command, bconsole will prompt with:

Cloud choice:

1: List Cloud Volumes in the Cloud

2: Upload a Volume to the Cloud

3: Prune the Cloud Cache

4: Truncate a Volume Cache

5: Done

Select action to perform on Cloud (1-5):

The different choices should be rather obvious.

– Truncate This command will attempt to truncate the local cache for the specifiedVolume. Bacula will prompt you for the information needed to determine the Volumename or names. To avoid the prompts, the following additional command line optionsmay be specified:

∗ Storage=xxx∗ Volume=xxx∗ AllPools∗ AllFromPool∗ Pool=xxx∗ MediaType=xxx∗ Drive=xxx∗ Slots=nnn

– Prune This command will attempt to prune the local cache for the specified Volume.Bacula will respect the CacheRetention volume attribute to determine if the cachecan be truncated or not. Only parts that are uploaded to the cloud will be deletedfrom the cache. Bacula will prompt you for the information needed to determine theVolume name or names. To avoid the prompts, the following additional commandline options may be specified:

∗ Storage=xxx∗ Volume=xxx∗ AllPools∗ AllFromPool∗ Pool=xxx∗ MediaType=xxx∗ Drive=xxx∗ Slots=nnn

– Upload This command will attempt to upload the specified Volumes. It will promptyou for the informatio

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