Answers

1. How do I build Bacula for platform xxx? The bacula spec file contains defines to build for several platforms: Red Hat 7.x (rh7), Red Hat 8.0 (rh8), Red Hat 9 (rh9), Fedora Core (fc1, fc3, fc4, fc5, fc6, fc7), Whitebox Enterprise Linux 3.0 (wb3), Red Hat Enterprise Linux (rhel3, rhel4), Mandrake 10.x (mdk), Mandriva 2006.x (mdv) CentOS (centos3, centos4) Scientific Linux (sl3, sl4) and SuSE (su9, su10, su102). The package build is controlled by a mandatory define set at the beginning of the file. These defines basically just control the dependency information that gets coded into the finished rpm package as well as any special configure options required. The platform define may be edited in the spec file directly (by default all defines are set to 0 or "not set"). For example, to build the Red Hat 7.x package find the line in the spec file which reads

           %define rh7 0
           

   and edit it to read

           %define rh7 1
           

   Alternately you may pass the define on the command line when calling rpmbuild:

           rpmbuild -ba --define "build_rh7 1" bacula.spec
           rpmbuild --rebuild --define build_rh7 1" bacula-x.x.x-x.src.rpm
   

2. How do I control which database support gets built? Another mandatory build define controls which database support is compiled, one of build_sqlite, build_mysql or build_postgresql. To get the MySQL package and support either set the

           %define mysql 0
           OR
           %define mysql4 0
           OR
           %define mysql5 0
           

   to

           %define mysql 1
           OR
           %define mysql4 1
           OR
           %define mysql5 1
           

   in the spec file directly or pass it to rpmbuild on the command line:

           rpmbuild -ba --define "build_rh7 1" --define "build_mysql 1" bacula.spec
           rpmbuild -ba --define "build_rh7 1" --define "build_mysql4 1" bacula.spec
           rpmbuild -ba --define "build_rh7 1" --define "build_mysql5 1" bacula.spec
   

3. What other defines are used? Three other building defines of note are the depkgs_version, docs_version and _rescuever identifiers. These two defines are set with each release and must match the version of those sources that are being used to build the packages. You would not ordinarily need to edit these. See also the Build Options section below for other build time options that can be passed on the command line.
4. I'm getting errors about not having permission when I try to build the packages. Do I need to be root? No, you do not need to be root and, in fact, it is better practice to build rpm packages as a non-root user. Bacula packages are designed to be built by a regular user but you must make a few changes on your system to do this. If you are building on your own system then the simplest method is to add write permissions for all to the build directory (/usr/src/redhat/, /usr/src/RPM or /usr/src/packages). To accomplish this, execute the following command as root:

           chmod -R 777 /usr/src/redhat
           chmod -R 777 /usr/src/RPM
           chmod -R 777 /usr/src/packages
   

   If you are working on a shared system where you can not use the method above then you need to recreate the appropriate above directory tree with all of its subdirectories inside your home directory. Then create a file named

   .rpmmacros

   in your home directory (or edit the file if it already exists) and add the following line:

           %_topdir /home/myuser/redhat
           

   Another handy directive for the .rpmmacros file if you wish to suppress the creation of debug rpm packages is:

           %debug_package %{nil}
           

5. I'm building my own rpms but on all platforms and compiles I get an unresolved dependency for something called /usr/afsws/bin/pagsh. This is a shell from the OpenAFS (Andrew File System). If you are seeing this then you chose to include the docs/examples directory in your package. One of the example scripts in this directory is a pagsh script. Rpmbuild, when scanning for dependencies, looks at the shebang line of all packaged scripts in addition to checking shared libraries. To avoid this do not package the examples directory. If you are seeing this problem you are building a very old bacula package as the examples have been removed from the doc packaging.

6. I'm building my own rpms because you don't publish for my platform. Can I get my packages released to sourceforge for other people to use? Yes, contributions from users are accepted and appreciated. Please examine the directory platforms/contrib-rpm in the source code for further information.

7. Is there an easier way than sorting out all these command line options? Yes, there is a gui wizard shell script which you can use to rebuild the src rpm package. Look in the source archive for platforms/contrib-rpm/rpm_wizard.sh. This script will allow you to specify build options using GNOME dialog screens. It requires zenity.

8. I just upgraded from 1.36.x to 1.38.x and now my director daemon won't start. It appears to start but dies silently and I get a "connection refused" error when starting the console. What is wrong? Beginning with 1.38 the rpm packages are configured to run the director and storage daemons as a non-root user. The file daemon runs as user root and group bacula, the storage daemon as user bacula and group disk, and the director as user bacula and group bacula. If you are upgrading you will need to change some file permissions for things to work. Execute the following commands as root:

           chown bacula.bacula /var/bacula/*
           chown root.bacula /var/bacula/bacula-fd.9102.state
           chown bacula.disk /var/bacula/bacula-sd.9103.state
   

   Further, if you are using File storage volumes rather than tapes those files will also need to have ownership set to user bacula and group bacula.

9. There are a lot of rpm packages. Which packages do I need for what? For a bacula server you need to select the packsge based upon your preferred catalog database: one of bacula-mysql, bacula-postgresql or bacula-sqlite. If your system does not provide an mtx package you also need bacula-mtx to satisfy that dependancy. For a client machine you need only install bacula-client. Optionally, for either server or client machines, you may install a graphical console bacula-gconsole and/or bacula-wxconsole. The Bacula Administration Tool is installed with the bacula-bat package. One last package, bacula-updatedb is required only when upgrading a server more than one database revision level.

10. Support for RHEL3/4, CentOS 3/4 and x86_64 The examples below show explicit build support for RHEL4 and CentOS 4. Build support for x86_64 has also been added. Test builds have been done on CentOS but not RHEL4.

Build with one of these 3 commands:

rpmbuild --rebuild \
        --define "build_rhel4 1" \
        --define "build_sqlite 1" \
        bacula-1.38.3-1.src.rpm

rpmbuild --rebuild \
        --define "build_rhel4 1" \
        --define "build_postgresql 1" \
        bacula-1.38.3-1.src.rpm

rpmbuild --rebuild \
        --define "build_rhel4 1" \
        --define "build_mysql4 1" \
        bacula-1.38.3-1.src.rpm

For CentOS substitute '--define "build_centos4 1"' in place of rhel4.

For 64 bit support add '--define "build_x86_64 1"'