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Of all the configuration files needed to run Bacula, the Director's is the most complicated, and the one that you will need to modify the most often as you add clients or modify the FileSets.
For a general discussion of configuration files and resources including the data types recognized by Bacula. Please see the ConfigurationConfigureChapter chapter of this manual.
Director resource type may be one of the following:
Job, JobDefs, Client, Storage/Autochange, Catalog, Schedule, FileSet, Pool, Director, or Messages. We present them here in the most logical order for defining them:
Note, everything revolves around a job and is tied to a job in one way or another.
The Director resource defines the attributes of the Directors running on the network. In the current implementation, there is only a single Director resource, but the final design will contain multiple Directors to maintain index and media database redundancy.
The password is plain text. It is not generated through any special process but as noted above, it is better to use random text for security reasons.
If you have specified a Director user and/or a Director group on your ./configure line with -with-dir-user and/or -with-dir-group the Working Directory owner and group will be set to those values.
The PID directory specified must already exist and be readable and writable by the Bacula daemon referencing it
Typically on Linux systems, you will set this to: /var/run. If you are not installing Bacula in the system directories, you can use the Working Directory as defined above. This directive is required.
In general, increasing the number of Concurrent Jobs increases the total through put of Bacula, because the simultaneous Jobs can all feed data to the Storage daemon and to the Catalog at the same time. However, keep in mind, that the Volume format becomes more complicated with multiple simultaneous jobs, consequently, restores may take slightly longer if Bacula must sort through interleaved volume blocks from multiple simultaneous jobs. Though normally unnecessary, interleaved job data can be avoided by having each simultaneous job write to a different volume or by using data spooling, which will first spool the data to disk simultaneously, then write one spool file at a time to the volume thus avoiding excessive interleaving of the different job blocks.
DirAddresses = {
ip = {addr = 1.2.3.4; port = 1205;}
ipv4 = {
addr = 1.2.3.4; port = http;}
ipv6 = {
addr = 1.2.3.4;
port = 1205;
}
ip = {
addr = 1.2.3.4
port = 1205
}
ip = {addr = 1.2.3.4 }
ip = {addr = 201:220:222::2 }
ip = {
addr = bluedot.thun.net
}
}
where ip, ip4, ip6, addr, and port are all keywords. Note, that the address can be specified as either a dotted quadruple, or IPv6 colon notation, or as a symbolic name (only in the ip specification). Also, port can be specified as a number or as the mnemonic value from the /etc/services file. If a port is not specified, the default will be used. If an ip section is specified, the resolution can be made either by IPv4 or IPv6. If ip4 is specified, then only IPv4 resolutions will be permitted, and likewise with ip6.
Please note that if you use the DirAddresses directive, you must not use either a DirPort or a DirAddress directive in the same resource.
The Statistics Retention directive defines the length of time that Bacula will keep statistics job records in the Catalog database after the Job End time. (In JobHistory table) When this time period expires, and if user runs prune stats command, Bacula will prune (remove) Job records that are older than the specified period.
Theses statistics records aren't use for restore purpose, but mainly for capacity planning, billings, etc. See Statistics chapterTO-BE-REPLACED for additional information.
See the Configuration chapterTime of this manual for additional details of time specification.
The default is 5 years.
Where number is the maximum number of reload command that can be done while jobs are running. The default is set to 32 and is usually sufficient.
The following is an example of a valid Director resource definition:
Director {
Name = HeadMan
WorkingDirectory = "$HOME/bacula/bin/working"
Password = UA_password
PidDirectory = "$HOME/bacula/bin/working"
QueryFile = "$HOME/bacula/bin/query.sql"
Messages = Standard
}
The Job resource defines a Job (Backup, Restore, ...) that Bacula must perform. Each Job resource definition contains the name of a Client and a FileSet to backup, the Schedule for the Job, where the data are to be stored, and what media Pool can be used. In effect, each Job resource must specify What, Where, How, and When or FileSet, Storage, Backup/Restore/Level, and Schedule respectively. Note, the FileSet must be specified for a restore job for historical reasons, but it is no longer used.
Only a single type (Backup, Restore, ...) can be specified for any job. If you want to backup multiple FileSets on the same Client or multiple Clients, you must define a Job for each one.
Note, you define only a single Job to do the Full, Differential, and Incremental backups since the different backup levels are tied together by a unique Job name. Normally, you will have only one Job per Client, but if a client has a really huge number of files (more than several million), you might want to split it into to Jobs each with a different FileSet covering only part of the total files.
Multiple Storage daemons are not currently supported for Jobs, so if you do want to use multiple storage daemons, you will need to create a different Job and ensure that for each Job that the combination of Client and FileSet are unique. The Client and FileSet are what Bacula uses to restore a client, so if there are multiple Jobs with the same Client and FileSet or multiple Storage daemons that are used, the restore will not work. This problem can be resolved by defining multiple FileSet definitions (the names must be different, but the contents of the FileSets may be the same).
When the job actually runs, the unique Job Name will consist of the name you specify here followed by the date and time the job was scheduled for execution. This directive is required.
Restore jobs cannot be automatically started by the scheduler as is the case for Backup, Verify and Admin jobs. To restore files, you must use the restore command in the console.
For a Backup Job, the Level may be one of the following:
If all the above conditions do not hold, the Director will upgrade the Incremental to a Full save. Otherwise, the Incremental backup will be performed as requested.
The File daemon (Client) decides which files to backup for an Incremental backup by comparing start time of the prior Job (Full, Differential, or Incremental) against the time each file was last "modified" (st_mtime) and the time its attributes were last "changed"(st_ctime). If the file was modified or its attributes changed on or after this start time, it will then be backed up.
Some virus scanning software may change st_ctime while doing the scan. For example, if the virus scanning program attempts to reset the access time (st_atime), which Bacula does not use, it will cause st_ctime to change and hence Bacula will backup the file during an Incremental or Differential backup. In the case of Sophos virus scanning, you can prevent it from resetting the access time (st_atime) and hence changing st_ctime by using the --no-reset-atime option. For other software, please see their manual.
When Bacula does an Incremental backup, all modified files that are still on the system are backed up. However, any file that has been deleted since the last Full backup remains in the Bacula catalog, which means that if between a Full save and the time you do a restore, some files are deleted, those deleted files will also be restored. The deleted files will no longer appear in the catalog after doing another Full save.
In addition, if you move a directory rather than copy it, the files in it do not have their modification time (st_mtime) or their attribute change time (st_ctime) changed. As a consequence, those files will probably not be backed up by an Incremental or Differential backup which depend solely on these time stamps. If you move a directory, and wish it to be properly backed up, it is generally preferable to copy it, then delete the original.
However, to manage deleted files or directories changes in the catalog during an Incremental backup you can use accurate mode. This is quite memory consuming process. See Accurate modeaccuratemode for more details.
If all the above conditions do not hold, the Director will upgrade the Differential to a Full save. Otherwise, the Differential backup will be performed as requested.
The File daemon (Client) decides which files to backup for a differential backup by comparing the start time of the prior Full backup Job against the time each file was last "modified" (st_mtime) and the time its attributes were last "changed" (st_ctime). If the file was modified or its attributes were changed on or after this start time, it will then be backed up. The start time used is displayed after the Since on the Job report. In rare cases, using the start time of the prior backup may cause some files to be backed up twice, but it ensures that no change is missed. As with the Incremental option, you should ensure that the clocks on your server and client are synchronized or as close as possible to avoid the possibility of a file being skipped. Note, on versions 1.33 or greater Bacula automatically makes the necessary adjustments to the time between the server and the client so that the times Bacula uses are synchronized.
When Bacula does a Differential backup, all modified files that are still on the system are backed up. However, any file that has been deleted since the last Full backup remains in the Bacula catalog, which means that if between a Full save and the time you do a restore, some files are deleted, those deleted files will also be restored. The deleted files will no longer appear in the catalog after doing another Full save. However, to remove deleted files from the catalog during a Differential backup is quite a time consuming process and not currently implemented in Bacula. It is, however, a planned future feature.
As noted above, if you move a directory rather than copy it, the files in it do not have their modification time (st_mtime) or their attribute change time (st_ctime) changed. As a consequence, those files will probably not be backed up by an Incremental or Differential backup which depend solely on these time stamps. If you move a directory, and wish it to be properly backed up, it is generally preferable to copy it, then delete the original. Alternatively, you can move the directory, then use the touch program to update the timestamps.
However, to manage deleted files or directories changes in the catalog during an Differential backup you can use accurate mode. This is quite memory consuming process. See Accurate modeaccuratemode for more details.
Every once and a while, someone asks why we need Differential backups as long as Incremental backups pickup all changed files. There are possibly many answers to this question, but the one that is the most important for me is that a Differential backup effectively merges all the Incremental and Differential backups since the last Full backup into a single Differential backup. This has two effects: 1. It gives some redundancy since the old backups could be used if the merged backup cannot be read. 2. More importantly, it reduces the number of Volumes that are needed to do a restore effectively eliminating the need to read all the volumes on which the preceding Incremental and Differential backups since the last Full are done.
When the Backup Level is set to VirtualFull, Bacula will consolidate the previous Full backup plus the most recent Differential backup and any subsequent Incremental backups into a new Full backup. This new Full backup will then be considered as the most recent Full for any future Incremental or Differential backups. The VirtualFull backup is accomplished without contacting the client by reading the previous backup data and writing it to a volume in a different pool.
Bacula's virtual backup feature is often called Synthetic Backup or Consolidation in other backup products.
For a Restore Job, no level needs to be specified.
For a Verify Job, the Level may be one of the following:
Please note! If you run two Verify Catalog jobs on the same client at the same time, the results will certainly be incorrect. This is because Verify Catalog modifies the Catalog database while running in order to track new files.
Please note! If you run two Verify VolumeToCatalog jobs on the same client at the same time, the results will certainly be incorrect. This is because the Verify VolumeToCatalog modifies the Catalog database while running.
This command can be very useful if you have disk problems because it will compare the current state of your disk against the last successful backup, which may be several jobs.
Note, the current implementation (1.32c) does not identify files that have been deleted.
When restoring a FileSet for a specified date (including "most recent"), Bacula is able to restore exactly the files and directories that existed at the time of the last backup prior to that date including ensuring that deleted files are actually deleted, and renamed directories are restored properly.
In this mode, the File daemon must keep data concerning all files in memory. So If you do not have sufficient memory, the backup may either be terribly slow or fail.
For 500.000 files (a typical desktop linux system), it will require approximately 64 Megabytes of RAM on your File daemon to hold the required information.
If you use the Restore command in the Console program, to start a restore job, the bootstrap file will be created automatically from the files you select to be restored.
For additional details of the bootstrap file, please see Restoring Files with the Bootstrap FileBootstrapChapter chapter of this manual.
Using this feature, permits you to constantly have a bootstrap file that can recover the current state of your system. Normally, the file specified should be a mounted drive on another machine, so that if your hard disk is lost, you will immediately have a bootstrap record available. Alternatively, you should copy the bootstrap file to another machine after it is updated. Note, it is a good idea to write a separate bootstrap file for each Job backed up including the job that backs up your catalog database.
If the bootstrap-file-specification begins with a vertical bar (|), Bacula will use the specification as the name of a program to which it will pipe the bootstrap record. It could for example be a shell script that emails you the bootstrap record.
On versions 1.39.22 or greater, before opening the file or executing the specified command, Bacula performs character substitutioncharacter substitution like in RunScript directive. To automatically manage your bootstrap files, you can use this in your JobDefs resources:
JobDefs {
Write Bootstrap = "%c_%n.bsr"
...
}
For more details on using this file, please see the chapter entitled The Bootstrap FileBootstrapChapter of this manual.
The Snapshot Retention directive defines the length of time that Bacula will keep Snapshots in the Catalog database and on the Client after the Snapshot creation. When this time period expires, and if using the snapshot prune command, Bacula will prune (remove) Snapshot records that are older than the specified Snapshot Retention period and will contact the FileDaemon to delete Snapshots from the system.
The Snapshot retention period is specified as seconds, minutes, hours, days, weeks, months, quarters, or years. See the Configuration chapterTime of this manual for additional details of time specification.
The default is 0 seconds, Snapshots are deleted at the end of the backup. The Job SnapshotRetention directive overwrites the Client SnapshotRetention directive.
When this directive is present during a Virtual Full (it is ignored for other Job types), it will look for a Full backup that has more subsequent backups than the value specified. In the example below, the Job will simply terminate unless there is a Full back followed by at least 31 backups of either level Differential or Incremental.
Job {
Name = "VFull"
Type = Backup
Level = VirtualFull
Client = "my-fd"
File Set = "FullSet"
Accurate = Yes
Backups To Keep = 30
}
Assuming that the last Full backup is followed by 32 Incremental backups, a Virtual Full will be run that consolidates the Full with the first two Incrementals that were run after the Full. The result is that you will end up with a Full followed by 30 Incremental backups.
If set to yes, it will cause any old Job that is consolidated during a Virtual Full to be deleted. In the example above we saw that a Full plus one other job (either an Incremental or Differential) were consolidated into a new Full backup. The original Full plus the other Job consolidated will be deleted. The default value is no.
By default, the the watchdog thread will kill any Job that has run more than 6 days. The maximum watchdog timeout is independent of MaxRunTime and cannot be changed.
The time specifies the maximum allowed time that a job may run, counted from when the job was scheduled. This can be useful to prevent jobs from running during working hours. We can see it like Max Start Delay + Max Run Time.
The Job resource now permits specifying a number of Maximum Spawn Jobs. The default is 300. This directive can be useful if you have big hardware and you do a lot of Migration/Copy jobs which start at the same time.
The speed parameter specifies the maximum allowed bandwidth that a job may use. The speed parameter should be specified in k/s, kb/s, m/s or mb/s.
If the directive is set to no, the Storage daemon will prefer finding an unused drive, otherwise, each job started will append to the same Volume (assuming the Pool is the same for all jobs). Setting Prefer Mounted Volumes to no can be useful for those sites with multiple drive autochangers that prefer to maximize backup throughput at the expense of using additional drives and Volumes. This means that the job will prefer to use an unused drive rather than use a drive that is already in use.
Despite the above, we recommend against setting this directive to no since it tends to add a lot of swapping of Volumes between the different drives and can easily lead to deadlock situations in the Storage daemon. We will accept bug reports against it, but we cannot guarantee that we will be able to fix the problem in a reasonable time.
A better alternative for using multiple drives is to use multiple pools so that Bacula will be forced to mount Volumes from those Pools on different drives.
The RunScript directive behaves like a resource in that it requires opening and closing braces around a number of directives that make up the body of the runscript.
The specified Command (see below for details) is run as an external program prior or after the current Job. This is optional. By default, the program is executed on the Client side like in ClientRunXXXJob.
Console options are special commands that are sent to the director instead of the OS. At this time, console command ouputs are redirected to log with the jobid 0.
You can use following console command : delete, disable, enable, estimate, list, llist, memory, prune, purge, reload, status, setdebug, show, time, trace, update, version, .client, .jobs, .pool, .storage. See console chapter for more information. You need to specify needed information on command line, nothing will be prompted. Example :
Console = "prune files client=%c" Console = "update stats age=3"
You can specify more than one Command/Console option per RunScript.
You can use following options may be specified in the body of the runscript:
| Options | Value | Default | Information |
| Runs On Success | Yes / No | Yes | Run command if JobStatus is successful |
| Runs On Failure | Yes / No | No | Run command if JobStatus isn't successful |
| Runs On Client | Yes / No | Yes | Run command on client |
| Runs When | Before | After | Always | AfterVSS | Never | When run commands |
| Fail Job On Error | Yes/No | Yes | Fail job if script returns something different from 0 |
| Command | Path to your script | ||
| Console | Console command |
Any output sent by the command to standard output will be included in the Bacula job report. The command string must be a valid program name or name of a shell script.
In addition, the command string is parsed then fed to the OS, which means that the path will be searched to execute your specified command, but there is no shell interpretation, as a consequence, if you invoke complicated commands or want any shell features such as redirection or piping, you must call a shell script and do it inside that script.
Before submitting the specified command to the operating system, Bacula performs character substitution of the following characters:
%% = %
%b = Job Bytes
%c = Client's name
%C = If the job is a Cloned job (Only on director side)
%d = Daemon's name (Such as host-dir or host-fd)
%D = Director's name (Also valid on file daemon)
%e = Job Exit Status
%E = Non-fatal Job Errors
%f = Job FileSet (Only on director side)
%F = Job Files
%h = Client address
%i = JobId
%I = Migration/Copy JobId (Only in Copy/Migrate Jobs)
%j = Unique Job id
%l = Job Level
%n = Job name
%p = Pool name (Only on director side)
%P = Current PID process
%o = Job Priority
%R = Read Bytes
%S = Previous Job name (Only on file daemon side)
%s = Since time
%t = Job type (Backup, ...)
%v = Volume name (Only on director side)
%w = Storage name (Only on director side)
%x = Spooling enabled? ("yes" or "no")
Some character substitutions are not available in all situations. The Job Exit Status code %e edits the following values:
Thus if you edit it on a command line, you will need to enclose it within some sort of quotes.
You can use these following shortcuts:
| Keyword |
| Run Before Job |
| Run After Job |
| Run After Failed Job |
| Client Run Before Job |
| Client Run After Job |
RunScript {
RunsWhen = Before
FailJobOnError = No
Command = "/etc/init.d/apache stop"
}
RunScript {
RunsWhen = After
RunsOnFailure = yes
Command = "/etc/init.d/apache start"
}
Notes about ClientRunBeforeJob
For compatibility reasons, with this shortcut, the command is executed directly when the client recieve it. And if the command is in error, other remote runscripts will be discarded. To be sure that all commands will be sent and executed, you have to use RunScript syntax.
Special Shell Considerations
A "Command =" can be one of:
Special Windows Considerations
You can run scripts just after snapshots initializations with AfterVSS keyword.
In addition, for a Windows client, please take note that you must ensure a correct path to your script. The script or program can be a .com, .exe or a .bat file. If you just put the program name in then Bacula will search using the same rules that cmd.exe uses (current directory, Bacula bin directory, and PATH). It will even try the different extensions in the same order as cmd.exe. The command can be anything that cmd.exe or command.com will recognize as an executable file.
However, if you have slashes in the program name then Bacula figures you are fully specifying the name, so you must also explicitly add the three character extension.
The command is run in a Win32 environment, so Unix like commands will not work unless you have installed and properly configured Cygwin in addition to and separately from Bacula.
The System %Path% will be searched for the command. (under the environment variable dialog you have have both System Environment and User Environment, we believe that only the System environment will be available to bacula-fd, if it is running as a service.)
System environment variables can be referenced with %var% and used as either part of the command name or arguments.
So if you have a script in the Bacula
bin directory then the following lines should work fine:
Client Run Before Job = systemstate
or
Client Run Before Job = systemstate.bat
or
Client Run Before Job = "systemstate"
or
Client Run Before Job = "systemstate.bat"
or
ClientRunBeforeJob = "\"C:/Program Files/Bacula/systemstate.bat\""
The outer set of quotes is removed when the configuration file is parsed. You need to escape the inner quotes so that they are there when the code that parses the command line for execution runs so it can tell what the program name is.
ClientRunBeforeJob = "\"C:/Program Files/Software
Vendor/Executable\" /arg1 /arg2 \"foo bar\""
The special characters
&<>()@^|will need to be quoted, if they are part of a filename or argument.
If someone is logged in, a blank "command" window running the commands will be present during the execution of the command.
Some Suggestions from Phil Stracchino for running on Win32 machines with the native Win32 File daemon:
ClientRunBeforeJob = "c:/bacula/bin/systemstate.bat"
rather than DOS/Windows form:
ClientRunBeforeJob =
"c:\bacula\bin\systemstate.bat" INCORRECT
For Win32, please note that there are certain limitations:
ClientRunBeforeJob = "C:/Program Files/Bacula/bin/pre-exec.bat"
Lines like the above do not work because there are limitations of cmd.exe that is used to execute the command. Bacula prefixes the string you supply with cmd.exe /c . To test that your command works you should type cmd /c "C:/Program Files/test.exe" at a cmd prompt and see what happens. Once the command is correct insert a backslash (\) before each double quote ("), and then put quotes around the whole thing when putting it in the director's .conf file. You either need to have only one set of quotes or else use the short name and don't put quotes around the command path.
Below is the output from cmd's help as it relates to the command line passed to the /c option.
If /C or /K is specified, then the remainder of the command line after the switch is processed as a command line, where the following logic is used to process quote (") characters:
&<>()@^|
The following example of the use of the Client Run Before Job directive was submitted by a user:
You could write a shell script to back up a DB2 database to a FIFO. The shell script is:
#!/bin/sh # ===== backupdb.sh DIR=/u01/mercuryd mkfifo $DIR/dbpipe db2 BACKUP DATABASE mercuryd TO $DIR/dbpipe WITHOUT PROMPTING & sleep 1
The following line in the Job resource in the bacula-dir.conf file:
Client Run Before Job = "su - mercuryd -c \"/u01/mercuryd/backupdb.sh '%t' '%l'\""
When the job is run, you will get messages from the output of the script stating that the backup has started. Even though the command being run is backgrounded with &, the job will block until the "db2 BACKUP DATABASE" command, thus the backup stalls.
To remedy this situation, the "db2 BACKUP DATABASE" line should be changed to the following:
db2 BACKUP DATABASE mercuryd TO $DIR/dbpipe WITHOUT PROMPTING > $DIR/backup.log 2>&1 < /dev/null &
It is important to redirect the input and outputs of a backgrounded command to /dev/null to prevent the script from blocking.
Run Before Job = "echo test"it's equivalent to :
RunScript {
Command = "echo test"
RunsOnClient = No
RunsWhen = Before
}
Lutz Kittler has pointed out that using the RunBeforeJob directive can be a simple way to modify your schedules during a holiday. For example, suppose that you normally do Full backups on Fridays, but Thursday and Friday are holidays. To avoid having to change tapes between Thursday and Friday when no one is in the office, you can create a RunBeforeJob that returns a non-zero status on Thursday and zero on all other days. That way, the Thursday job will not run, and on Friday the tape you inserted on Wednesday before leaving will be used.
An example of the use of this directive is given in the TipsJobNotificationproblemschapter of the Bacula Enterprise Problem Resolution Guide.
See the Run After Failed Job if you want to run a script after the job has terminated with any non-normal status.
RunScript {
Command = "echo test"
RunsWhen = After
RunsOnFailure = yes
RunsOnClient = no
RunsOnSuccess = yes # default, you can drop this line
}
An example of the use of this directive is given in the TipsJobNotificationproblemschapter of the Bacula Enterprise Problem Resolution Guide.
Note, please see the notes above in RunScript concerning Windows clients.
There are several points that must be taken into account when using this directive: first, a failed job is defined as one that has not terminated normally, which includes any running job of the same name (you need to ensure that two jobs of the same name do not run simultaneously); secondly, the Ignore FileSet Changes directive is not considered when checking for failed levels, which means that any FileSet change will trigger a rerun.
If this directive is set to yes (default no), the Storage daemon will be requested to spool the data for this Job to disk rather than write it directly to the Volume (normally a tape).
Thus the data is written in large blocks to the Volume rather than small blocks. This directive is particularly useful when running multiple simultaneous backups to tape. Once all the data arrives or the spool files' maximum sizes are reached, the data will be despooled and written to tape.
Spooling data prevents interleaving date from several job and reduces or eliminates tape drive stop and start commonly known as "shoe-shine".
We don't recommend using this option if you are writing to a disk file using this option will probably just slow down the backup jobs.
NOTE: When this directive is set to yes, Spool Attributes is also automatically set to yes.
NOTE: When Spool Data is set to yes, Spool Attributes is also automatically set to yes.
Using Add Suffix=.old, /etc/passwd will be restored to /etc/passwsd.old
Using Strip Prefix=/etc, /etc/passwd will be restored to /passwd
Under Windows, if you want to restore c:/files to d:/files, you can use :
Strip Prefix = c: Add Prefix = d:
For more informations about how use this option, see thisuseregexwhere.
This specification can be useful for portables, laptops, or other machines that are not always connected to the network or switched on.
If this directive is enabled, and the job terminates in incomplete status, the job will be rescheduled as determined by the Reschedule Interval and Reschedule Times directives. If you cancel the job, it will not be rescheduled. The default is yes (i.e. Incomplete jobs will be rescheduled).
A duplicate job in the sense we use it here means a second or subsequent job with the same name starts. This happens most frequently when the first job runs longer than expected because no tapes are available. The default is yes.
If this directive is enabled duplicate jobs will be run. If the directive is set to no (default) then only one job of a given name may run at one time, and the action that Bacula takes to ensure only one job runs is determined by the other directives (see below).
If Allow Duplicate Jobs is set to no and two jobs are present and none of the three directives given below permit cancelling a job, then the current job (the second one started) will be cancelled.
The part after the equal sign must be enclosed in double quotes, and can contain any string or set of options (overrides) that you can specify when entering the Run command from the console. For example storage=DDS-4 .... In addition, there are two special keywords that permit you to clone the current job. They are level=%l and since=%s. The %l in the level keyword permits entering the actual level of the current job and the %s in the since keyword permits putting the same time for comparison as used on the current job. Note, in the case of the since keyword, the %s must be enclosed in double quotes, and thus they must be preceded by a backslash since they are already inside quotes. For example:
run = "Nightly-backup level=%l since=\"%s\" storage=DDS-4"
A cloned job will not start additional clones, so it is not possible to recurse.
Please note that all cloned jobs, as specified in the Run directives are submitted for running before the original job is run (while it is being initialized). This means that any clone job will actually start before the original job, and may even block the original job from starting until the original job finishes unless you allow multiple simultaneous jobs. Even if you set a lower priority on the clone job, if no other jobs are running, it will start before the original job.
If you are trying to prioritize jobs by using the clone feature (Run directive), you will find it much easier to do using a RunScript resource, or a RunBeforeJob directive.
The priority only affects waiting jobs that are queued to run, not jobs that are already running. If one or more jobs of priority 2 are already running, and a new job is scheduled with priority 1, the currently running priority 2 jobs must complete before the priority 1 job is run, unless Allow Mixed Priority is set.
The default priority is 10.
If you want to run concurrent jobs you should keep these points in mind:
If you have several jobs of different priority, it may not best to start them at exactly the same time, because Bacula must examine them one at a time. If by Bacula starts a lower priority job first, then it will run before your high priority jobs. If you experience this problem, you may avoid it by starting any higher priority jobs a few seconds before lower priority ones. This insures that Bacula will examine the jobs in the correct order, and that your priority scheme will be respected.
Note that only higher priority jobs will start early. Suppose the director will allow two concurrent jobs, and that two jobs with priority 10 are running, with two more in the queue. If a job with priority 5 is added to the queue, it will be run as soon as one of the running jobs finishes. However, new priority 10 jobs will not be run until the priority 5 job has finished.
The following is an example of a valid Job resource definition:
Job {
Name = "Minou"
Type = Backup
Level = Incremental # default
Client = Minou
FileSet="Minou Full Set"
Storage = DLTDrive
Pool = Default
Schedule = "MinouWeeklyCycle"
Messages = Standard
}
The JobDefs resource permits all the same directives that can appear in a Job resource. However, a JobDefs resource does not create a Job, rather it can be referenced within a Job to provide defaults for that Job. This permits you to concisely define several nearly identical Jobs, each one referencing a JobDefs resource which contains the defaults. Only the changes from the defaults need to be mentioned in each Job.
The Schedule resource provides a means of automatically scheduling a Job as well as the ability to override the default Level, Pool, Storage and Messages resources. If a Schedule resource is not referenced in a Job, the Job can only be run manually. In general, you specify an action to be taken and when.
The Job-overrides permit overriding the Level, the Storage, the Messages, and the Pool specifications provided in the Job resource. In addition, the FullPool, the IncrementalPool, and the DifferentialPool specifications permit overriding the Pool specification according to what backup Job Level is in effect.
By the use of overrides, you may customize a particular Job. For example, you may specify a Messages override for your Incremental backups that outputs messages to a log file, but for your weekly or monthly Full backups, you may send the output by email by using a different Messages override.
Job-overrides are specified as: keyword=value where the keyword is Level, Storage, Messages, Pool, FullPool, DifferentialPool, or IncrementalPool, and the value is as defined on the respective directive formats for the Job resource. You may specify multiple Job-overrides on one Run directive by separating them with one or more spaces or by separating them with a trailing comma. For example:
Date-time-specification determines when the Job is to be run. The specification is a repetition, and as a default Bacula is set to run a job at the beginning of the hour of every hour of every day of every week of every month of every year. This is not normally what you want, so you must specify or limit when you want the job to run. Any specification given is assumed to be repetitive in nature and will serve to override or limit the default repetition. This is done by specifying masks or times for the hour, day of the month, day of the week, week of the month, week of the year, and month when you want the job to run. By specifying one or more of the above, you can define a schedule to repeat at almost any frequency you want.
Basically, you must supply a month, day, hour, and minute the Job is to be run. Of these four items to be specified, day is special in that you may either specify a day of the month such as 1, 2, ... 31, or you may specify a day of the week such as Monday, Tuesday, ... Sunday. Finally, you may also specify a week qualifier to restrict the schedule to the first, second, third, fourth, or fifth week of the month.
For example, if you specify only a day of the week, such as Tuesday the Job will be run every hour of every Tuesday of every Month. That is the month and hour remain set to the defaults of every month and all hours.
Note, by default with no other specification, your job will run at the beginning of every hour. If you wish your job to run more than once in any given hour, you will need to specify multiple run specifications each with a different minute.
The date/time to run the Job can be specified in the following way in pseudo-BNF:
<void-keyword> = on
<at-keyword> = at
<week-keyword> = 1st | 2nd | 3rd | 4th | 5th | 6th | first |
second | third | fourth | fifth | sixth
<wday-keyword> = sun | mon | tue | wed | thu | fri | sat |
sunday | monday | tuesday | wednesday |
thursday | friday | saturday
<week-of-year-keyword> = w00 | w01 | ... w52 | w53
<month-keyword> = jan | feb | mar | apr | may | jun | jul |
aug | sep | oct | nov | dec | january |
february | ... | december
<daily-keyword> = daily
<weekly-keyword> = weekly
<monthly-keyword> = monthly
<hourly-keyword> = hourly
<digit> = 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 0
<number> = <digit> | <digit><number>
<12hour> = 0 | 1 | 2 | ... 12
<hour> = 0 | 1 | 2 | ... 23
<minute> = 0 | 1 | 2 | ... 59
<day> = 1 | 2 | ... 31 | lastday
<time> = <hour>:<minute> |
<12hour>:<minute>am |
<12hour>:<minute>pm
<time-spec> = <at-keyword> <time> |
<hourly-keyword>
<date-keyword> = <void-keyword> <weekly-keyword>
<day-range> = <day>-<day>
<month-range> = <month-keyword>-<month-keyword>
<wday-range> = <wday-keyword>-<wday-keyword>
<range> = <day-range> | <month-range> |
<wday-range>
<date> = <date-keyword> | <day> | <range>
<date-spec> = <date> | <date-spec>
<day-spec> = <day> | <wday-keyword> |
<day> | <wday-range> |
<week-keyword> <wday-keyword> |
<week-keyword> <wday-range> |
<daily-keyword>
<month-spec> = <month-keyword> | <month-range> |
<monthly-keyword>
<date-time-spec> = <month-spec> <day-spec> <time-spec>
Note, the Week of Year specification wnn follows the ISO standard definition of the week of the year, where Week 1 is the week in which the first Thursday of the year occurs, or alternatively, the week which contains the 4th of January. Weeks are numbered w01 to w53. w00 for Bacula is the week that precedes the first ISO week (i.e. has the first few days of the year if any occur before Thursday). w00 is not defined by the ISO specification. A week starts with Monday and ends with Sunday.
According to the NIST (US National Institute of Standards and Technology), 12am and 12pm are ambiguous and can be defined to anything. However, 12:01am is the same as 00:01 and 12:01pm is the same as 12:01, so Bacula defines 12am as 00:00 (midnight) and 12pm as 12:00 (noon). You can avoid this abiguity (confusion) by using 24 hour time specifications (i.e. no am/pm). This is the definition in Bacula version 2.0.3 and later.
An example schedule resource that is named WeeklyCycle and runs a job with level full each Sunday at 2:05am and an incremental job Monday through Saturday at 2:05am is:
Schedule {
Name = "WeeklyCycle"
Run = Level=Full sun at 2:05
Run = Level=Incremental mon-sat at 2:05
}
An example of a possible monthly cycle is as follows:
Schedule {
Name = "MonthlyCycle"
Run = Level=Full Pool=Monthly 1st sun at 2:05
Run = Level=Differential 2nd-5th sun at 2:05
Run = Level=Incremental Pool=Daily mon-sat at 2:05
}
The first of every month:
Schedule {
Name = "First"
Run = Level=Full on 1 at 2:05
Run = Level=Incremental on 2-31 at 2:05
}
Every 10 minutes:
Schedule {
Name = "TenMinutes"
Run = Level=Full hourly at 0:05
Run = Level=Full hourly at 0:15
Run = Level=Full hourly at 0:25
Run = Level=Full hourly at 0:35
Run = Level=Full hourly at 0:45
Run = Level=Full hourly at 0:55
}
Internally Bacula keeps a schedule as a bit mask. There are six masks and a minute field to each schedule. The masks are hour, day of the month (mday), month, day of the week (wday), week of the month (wom), and week of the year (woy). The schedule is initialized to have the bits of each of these masks set, which means that at the beginning of every hour, the job will run. When you specify a month for the first time, the mask will be cleared and the bit corresponding to your selected month will be selected. If you specify a second month, the bit corresponding to it will also be added to the mask. Thus when Bacula checks the masks to see if the bits are set corresponding to the current time, your job will run only in the two months you have set. Likewise, if you set a time (hour), the hour mask will be cleared, and the hour you specify will be set in the bit mask and the minutes will be stored in the minute field.
For any schedule you have defined, you can see how these bits are set by doing a show schedules command in the Console program. Please note that the bit mask is zero based, and Sunday is the first day of the week (bit zero).
-
The FileSet resource defines what files are to be included or excluded in a backup job. A FileSet resource is required for each backup Job. It consists of a list of files or directories to be included, a list of files or directories to be excluded and the various backup options such as compression, encryption, and signatures that are to be applied to each file.
Any change to the list of the included files will cause Bacula to automatically create a new FileSet (defined by the name and an MD5 checksum of the Include/Exclude contents). Each time a new FileSet is created, Bacula will ensure that the next backup is always a Full save.
Bacula is designed to handle most character sets of the world, US ASCII, German, French, Chinese, ... However, it does this by encoding everything in UTF-8, and it expects all configuration files (including those read on Win32 machines) to be in UTF-8 format. UTF-8 is typically the default on Linux machines, but not on all Unix machines, nor on Windows, so you must take some care to ensure that your locale is set properly before starting Bacula. On most modern Win32 machines, you can edit the conf files with notebook and choose output encoding UTF-8.
To ensure that Bacula configuration files can be correctly read including foreign characters the LANG environment variable must end in .UTF-8. A full example is en_US.UTF-8. The exact syntax may vary a bit from OS to OS, and exactly how you define it will also vary.
Bacula assumes that all filenames are in UTF-8 format on Linux and Unix machines. On Win32 they are in Unicode (UTF-16), and will be automatically converted to UTF-8 format.
We strongly recommend against setting this directive to yes, since doing so may cause you to have an incomplete set of backups.
If this directive is set to yes, any changes you make to the FileSet Include or Exclude lists, will not force a Full during subsequent backups.
The default is no, in which case, if you change the Include or Exclude, Bacula will force a Full backup to ensure that everything is properly backed up.
The Include resource must contain a list of directories and/or files to be processed in the backup job. Normally, all files found in all subdirectories of any directory in the Include File list will be backed up. Note, see below for the definition of file-list. The Include resource may also contain one or more Options resources that specify options such as compression to be applied to all or any subset of the files found when processing the file-list for backup. Please see below for more details concerning Options resources.
There can be any number of Include resources within the FileSet, each having its own list of directories or files to be backed up and the backup options defined by one or more Options resources. The file-list consists of one file or directory name per line. Directory names should be specified without a trailing slash with Unix path notation.
Windows users, please take note to specify directories (even c:/...) in Unix path notation. If you use Windows conventions, you will most likely not be able to restore your files due to the fact that the Windows path separator was defined as an escape character long before Windows existed, and Bacula adheres to that convention (i.e.
means the next character appears as itself).
You should always specify a full path for every directory and file that you list in the FileSet. In addition, on Windows machines, you should always prefix the directory or filename with the drive specification (e.g. c:/xxx) using Unix directory name separators (forward slash). The drive letter itself can be upper or lower case (e.g. c:/xxx or C:/xxx).
Bacula's default for processing directories is to recursively descend in the directory saving all files and subdirectories. Bacula will not by default cross filesystems (or mount points in Unix parlance). This means that if you specify the root partition (e.g. /), Bacula will save only the root partition and not any of the other mounted filesystems. Similarly on Windows systems, you must explicitly specify each of the drives you want saved (e.g. c:/ and d:/ ...). In addition, at least for Windows systems, you will most likely want to enclose each specification within double quotes particularly if the directory (or file) name contains spaces. The df command on Unix systems will show you which mount points you must specify to save everything. See below for an example.
Take special care not to include a directory twice or Bacula will backup the same files two times wasting a lot of space on your archive device. Including a directory twice is very easy to do. For example:
Include {
Options { compression=GZIP }
File = /
File = /usr
}
on a Unix system where /usr is a subdirectory (rather than a mounted filesystem) will cause /usr to be backed up twice.
Please take note of the following items in the FileSet syntax:
The Options resource is optional, but when specified, it will contain a list of keyword=value options to be applied to the file-list. See below for the definition of file-list. Multiple Options resources may be specified one after another. As the files are found in the specified directories, the Options will applied to the filenames to determine if and how the file should be backed up. The wildcard and regular expression pattern matching parts of the Options resources are checked in the order they are specified in the FileSet until the first one that matches. Once one matches, the compression and other flags within the Options specification will apply to the pattern matched.
A key point is that in the absence of an Option or no other Option is matched, every file is accepted for backing up. This means that if you want to exclude something, you must explicitly specify an Option with an exclude = yes and some pattern matching.
Once Bacula determines that the Options resource matches the file under consideration, that file will be saved without looking at any other Options resources that may be present. This means that any wild cards must appear before an Options resource without wild cards.
If for some reason, Bacula checks all the Options resources to a file under consideration for backup, but there are no matches (generally because of wild cards that don't match), Bacula as a default will then backup the file. This is quite logical if you consider the case of no Options clause is specified, where you want everything to be backed up, and it is important to keep in mind when excluding as mentioned above.
However, one additional point is that in the case that no match was found, Bacula will use the options found in the last Options resource. As a consequence, if you want a particular set of “default” options, you should put them in an Options resource after any other Options.
It is a good idea to put all your wild-card and regex expressions inside double quotes to prevent conf file scanning problems.
This is perhaps a bit overwhelming, so there are a number of examples included below to illustrate how this works.
You find yourself using a lot of Regex statements, which will cost quite a lot of CPU time, we recommend you simplify them if you can, or better yet convert them to Wild statements which are much more efficient.
The directives within an Options resource may be one of the following:
Software compression is very important if you are writing your Volumes to a file, and it can also be helpful if you have a fast computer but a slow network, otherwise it is generally better to rely your tape drive's hardware compression. As noted above, it is not generally a good idea to do both software and hardware compression.
Specifying GZIP uses the default compression level 6 (i.e. GZIP is identical to GZIP6). If you want a different compression level (1 through 9), you can specify it by appending the level number with no intervening spaces to GZIP. Thus compression=GZIP1 would give minimum compression but the fastest algorithm, and compression=GZIP9 would give the highest level of compression, but requires more computation. According to the GZIP documentation, compression levels greater than six generally give very little extra compression and are rather CPU intensive.
You can overwrite this option per Storage resource with AllowCompressionAllowCompression option.
LZO provides much faster compression and decompression speed but lower compression ratio than GZIP. If your CPU is fast enough you should be able to compress your data without making the backup duration longer.
Note that bacula only use one compression level LZO1X-1 specified by LZO.
You can overwrite this option per Storage resource with AllowCompressionAllowCompression option.
The options letters specified are used when running a Backup Level=Full with BaseJobs. The options letters are the same as in the verify= options below.
A useful set of general options on the Level=Catalog or Level=DiskToCatalog verify is pins5 i.e. compare permission bits, then inodes, number of links, size, and finally MD5 changes.
rufus-fd: /misc is a different filesystem. Will not descend from / into /misc rufus-fd: /net is a different filesystem. Will not descend from / into /net rufus-fd: /var/lib/nfs/rpc_pipefs is a different filesystem. Will not descend from /var/lib/nfs into /var/lib/nfs/rpc_pipefs rufus-fd: /selinux is a different filesystem. Will not descend from / into /selinux rufus-fd: /sys is a different filesystem. Will not descend from / into /sys rufus-fd: /dev is a different filesystem. Will not descend from / into /dev rufus-fd: /home is a different filesystem. Will not descend from / into /home
Note: in older versions of Bacula, the above message was of the form:
Filesystem change prohibited. Will not descend into /misc
If you wish to backup multiple filesystems, you can explicitly list each filesystem you want saved. Otherwise, if you set the onefs option to no, Bacula will backup all mounted file systems (i.e. traverse mount points) that are found within the FileSet. Thus if you have NFS or Samba file systems mounted on a directory listed in your FileSet, they will also be backed up. Normally, it is preferable to set onefs=yes and to explicitly name each filesystem you want backed up. Explicitly naming the filesystems you want backed up avoids the possibility of getting into a infinite loop recursing filesystems. Another possibility is to use onefs=no and to set fstype=ext2, .... See the example below for more details.
If you think that Bacula should be backing up a particular directory and it is not, and you have onefs=no set, before you complain, please do:
stat / stat <filesystem>
where you replace filesystem with the one in question. If the Device: number is different for / and for your filesystem, then they are on different filesystems. E.g.
stat / File: `/' Size: 4096 Blocks: 16 IO Block: 4096 directory Device: 302h/770d Inode: 2 Links: 26 Access: (0755/drwxr-xr-x) Uid: ( 0/ root) Gid: ( 0/ root) Access: 2005-11-10 12:28:01.000000000 +0100 Modify: 2005-09-27 17:52:32.000000000 +0200 Change: 2005-09-27 17:52:32.000000000 +0200 stat /net File: `/home' Size: 4096 Blocks: 16 IO Block: 4096 directory Device: 308h/776d Inode: 2 Links: 7 Access: (0755/drwxr-xr-x) Uid: ( 0/ root) Gid: ( 0/ root) Access: 2005-11-10 12:28:02.000000000 +0100 Modify: 2005-11-06 12:36:48.000000000 +0100 Change: 2005-11-06 12:36:48.000000000 +0100
Also be aware that even if you include /home in your list of files to backup, as you most likely should, you will get the informational message that “/home is a different filesystem” when Bacula is processing the / directory. This message does not indicate an error. This message means that while examining the File = referred to in the second part of the message, Bacula will not descend into the directory mentioned in the first part of the message. However, it is possible that the separate filesystem will be backed up despite the message. For example, consider the following FileSet:
File = / File = /var
where /var is a separate filesystem. In this example, you will get a message saying that Bacula will not decend from / into /var. But it is important to realise that Bacula will descend into /var from the second File directive shown above. In effect, the warning is bogus, but it is supplied to alert you to possible omissions from your FileSet. In this example, /var will be backed up. If you changed the FileSet such that it did not specify /var, then /var will not be backed up.
Restrictions: Bacula reads files in 32K buffers. If the whole buffer is zero, it will be treated as a sparse block and not written to tape. However, if any part of the buffer is non-zero, the whole buffer will be written to tape, possibly including some disk sectors (generally 4098 bytes) that are all zero. As a consequence, Bacula's detection of sparse blocks is in 32K increments rather than the system block size. If anyone considers this to be a real problem, please send in a request for change with the reason.
If you are not familiar with sparse files, an example is say a file where you wrote 512 bytes at address zero, then 512 bytes at address 1 million. The operating system will allocate only two blocks, and the empty space or hole will have nothing allocated. However, when you read the sparse file and read the addresses where nothing was written, the OS will return all zeros as if the space were allocated, and if you backup such a file, a lot of space will be used to write zeros to the volume. Worse yet, when you restore the file, all the previously empty space will now be allocated using much more disk space. By turning on the sparse option, Bacula will specifically look for empty space in the file, and any empty space will not be written to the Volume, nor will it be restored. The price to pay for this is that Bacula must search each block it reads before writing it. On a slow system, this may be important. If you suspect you have sparse files, you should benchmark the difference or set sparse for only those files that are really sparse.
You probably should not use this option on files or raw disk devices that are not really sparse files (i.e. have holes in them).
Unfortunately, when Bacula runs a RunBeforeJob, it waits until that script terminates, and if the script accesses the FIFO to write into the it, the Bacula job will block and everything will stall. However, Vladimir Stavrinov as supplied tip that allows this feature to work correctly. He simply adds the following to the beginning of the RunBeforeJob script:
exec > /dev/null
This option is particularly useful for sites where users are sensitive to their MailBox file access time. It replaces both the keepatime option without the inconveniences of that option (see below).
If your Operating System does not support this option, it will be silently ignored by Bacula.
Note, if you use this feature, when Bacula resets the access time, the change time (st_ctime) will automatically be modified by the system, so on the next incremental job, the file will be backed up even if it has not changed. As a consequence, you will probably also want to use mtimeonly = yes as well as keepatime (thanks to Rudolf Cejka for this tip).
zog-fd: Client1.2007-03-31_09.46.21 Error: /tmp/test mtime changed during backup.
In general, it is recommended to use this option.
You may want to test your expressions prior to running your backup by using the bwild program. Please see the Utilitiesbwildutilitychapter of the Bacula Enterprise Utility programs for more information. You can also test your full FileSet definition by using the estimateestimateconsolecommand in the Bacula Enterprise Console Manual. It is recommended to enclose the string in double quotes.
It is recommended to enclose the string in double quotes.
You may want to test your expressions prior to running your backup by using the bwild program. Please see the Utilitiesbwildutilitychapter of the Bacula Enterprise Utility programs for more information. You can also test your full FileSet definition by using the estimateestimateconsolecommand in the Bacula Enterprise Console Manual. An example of excluding with the WildDir option on Win32 machines is presented below.
It is recommended to enclose the string in double quotes.
You may want to test your expressions prior to running your backup by using the bwild program. Please see the Utilitiesbwildutilitychapter of the Bacula Enterprise Utility programs for more information. You can also test your full FileSet definition by using the estimateestimateconsolecommand in the Bacula Enterprise Console Manual. An example of excluding with the WildFile option on Win32 machines is presented below.
It is recommended to enclose the string in double quotes.
The regex libraries differ from one operating system to another, and in addition, regular expressions are complicated, so you may want to test your expressions prior to running your backup by using the bregex program. Please see the Utilitiesbwildutilitychapter of the Bacula Enterprise Utility programs for more information. You can also test your full FileSet definition by using the estimateestimateconsolecommand in the Bacula Enterprise Console Manual.
You find yourself using a lot of Regex statements, which will cost quite a lot of CPU time, we recommend you simplify them if you can, or better yet convert them to Wild statements which are much more efficient.
It is recommended to enclose the string in double quotes.
The regex libraries differ from one operating system to another, and in addition, regular expressions are complicated, so you may want to test your expressions prior to running your backup by using the bregex program. Please see the bregexbregexutilitycommand of the Bacula Enterprise Utility programs more.
It is recommended to enclose the string in double quotes.
The regex libraries differ from one operating system to another, and in addition, regular expressions are complicated, so you may want to test your expressions prior to running your backup by using the bregex program. Please see the bregexbregexutilitycommand of the Bacula Enterprise Utility programs more.
For other operating systems there is support for either POSIX ACLs or the more extensible NFSv4 ACLs.
The ACL stream format between Operation Systems is not compatible so for example an ACL saved on Linux cannot be restored on Solaris.
The following Operating Systems are currently supported:
The XATTR stream format between Operating Systems is not compatible so an XATTR saved on Linux cannot for example be restored on Solaris.
On some operating systems ACLs are also stored as Extended Attributes (Linux, Darwin, FreeBSD) Bacula checks if you have the aclsupport option enabled and if so will not save the same info when saving extended attribute information. Thus ACLs are only saved once.
The following Operating Systems are currently supported:
ext2, jfs, ntfs, proc, reiserfs, xfs, usbdevfs, sysfs, smbfs, iso9660.
You may have multiple Fstype directives, and thus permit matching of multiple filesystem types within a single Options resource. If the type specified on the fstype directive does not match the filesystem for a particular directive, that directory will not be backed up. This directive can be used to prevent backing up non-local filesystems. Normally, when you use this directive, you would also set onefs=no so that Bacula will traverse filesystems.
The permitted drivetype names are:
removable, fixed, remote, cdrom, ramdisk
You may have multiple Driveype directives, and thus permit matching of multiple drive types within a single Options resource. If the type specified on the drivetype directive does not match the filesystem for a particular directive, that directory will not be backed up. This directive can be used to prevent backing up non-local filesystems. Normally, when you use this directive, you would also set onefs=no so that Bacula will traverse filesystems.
This option is not implemented in Unix/Linux systems.
file-list is a list of directory and/or filename names specified with a File = directive. To include names containing spaces, enclose the name between double-quotes. Wild-cards are not interpreted in file-lists. They can only be specified in Options resources.
There are a number of special cases when specifying directories and files in a file-list. They are:
Include {
Options { compression=GZIP }
@/home/files/my-files
}
This allows you to have a job that, for example, includes all the local partitions even if you change the partitioning by adding a disk. The examples below show you how to do this. However, please note two things:
1. if you want the local filesystems, you probably should be using the new fstype directive, which was added in version 1.36.3 and set onefs=no.
2. the exact syntax of the command needed in the examples below is very system dependent. For example, on recent Linux systems, you may need to add the -P option, on FreeBSD systems, the options will be different as well.
In general, you will need to prefix your command or commands with a sh -c so that they are invoked by a shell. This will not be the case if you are invoking a script as in the second example below. Also, you must take care to escape (precede with a \) wild-cards, shell character, and to ensure that any spaces in your command are escaped as well. If you use a single quotes (') within a double quote ("), Bacula will treat everything between the single quotes as one field so it will not be necessary to escape the spaces. In general, getting all the quotes and escapes correct is a real pain as you can see by the next example. As a consequence, it is often easier to put everything in a file and simply use the file name within Bacula. In that case the sh -c will not be necessary providing the first line of the file is #!/bin/sh.
As an example:
Include {
Options { signature = SHA1 }
File = "|sh -c 'df -l | grep \"^/dev/hd[ab]\" | grep -v \".*/tmp\" \
| awk \"{print \\$6}\"'"
}
will produce a list of all the local partitions on a Red Hat Linux system. Note, the above line was split, but should normally be written on one line. Quoting is a real problem because you must quote for Bacula which consists of preceding every \ and every " with a \, and you must also quote for the shell command. In the end, it is probably easier just to execute a small file with:
Include {
Options {
signature=MD5
}
File = "|my_partitions"
}
where my_partitions has:
#!/bin/sh
df -l | grep "^/dev/hd[ab]" | grep -v ".*/tmp" \
| awk "{print \$6}"
If the vertical bar (|) in front of my_partitions is preceded by a backslash as in \|, the program will be executed on the Client's machine instead of on the Director's machine. Please note that if the filename is given within quotes, you will need to use two slashes. An example, provided by John Donagher, that backs up all the local UFS partitions on a remote system is:
FileSet {
Name = "All local partitions"
Include {
Options { signature=SHA1; onefs=yes; }
File = "\\|bash -c \"df -klF ufs | tail +2 | awk '{print \$6}'\""
}
}
The above requires two backslash characters after the double quote (one preserves the next one). If you are a Linux user, just change the ufs to ext3 (or your preferred filesystem type), and you will be in business.
If you know what filesystems you have mounted on your system, e.g. for Red Hat Linux normally only ext2 and ext3, you can backup all local filesystems using something like:
Include {
Options { signature = SHA1; onfs=no; fstype=ext2 }
File = /
}
Include {
Options { signature = SHA1 }
File = "</home/files/local-filelist"
}
If you precede the less-than sign () with a backslash as in \, the file-list will be read on the Client machine instead of on the Director's machine. Please note that if the filename is given within quotes, you will need to use two slashes.
Include {
Options { signature = SHA1 }
File = "\\</home/xxx/filelist-on-client"
}
Include {
Options { signature=MD5; sparse=yes }
File = /dev/hd6
}
will backup the data in device /dev/hd6. Note, the bf /dev/hd6 must be the raw partition itself. Bacula will not back it up as a raw device if you specify a symbolic link to a raw device such as my be created by the LVM Snapshot utilities.
Ludovic Strappazon has pointed out that this feature can be used to backup a full Microsoft Windows disk. Simply boot into the system using a Linux Rescue disk, then load a statically linked Bacula as described in the Disaster Recovery Using BaculaRescueChapter chapter of this manual. Then save the whole disk partition. In the case of a disaster, you can then restore the desired partition by again booting with the rescue disk and doing a restore of the partition.
Include {
Options {
signature=SHA1
readfifo=yes
}
File = /home/abc/fifo
}
if /home/abc/fifo is a fifo device, Bacula will open the fifo, read it, and store all data thus obtained on the Volume. Please note, you must have a process on the system that is writing into the fifo, or Bacula will hang, and after one minute of waiting, Bacula will give up and go on to the next file. The data read can be anything since Bacula treats it as a stream.
This feature can be an excellent way to do a “hot” backup of a very large database. You can use the RunBeforeJob to create the fifo and to start a program that dynamically reads your database and writes it to the fifo. Bacula will then write it to the Volume. Be sure to read the readfifo sectionreadfifo that gives a tip to ensure that the RunBeforeJob does not block Bacula.
During the restore operation, the inverse is true, after Bacula creates the fifo if there was any data stored with it (no need to explicitly list it or add any options), that data will be written back to the fifo. As a consequence, if any such FIFOs exist in the fileset to be restored, you must ensure that there is a reader program or Bacula will block, and after one minute, Bacula will time out the write to the fifo and move on to the next file.
# List of files to be backed up
FileSet {
Name = "MyFileSet"
Include {
Options {
signature = MD5
}
File = /home
Exclude Dir Containing = .excludeme
}
}
But in /home, there may be hundreds of directories of users and some people want to indicate that they don't want to have certain directories backed up. For example, with the above FileSet, if the user or sysadmin creates a file named .excludeme in specific directories, such as
/home/user/www/cache/.excludeme /home/user/temp/.excludeme
then Bacula will not backup the two directories named:
/home/user/www/cache /home/user/temp
NOTE: subdirectories will not be backed up. That is, the directive applies to the two directories in question and any children (be they files, directories, etc).
The following is an example of a valid FileSet resource definition. Note, the first Include pulls in the contents of the file /etc/backup.list when Bacula is started (i.e. the @), and that file must have each filename to be backed up preceded by a File = and on a separate line.
FileSet {
Name = "Full Set"
Include {
Options {
Compression=GZIP
signature=SHA1
Sparse = yes
}
@/etc/backup.list
}
Include {
Options {
wildfile = "*.o"
wildfile = "*.exe"
Exclude = yes
}
File = /root/myfile
File = /usr/lib/another_file
}
}
In the above example, all the files contained in /etc/backup.list will be compressed with GZIP compression, an SHA1 signature will be computed on the file's contents (its data), and sparse file handling will apply.
The two directories /root/myfile and /usr/lib/another_file will also be saved without any options, but all files in those directories with the extensions .o and .exe will be excluded.
Let's say that you now want to exclude the directory /tmp. The simplest way to do so is to add an exclude directive that lists /tmp. The example above would then become:
FileSet {
Name = "Full Set"
Include {
Options {
Compression=GZIP
signature=SHA1
Sparse = yes
}
@/etc/backup.list
}
Include {
Options {
wildfile = "*.o"
wildfile = "*.exe"
Exclude = yes
}
File = /root/myfile
File = /usr/lib/another_file
}
Exclude {
File = /tmp # don't add trailing /
}
}
You can add wild-cards to the File directives listed in the Exclude directory, but you need to take care because if you exclude a directory, it and all files and directories below it will also be excluded.
Now lets take a slight variation on the above and suppose you want to save all your whole filesystem except /tmp. The problem that comes up is that Bacula will not normally cross from one filesystem to another. Doing a df command, you get the following output:
[kern@rufus k]$ df Filesystem 1k-blocks Used Available Use% Mounted on /dev/hda5 5044156 439232 4348692 10% / /dev/hda1 62193 4935 54047 9% /boot /dev/hda9 20161172 5524660 13612372 29% /home /dev/hda2 62217 6843 52161 12% /rescue /dev/hda8 5044156 42548 4745376 1% /tmp /dev/hda6 5044156 2613132 2174792 55% /usr none 127708 0 127708 0% /dev/shm //minimatou/c$ 14099200 9895424 4203776 71% /mnt/mmatou lmatou:/ 1554264 215884 1258056 15% /mnt/matou lmatou:/home 2478140 1589952 760072 68% /mnt/matou/home lmatou:/usr 1981000 1199960 678628 64% /mnt/matou/usr lpmatou:/ 995116 484112 459596 52% /mnt/pmatou lpmatou:/home 19222656 2787880 15458228 16% /mnt/pmatou/home lpmatou:/usr 2478140 2038764 311260 87% /mnt/pmatou/usr deuter:/ 4806936 97684 4465064 3% /mnt/deuter deuter:/home 4806904 280100 4282620 7% /mnt/deuter/home deuter:/files 44133352 27652876 14238608 67% /mnt/deuter/files
And we see that there are a number of separate filesystems (/ /boot /home /rescue /tmp and /usr not to mention mounted systems). If you specify only / in your Include list, Bacula will only save the Filesystem /dev/hda5. To save all filesystems except /tmp with out including any of the Samba or NFS mounted systems, and explicitly excluding a /tmp, /proc, .journal, and .autofsck, which you will not want to be saved and restored, you can use the following:
FileSet {
Name = Include_example
Include {
Options {
wilddir = /proc
wilddir = /tmp
wildfile = "/.journal"
wildfile = "/.autofsck"
exclude = yes
}
File = /
File = /boot
File = /home
File = /rescue
File = /usr
}
}
Since /tmp is on its own filesystem and it was not explicitly named in the Include list, it is not really needed in the exclude list. It is better to list it in the Exclude list for clarity, and in case the disks are changed so that it is no longer in its own partition.
Now, lets assume you only want to backup .Z and .gz files and nothing else. This is a bit trickier because Bacula by default will select everything to backup, so we must exclude everything but .Z and .gz files. If we take the first example above and make the obvious modifications to it, we might come up with a FileSet that looks like this:
FileSet {
Name = "Full Set"
Include { !!!!!!!!!!!!
Options { This
wildfile = "*.Z" example
wildfile = "*.gz" doesn't
work
} !!!!!!!!!!!!
File = /myfile
}
}
The *.Z and *.gz files will indeed be backed up, but all other files that are not matched by the Options directives will automatically be backed up too (i.e. that is the default rule).
To accomplish what we want, we must explicitly exclude all other files. We do this with the following:
FileSet {
Name = "Full Set"
Include {
Options {
wildfile = "*.Z"
wildfile = "*.gz"
}
Options {
Exclude = yes
RegexFile = ".*"
}
File = /myfile
}
}
The “trick” here was to add a RegexFile expression that matches all files. It does not match directory names, so all directories in /myfile will be backed up (the directory entry) and any *.Z and *.gz files contained in them. If you know that certain directories do not contain any *.Z or *.gz files and you do not want the directory entries backed up, you will need to explicitly exclude those directories. Backing up a directory entries is not very expensive.
Bacula uses the system regex library and some of them are different on different OSes. The above has been reported not to work on FreeBSD. This can be tested by using the estimate job=job-name listing command in the console and adapting the RegexFile expression appropriately. In a future version of Bacula, we will supply our own Regex code to avoid such system dependencies.
Please be aware that allowing Bacula to traverse or change file systems can be very dangerous. For example, with the following:
FileSet {
Name = "Bad example"
Include {
Options { onefs=no }
File = /mnt/matou
}
}
you will be backing up an NFS mounted partition (/mnt/matou), and since onefs is set to no, Bacula will traverse file systems. Now if /mnt/matou has the current machine's file systems mounted, as is often the case, you will get yourself into a recursive loop and the backup will never end.
As a final example, let's say that you have only one or two subdirectories of /home that you want to backup. For example, you want to backup only subdirectories beginning with the letter a and the letter b - i.e. /home/a* and /home/b*. Now, you might first try:
FileSet {
Name = "Full Set"
Include {
Options {
wilddir = "/home/a*"
wilddir = "/home/b*"
}
File = /home
}
}
The problem is that the above will include everything in /home. To get things to work correctly, you need to start with the idea of exclusion instead of inclusion. So, you could simply exclude all directories except the two you want to use:
FileSet {
Name = "Full Set"
Include {
Options {
RegexDir = "^/home/[c-z]"
exclude = yes
}
File = /home
}
}
And assuming that all subdirectories start with a lowercase letter, this would work.
An alternative would be to include the two subdirectories desired and exclude everything else:
FileSet {
Name = "Full Set"
Include {
Options {
wilddir = "/home/a*"
wilddir = "/home/b*"
}
Options {
RegexDir = ".*"
exclude = yes
}
File = /home
}
}
The following example shows how to back up only the My Pictures directory inside the My Documents directory for all users in C:/Documents and Settings, i.e. everything matching the pattern:
C:/Documents and Settings/*/My Documents/My Pictures/*
To understand how this can be achieved, there are two important points to remember:
Firstly, Bacula traverses the filesystem starting from the File = lines. It stops descending when a directory is excluded, so you must include all ancestor (higher level) directories of each directory containing files to be included.
Secondly, each directory and file is compared to the Options clauses in the order they appear in the FileSet. When a match is found, no further Optionss are compared and the directory or file is either included or excluded.
The FileSet resource definition below implements this by including specifc directories and files and excluding everything else.
FileSet {
Name = "AllPictures"
Include {
File = "C:/Documents and Settings"
Options {
signature = SHA1
verify = s1
IgnoreCase = yes
# Include all users' directories so we reach the inner ones. Unlike a
# WildDir pattern ending in *, this RegExDir only matches the top-level
# directories and not any inner ones.
RegExDir = "^C:/Documents and Settings/[^/]+$"
# Ditto all users' My Documents directories.
WildDir = "C:/Documents and Settings/*/My Documents"
# Ditto all users' My Documents/My Pictures directories.
WildDir = "C:/Documents and Settings/*/My Documents/My Pictures"
# Include the contents of the My Documents/My Pictures directories and
# any subdirectories.
Wild = "C:/Documents and Settings/*/My Documents/My Pictures/*"
}
Options {
Exclude = yes
IgnoreCase = yes
# Exclude everything else, in particular any files at the top level and
# any other directories or files in the users' directories.
Wild = "C:/Documents and Settings/*"
}
}
}
The following FileSet definition will backup a raw partition:
FileSet {
Name = "RawPartition"
Include {
Options { sparse=yes }
File = /dev/hda2
}
}
While backing up and restoring a raw partition, you should ensure that no other process including the system is writing to that partition. As a precaution, you are strongly urged to ensure that the raw partition is not mounted or is mounted read-only. If necessary, this can be done using the RunBeforeJob directive.
You may also include full filenames or directory names in addition to using wild-cards and Exclude=yes in the Options resource as specified above by simply including the files to be excluded in an Exclude resource within the FileSet. It accepts wild-cards pattern, so for a directory, don't add a trailing /. For example:
FileSet {
Name = Exclusion_example
Include {
Options {
Signature = SHA1
}
File = /
File = /boot
File = /home
File = /rescue
File = /usr
}
Exclude {
File = /proc
File = /tmp # Don't add trailing /
File = .journal
File = .autofsck
}
}
FileSet {
Name = "Windows Set"
Include {
Options {
WildFile = "*.obj"
WildFile = "*.exe"
exclude = yes
}
File = "c:/My Documents"
}
}
For exclude lists to work correctly on Windows, you must observe the following rules:
Thanks to Thiago Lima for summarizing the above items for us. If you are having difficulties getting includes or excludes to work, you might want to try using the estimate job=xxx listing command documented in the estimateestimateconsolecommand of Bacula Enterprise Console Manual.
On Win32 systems, if you move a directory or file or rename a file into the set of files being backed up, and a Full backup has already been made, Bacula will not know there are new files to be saved during an Incremental or Differential backup (blame Microsoft, not me). To avoid this problem, please copy any new directory or files into the backup area. If you do not have enough disk to copy the directory or files, move them, but then initiate a Full backup.
The following example was contributed by Russell Howe. Please note that for presentation purposes, the lines beginning with Data and Internet have been wrapped and should included on the previous line with one space.
This is my Windows 2000 fileset:
FileSet {
Name = "Windows 2000"
Include {
Options {
signature = MD5
Exclude = yes
IgnoreCase = yes
# Exclude Mozilla-based programs' file caches
WildDir = "[A-Z]:/Documents and Settings/*/Application
Data/*/Profiles/*/*/Cache"
WildDir = "[A-Z]:/Documents and Settings/*/Application
Data/*/Profiles/*/*/Cache.Trash"
WildDir = "[A-Z]:/Documents and Settings/*/Application
Data/*/Profiles/*/*/ImapMail"
# Exclude user's registry files - they're always in use anyway.
WildFile = "[A-Z]:/Documents and Settings/*/Local Settings/Application
Data/Microsoft/Windows/usrclass.*"
WildFile = "[A-Z]:/Documents and Settings/*/ntuser.*"
# Exclude directories full of lots and lots of useless little files
WildDir = "[A-Z]:/Documents and Settings/*/Cookies"
WildDir = "[A-Z]:/Documents and Settings/*/Recent"
WildDir = "[A-Z]:/Documents and Settings/*/Local Settings/History"
WildDir = "[A-Z]:/Documents and Settings/*/Local Settings/Temp"
WildDir = "[A-Z]:/Documents and Settings/*/Local Settings/Temporary
Internet Files"
# These are always open and unable to be backed up
WildFile = "[A-Z]:/Documents and Settings/All Users/Application
Data/Microsoft/Network/Downloader/qmgr[01].dat"
# Some random bits of Windows we want to ignore
WildFile = "[A-Z]:/WINNT/security/logs/scepol.log"
WildDir = "[A-Z]:/WINNT/system32/config"
WildDir = "[A-Z]:/WINNT/msdownld.tmp"
WildDir = "[A-Z]:/WINNT/Internet Logs"
WildDir = "[A-Z]:/WINNT/$Nt*Uninstall*"
WildDir = "[A-Z]:/WINNT/sysvol"
WildFile = "[A-Z]:/WINNT/cluster/CLUSDB"
WildFile = "[A-Z]:/WINNT/cluster/CLUSDB.LOG"
WildFile = "[A-Z]:/WINNT/NTDS/edb.log"
WildFile = "[A-Z]:/WINNT/NTDS/ntds.dit"
WildFile = "[A-Z]:/WINNT/NTDS/temp.edb"
WildFile = "[A-Z]:/WINNT/ntfrs/jet/log/edb.log"
WildFile = "[A-Z]:/WINNT/ntfrs/jet/ntfrs.jdb"
WildFile = "[A-Z]:/WINNT/ntfrs/jet/temp/tmp.edb"
WildFile = "[A-Z]:/WINNT/system32/CPL.CFG"
WildFile = "[A-Z]:/WINNT/system32/dhcp/dhcp.mdb"
WildFile = "[A-Z]:/WINNT/system32/dhcp/j50.log"
WildFile = "[A-Z]:/WINNT/system32/dhcp/tmp.edb"
WildFile = "[A-Z]:/WINNT/system32/LServer/edb.log"
WildFile = "[A-Z]:/WINNT/system32/LServer/TLSLic.edb"
WildFile = "[A-Z]:/WINNT/system32/LServer/tmp.edb"
WildFile = "[A-Z]:/WINNT/system32/wins/j50.log"
WildFile = "[A-Z]:/WINNT/system32/wins/wins.mdb"
WildFile = "[A-Z]:/WINNT/system32/wins/winstmp.mdb"
# Temporary directories & files
WildDir = "[A-Z]:/WINNT/Temp"
WildDir = "[A-Z]:/temp"
WildFile = "*.tmp"
WildDir = "[A-Z]:/tmp"
WildDir = "[A-Z]:/var/tmp"
# Recycle bins
WildDir = "[A-Z]:/RECYCLER"
# Swap files
WildFile = "[A-Z]:/pagefile.sys"
# These are programs and are easier to reinstall than restore from
# backup
WildDir = "[A-Z]:/cygwin"
WildDir = "[A-Z]:/Program Files/Grisoft"
WildDir = "[A-Z]:/Program Files/Java"
WildDir = "[A-Z]:/Program Files/Java Web Start"
WildDir = "[A-Z]:/Program Files/JavaSoft"
WildDir = "[A-Z]:/Program Files/Microsoft Office"
WildDir = "[A-Z]:/Program Files/Mozilla Firefox"
WildDir = "[A-Z]:/Program Files/Mozilla Thunderbird"
WildDir = "[A-Z]:/Program Files/mozilla.org"
WildDir = "[A-Z]:/Program Files/OpenOffice*"
}
# Our Win2k boxen all have C: and D: as the main hard drives.
File = "C:/"
File = "D:/"
}
}
Note, the three line of the above Exclude were split to fit on the document page, they should be written on a single line in real use.
NTFS filenames containing Unicode characters should now be supported as of version 1.37.30 or later.
If you wish to get an idea of what your FileSet will really backup or if your exclusion rules will work correctly, you can test it by using the estimate command in the Console program. See the estimateestimateconsolecommand of Bacula Enterprise Console Manual.
As an example, suppose you add the following test FileSet:
FileSet {
Name = Test
Include {
File = /home/xxx/test
Options {
regex = ".*\\.c$"
}
}
}
You could then add some test files to the directory /home/xxx/test and use the following command in the console:
estimate job=<any-job-name> listing client=<desired-client> fileset=Test
to give you a listing of all files that match. In the above example, it should be only files with names ending in .c.
The Client resource defines the attributes of the Clients that are served by this Director; that is the machines that are to be backed up. You will need one Client resource definition for each machine to be backed up.
The password is plain text. It is not generated through any special process, but it is preferable for security reasons to make the text random.
The Snapshot Retention directive defines the length of time that Bacula will keep Snapshots in the Catalog database and on the Client after the Snapshot creation. When this time period expires, and if using the snapshot prune command, Bacula will prune (remove) Snapshot records that are older than the specified Snapshot Retention period and will contact the FileDaemon to delete Snapshots from the system.
The Snapshot retention period is specified as seconds, minutes, hours, days, weeks, months, quarters, or years. See the Configuration chapterTime of this manual for additional details of time specification.
The default is 0 seconds, Snapshots are deleted at the end of the backup. The Job SnapshotRetention directive overwrites the Client SnapshotRetention directive.
File records may actually be retained for a shorter period than you specify on this directive if you specify either a shorter Job Retention or a shorter Volume Retention period. The shortest retention period of the three takes precedence. The time may be expressed in seconds, minutes, hours, days, weeks, months, quarters, or years. See the Configuration chapterTime of this manual for additional details of time specification.
The default is 60 days.
If a Job record is selected for pruning, all associated File and JobMedia records will also be pruned regardless of the File Retention period set. As a consequence, you normally will set the File retention period to be less than the Job retention period. The Job retention period can actually be less than the value you specify here if you set the Volume Retention directive in the Pool resource to a smaller duration. This is because the Job retention period and the Volume retention period are independently applied, so the smaller of the two takes precedence.
The Job retention period is specified as seconds, minutes, hours, days, weeks, months, quarters, or years. See the Configuration chapterTime of this manual for additional details of time specification.
The default is 180 days.
The speed parameter specifies the maximum allowed bandwidth that a job may use when started for this Client. The speed parameter should be specified in k/s, Kb/s, m/s or Mb/s, which are respective 1,000 bytes per second, 1,024 bytes per second, 1,000,000 bytes per second, or 1,048,576 bytes per second.
If the SD Calls Client directive is set to true in a Client resource any Backup, Restore, Verify, Copy, or Migration Job where the client is involved, the client will wait for the Storage daemon to contact it. By default this directive is set to false, and the Client will call the Storage daemon. This directive can be useful if your Storage daemon is behind a firewall that permits outgoing connections but not incoming one. The following picture shows the communications connection paths in both cases.
The following is an example of a valid Client resource definition:
Client {
Name = Minimatou
Address = minimatou
Catalog = MySQL
Password = very_good
}
The Storage resource defines which Storage daemons are available for use by the Director.
The password is plain text. It is not generated through any special process, but it is preferable for security reasons to use random text.
In addition, it is essential that you make the Media Type specification unique for each storage Device in the bacula-sd.conf file. If you have two DDS-4 drives that have incompatible formats, or if you have a DDS-4 drive and a DDS-4 autochanger, you almost certainly should specify different Media Types. During a restore, assuming a DDS-4 Media Type is associated with the Job, Bacula can decide to use any Storage daemon that supports Media Type DDS-4 and on any drive that supports it.
If you are writing to disk Volumes, please make doubly sure that each Device resource defined in the Storage daemon (and hence in the Director's conf file) has a unique media type. Otherwise for Bacula your restores may not work because Bacula will assume that you can mount any Media Type with the same name on any Device associated with that Media Type. This is possible with tape drives, but with disk drives, unless you are very clever you cannot mount a Volume in any directory - this can be done by creating an appropriate soft link.
Currently Bacula permits only a single Media Type per Storage Device definition. Consequently, if you have a drive that supports more than one Media Type, you can give a unique string to Volumes with different intrinsic Media Type (Media Type = DDS-3-4 for DDS-3 and DDS-4 types), but then those volumes will only be mounted on drives indicated with the dual type (DDS-3-4).
If you want to tie Bacula to using a single Storage daemon or drive, you must specify a unique Media Type for that drive. This is an important point that should be carefully understood. Note, this applies equally to Disk Volumes. If you define more than one disk Device resource in your Storage daemon's conf file, the Volumes on those two devices are in fact incompatible because one can not physically be mounted on the other device since they are found in different directories. For this reason, you probably should use two different Media Types for your two disk Devices (even though you might think of them as both being File types). You can find more on this subject in the Basic Volume ManagementDiskChapter chapter of this manual.
The MediaType specified in the Director's Storage resource, must correspond to the Media Type specified in the Device resource of the Storage daemon configuration file. This directive is required, and it is used by the Director and the Storage daemon to ensure that a Volume automatically selected from the Pool corresponds to the physical device. If a Storage daemon handles multiple devices (e.g. will write to various file Volumes on different partitions), this directive allows you to specify exactly which device.
As mentioned above, the value specified in the Director's Storage resource must agree with the value specified in the Device resource in the Storage daemon's configuration file. It is also an additional check so that you don't try to write data for a DLT onto an 8mm device.
For the autochanger to be used, you must also specify Autochanger = yes in the Device ResourceAutochanger in the Storage daemon's configuration file as well as other important Storage daemon configuration information. To help Bacula understand your Autochanger setup, instead of using the Directive Autochanger = yes, it is preferable to specify the name of the Autochanger in place of the word yes. Please consult the Using AutochangersAutochangersChapter manual of this chapter for the details of using autochangers.
The default value is set to 0 (zero), which means there is no limit on the number of read jobs. Note, limiting the read jobs does not apply to Restore jobs, which are normally started by hand. A reasonable value for this directive is one half the number of drives that the Storage resource has rounded down. Doing so, will leave the same number of drives for writing and will generally avoid over committing drives and a deadlock.
This directive is optional, and if you specify No (the default is Yes), it will cause backups jobs running on this storage resource to run without client File Daemon compression. This effectively overrides compression options in FileSets used by jobs which use this storage resource.
The following is an example of a valid Storage resource definition:
# Definition of tape storage device
Storage {
Name = DLTDrive
Address = lpmatou
Password = storage_password # password for Storage daemon
Device = "HP DLT 80" # same as Device in Storage daemon
Media Type = DLT8000 # same as MediaType in Storage daemon
}
Each autochanger that you have defined in an Autochanger resource in the Storage daemon's bacula-sd.conf file, must have a corresponding Autochanger resource defined in the Director's bacula-dir.conf file. The Autochanger resource uses the same directives as the Storage resource defined StorageResource.
Normally you will already have a Storage resource that points to the Storage daemon's Autochanger resource. Thus you need only to change the name of the Storage resource to Autochanger. In addition the Autochanger = yes directive is not needed in the Director's Autochanger resource, since the resource name is Autochanger, the Director already knows that it represents an autochanger.
In addition to the above change (Storage to Autochanger), you must modify any additional Storage resources that correspond to devices that are part of the Autochanger device. Instead of the previous Autochanger = yes directive they should be modified to be Autochanger = xxx where you replace the xxx with the name of the Autochanger.
For example, in the bacula-dir.conf file:
Autochanger { # New resource
Name = Changer-1
Address = cibou.company.com
SDPort = 9103
Password = "xxxxxxxxxx"
Device = LTO-Changer-1
Media Type = LTO-4
Maximum Concurrent Jobs = 50
}
Storage {
Name = Changer-1-Drive0
Address = cibou.company.com
SDPort = 9103
Password = "xxxxxxxxxx"
Device = LTO4_1_Drive0
Media Type = LTO-4
Maximum Concurrent Jobs = 5
Autochanger = Changer-1 # New directive
}
Storage {
Name = Changer-1-Drive1
Address = cibou.company.com
SDPort = 9103
Password = "xxxxxxxxxx"
Device = LTO4_1_Drive1
Media Type = LTO-4
Maximum Concurrent Jobs = 5
Autochanger = Changer-1 # New directive
}
...
Note that Storage resources Changer-1-Drive0 and Changer-1-Drive1 are not required since they make up part of an autochanger, and normally, Jobs refer only to the Autochanger resource. However, by referring to those Storage definitions in a Job, you will use only the indicated drive. This is not normally what you want to do, but it is very useful and often used for reserving a drive for restores. See the Storage daemon example .conf below and the use of AutoSelect = no.
The Pool resource defines the set of storage Volumes (tapes or files) to be used by Bacula to write the data. By configuring different Pools, you can determine which set of Volumes (media) receives the backup data. This permits, for example, to store all full backup data on one set of Volumes and all incremental backups on another set of Volumes. Alternatively, you could assign a different set of Volumes to each machine that you backup. This is most easily done by defining multiple Pools.
Another important aspect of a Pool is that it contains the default attributes (Maximum Jobs, Retention Period, Recycle flag, ...) that will be given to a Volume when it is created. This avoids the need for you to answer a large number of questions when labeling a new Volume. Each of these attributes can later be changed on a Volume by Volume basis using the update command in the console program. Note that you must explicitly specify which Pool Bacula is to use with each Job. Bacula will not automatically search for the correct Pool.
Most often in Bacula installations all backups for all machines (Clients) go to a single set of Volumes. In this case, you will probably only use the Default Pool. If your backup strategy calls for you to mount a different tape each day, you will probably want to define a separate Pool for each day. For more information on this subject, please see the Backup StrategiesStrategiesChapter chapter of this manual.
To use a Pool, there are three distinct steps. First the Pool must be defined in the Director's configuration file. Then the Pool must be written to the Catalog database. This is done automatically by the Director each time that it starts, or alternatively can be done using the create command in the console program. Finally, if you change the Pool definition in the Director's configuration file and restart Bacula, the pool will be updated alternatively you can use the update pool console command to refresh the database image. It is this database image rather than the Director's resource image that is used for the default Volume attributes. Note, for the pool to be automatically created or updated, it must be explicitly referenced by a Job resource.
Next the physical media must be labeled. The labeling can either be done with the label command in the console program or using the btape program. The preferred method is to use the label command in the console program.
Finally, you must add Volume names (and their attributes) to the Pool. For Volumes to be used by Bacula they must be of the same Media Type as the archive device specified for the job (i.e. if you are going to back up to a DLT device, the Pool must have DLT volumes defined since 8mm volumes cannot be mounted on a DLT drive). The Media Type has particular importance if you are backing up to files. When running a Job, you must explicitly specify which Pool to use. Bacula will then automatically select the next Volume to use from the Pool, but it will ensure that the Media Type of any Volume selected from the Pool is identical to that required by the Storage resource you have specified for the Job.
If you use the label command in the console program to label the Volumes, they will automatically be added to the Pool, so this last step is not normally required.
It is also possible to add Volumes to the database without explicitly labeling the physical volume. This is done with the add console command.
As previously mentioned, each time Bacula starts, it scans all the Pools associated with each Catalog, and if the database record does not already exist, it will be created from the Pool Resource definition. Bacula probably should do an update pool if you change the Pool definition, but currently, you must do this manually using the update pool command in the Console program.
The Pool Resource defined in the Director's configuration file (bacula-dir.conf) may contain the following directives:
This directive is only applied to case of volumes automatically created by Bacula. If you add volumes to a pool manually with the label command, it is possible to have more volumes in a pool than specified by Maximum Volumes.
| Backup | |
| *Archive | |
| *Cloned | |
| *Migration | |
| *Copy | |
| *Save |
The value defined by this directive in the bacula-dir.conf file is the default value used when a Volume is created. Once the volume is created, changing the value in the bacula-dir.conf file will not change what is stored for the Volume. To change the value for an existing Volume you must use the update command in the Console.
Please see the notes below under Maximum Volume Jobs concerning using this directive with multiple simultaneous jobs.
The value defined by this directive in the bacula-dir.conf file is the default value used when a Volume is created. Once the volume is created, changing the value in the bacula-dir.conf file will not change what is stored for the Volume. To change the value for an existing Volume you must use the update command in the Console.
If you are running multiple simultaneous jobs, this directive may not work correctly because when a drive is reserved for a job, this directive is not taken into account, so multiple jobs may try to start writing to the Volume. At some point, when the Media record is updated, multiple simultaneous jobs may fail since the Volume can no longer be written.
The value defined by this directive in the bacula-dir.conf file is the default value used when a Volume is created. Once the volume is created, changing the value in the bacula-dir.conf file will not change what is stored for the Volume. To change the value for an existing Volume you must use the update command in the Console.
This directive is particularly useful for restricting the size of disk volumes, and will work correctly even in the case of multiple simultaneous jobs writing to the volume.
The value defined by this directive in the bacula-dir.conf file is the default value used when a Volume is created. Once the volume is created, changing the value in the bacula-dir.conf file will not change what is stored for the Volume. To change the value for an existing Volume you must use the update command in the Console.
You might use this directive, for example, if you have a Volume used for Incremental backups, and Volumes used for Weekly Full backups. Once the Full backup is done, you will want to use a different Incremental Volume. This can be accomplished by setting the Volume Use Duration for the Incremental Volume to six days. I.e. it will be used for the 6 days following a Full save, then a different Incremental volume will be used. Be careful about setting the duration to short periods such as 23 hours, or you might experience problems of Bacula waiting for a tape over the weekend only to complete the backups Monday morning when an operator mounts a new tape.
The use duration is checked and the Used status is set only at the end of a job that writes to the particular volume, which means that even though the use duration may have expired, the catalog entry will not be updated until the next job that uses this volume is run. This directive is not intended to be used to limit volume sizes and will not work correctly (i.e. will fail jobs) if the use duration expires while multiple simultaneous jobs are writing to the volume.
Please note that the value defined by this directive in the bacula-dir.conf file is the default value used when a Volume is created. Once the volume is created, changing the value in the bacula-dir.conf file will not change what is stored for the Volume. To change the value for an existing Volume you must use the update volumeUpdateCommandconsolecommand in the Bacula Enterprise Console Manual.
Recycling will not occur until it is absolutely necessary to free up a volume (i.e. no other writable volume exists). All File records associated with pruned Jobs are also pruned. The time may be specified as seconds, minutes, hours, days, weeks, months, quarters, or years. The Volume Retention is applied independently of the Job Retention and the File Retention periods defined in the Client resource. This means that all the retention periods are applied in turn and that the shorter period is the one that effectively takes precedence. Note, that when the Volume Retention period has been reached, and it is necessary to obtain a new volume, Bacula will prune both the Job and the File records. And the inverse is also true that if all the Job and File records that refer to a Volume are pruned, then the Volume may be pruned and recycled regardless of its retention period. Pruning may also occur during a status dir command because it uses similar algorithms for finding the next available Volume.
It is important to know that when the Volume Retention period expires, or all the Job and File records have been pruned that refer to a Volume, Bacula does not automatically recycle a Volume. It attempts to keep the Volume data intact as long as possible before over writing the Volume.
By defining multiple Pools with different Volume Retention periods, you may effectively have a set of tapes that is recycled weekly, another Pool of tapes that is recycled monthly and so on. However, one must keep in mind that if your Volume Retention period is too short, it may prune the last valid Full backup, and hence until the next Full backup is done, you will not have a complete backup of your system, and in addition, the next Incremental or Differential backup will be promoted to a Full backup. As a consequence, the minimum Volume Retention period should be at twice the interval of your Full backups. This means that if you do a Full backup once a month, the minimum Volume retention period should be two months.
The default Volume retention period is 365 days, and either the default or the value defined by this directive in the bacula-dir.conf file is the default value used when a Volume is created. Once the volume is created, changing the value in the bacula-dir.conf file will not change what is stored for the Volume. To change the value for an existing Volume you must use the update command in the Console.
Note, it is also possible for all the Parts to be removed before the Cache Retention period is reached. In that case the cloud truncate command must be used.
The directive ActionOnPurge=Truncate instructs Bacula to permit the Volume to be truncated after it has been purged. Note: the ActionOnPurge is a bit misleading since the volume is not actually truncated when it is purged, but is enabled to be truncated. The actual truncation is done with the Truncate command/
To actually truncate a Volume, you must first set the ActionOnPurge to Truncate in the Pool, then you must ensure that any existing Volumes also have this information in them, by doing an update Volumes comand. Finally, after the Volume has been purged, you may then truncate it. It is useful to prevent disk based volumes from consuming too much space. See below for more details of how to ensure Volumes are truncated after being purged.
First set the Pool to permit truncation.
Pool {
Name = Default
Action On Purge = Truncate
...
}
Then assuming a Volume has been Purged, you can schedule truncate operation at the end of your CatalogBackup job like in this example:
Job {
Name = CatalogBackup
...
RunScript {
RunsWhen=After
RunsOnClient=No
Console = "purge volume action=all allpools storage=File"
}
}
Although this directive is called RecyclePool, the Volume in question is actually moved from its current pool to the one you specify on this directive when Bacula prunes the Volume and discovers that there are no records left in the catalog and hence marks it as Purged.
Please note that the value defined by this directive in the bacula-dir.conf file is the default value used when a Volume is created. Once the volume is created, changing the value in the bacula-dir.conf file will not change what is stored for the Volume. To change the value for an existing Volume you must use the update command in the Console.
When all Job and File records have been pruned or purged from the catalog for a particular Volume, if that Volume is marked as Full or Used, it will then be marked as Purged. Only Volumes marked as Purged will be considered to be converted to the Recycled state if the Recycle directive is set to yes.
This directive can be useful if you have a fixed number of Volumes in the Pool and you want to cycle through them and you have specified the correct retention periods.
However, if you use this directive and have only one Volume in the Pool, you will immediately recycle your Volume if you fill it and Bacula needs another one. Thus your backup will be totally invalid. Please use this directive with care. The default is no.
This directive can be useful if you have: a fixed number of Volumes in the Pool, you want to cycle through them, and you have specified retention periods that prune Volumes before you have cycled through the Volume in the Pool.
However, if you use this directive and have only one Volume in the Pool, you will immediately recycle your Volume if you fill it and Bacula needs another one. Thus your backup will be totally invalid. Please use this directive with care. The default is no.
This directive can be useful if you have a fixed number of Volumes in the Pool and you want to cycle through them and reusing the oldest one when all Volumes are full, but you don't want to worry about setting proper retention periods. However, by using this option you risk losing valuable data.
Please be aware that Purge Oldest Volume disregards all retention periods. If you have only a single Volume defined and you turn this variable on, that Volume will always be immediately overwritten when it fills! So at a minimum, ensure that you have a decent number of Volumes in your Pool before running any jobs. If you want retention periods to apply do not use this directive. To specify a retention period, use the Volume Retention directive (see above).
We highly recommend against using this directive, because it is sure that some day, Bacula will recycle a Volume that contains current data. The default is no.
This directive takes precedence over Client directives of the same name. For example, you can decide to increase Retention times for Archive or OffSite Pool.
Note, this affects only records in the catalog database. It does not affect your archive backups.
For more information see Client documentation about FileRetentionFileRetention
The Job Retention directive defines the length of time that Bacula will keep Job records in the Catalog database after the Job End time. As with the other retention periods, this affects only records in the catalog and not data in your archive backup.
This directive takes precedence over Client directives of the same name. For example, you can decide to increase Retention times for Archive or OffSite Pool.
For more information see Client side documentation JobRetentionJobRetention
The format should be specified in double quotes, and consists of letters, numbers and the special characters hyphen (-), underscore (_), colon (:), and period (.), which are the legal characters for a Volume name. The format should be enclosed in double quotes (").
In addition, the format may contain a number of variable expansion characters which will be expanded by a complex algorithm allowing you to create Volume names of many different formats. In all cases, the expansion process must resolve to the set of characters noted above that are legal Volume names. Generally, these variable expansion characters begin with a dollar sign ($) or a left bracket ([). If you specify variable expansion characters, you should always enclose the format with double quote characters ("). For more details on variable expansion, please see the Variable ExpansionVarsChaptermiscchapter of the Bacula Enterprise Misc Manual.
If no variable expansion characters are found in the string, the Volume name will be formed from the format string appended with the a unique number that increases. If you do not remove volumes from the pool, this number should be the number of volumes plus one, but this is not guaranteed. The unique number will be edited as four digits with leading zeros. For example, with a Label Format = "File-", the first volumes will be named File-0001, File-0002, ...
With the exception of Job specific variables, you can test your LabelFormat by using the varvarconsolecommand in the Bacula Enterprise Console Manual.
Label Format="${Level}_${Type}_${Client}_${Year}-${Month:p/2/0/r}-${Day:p/2/0/r}"
Once defined, the name of the volume cannot be changed. When the volume is recycled, the volume can be used by an other Job at an other time, and possibly from an other Pool. In the example above, the volume defined with such name is probably not supposed to be recycled or reused.
In almost all cases, you should enclose the format specification (part after the equal sign) in double quotes.
In order for a Pool to be used during a Backup Job, the Pool must have at least one Volume associated with it. Volumes are created for a Pool using the label or the add commands in the Bacula Console, program. In addition to adding Volumes to the Pool (i.e. putting the Volume names in the Catalog database), the physical Volume must be labeled with a valid Bacula software volume label before Bacula will accept the Volume. This will be automatically done if you use the label command. Bacula can automatically label Volumes if instructed to do so, but this feature is not yet fully implemented.
The following is an example of a valid Pool resource definition:
Pool {
Name = Default
Pool Type = Backup
}
The Catalog Resource defines what catalog to use for the current job. Currently, Bacula can only handle a single database server (MySQL or PostgreSQL) that is defined when configuring Bacula. However, there may be as many Catalogs (databases) defined as you wish. For example, you may want each Client to have its own Catalog database, or you may want backup jobs to use one database and verify or restore jobs to use another database.
Since both MySQL and PostgreSQL are networked databases, they may reside either on the same machine as the Director or on a different machine on the network. See below for more details.
the different
The following is an example of a valid Catalog resource definition:
Catalog
{
Name = MySQL
dbname = bacula;
user = bacula;
password = "" # no password = no security
}
or for a Catalog on another machine:
Catalog
{
Name = MySQL
dbname = bacula
user = bacula
password = ""
DB Address = remote.acme.com
DB Port = 1234
}
For the details of the Messages Resource, please see the Messages Resource ChapterMessagesChapter of this manual.
As of Bacula version 1.33 and higher, there are three different kinds of consoles, which the administrator or user can use to interact with the Director. These three kinds of consoles comprise three different security levels.
This second type of console begins with absolutely no privileges except those explicitly specified in the Director's Console resource. Thus you can have multiple Consoles with different names and passwords, sort of like multiple users, each with different privileges. As a default, these consoles can do absolutely nothing - no commands whatsoever. You give them privileges or rather access to commands and resources by specifying access control lists in the Director's Console resource. The ACLs are specified by a directive followed by a list of access names. Examples of this are shown below.
The Console resource is optional and need not be specified. The following directives are permitted within the Director's configuration resource:
The password is plain text. It is not generated through any special process. However, it is preferable for security reasons to choose random text.
JobACL = kernsave, "Backup client 1", "Backup client 2"
JobACL = "RestoreFiles"
With the above specification, the console can access the Director's resources for the four jobs named on the JobACL directives, but for no others.
Aside from Director resource names and console command names, the special keyword *all* can be specified in any of the above access control lists. When this keyword is present, any resource or command name (which ever is appropriate) will be accepted. For an example configuration file, please see the Console ConfigurationConsoleConfChapter chapter of this manual.
The Counter Resource defines a counter variable that can be accessed by variable expansion used for creating Volume labels with the LabelFormat directive. See the LabelFormatLabel directive in this chapter for more details.
An example Director configuration file might be the following:
#
# Default Bacula Director Configuration file
#
# The only thing that MUST be changed is to add one or more
# file or directory names in the Include directive of the
# FileSet resource.
#
# For Bacula release 1.15 (5 March 2002) -- redhat
#
# You might also want to change the default email address
# from root to your address. See the "mail" and "operator"
# directives in the Messages resource.
#
Director { # define myself
Name = rufus-dir
QueryFile = "/home/kern/bacula/bin/query.sql"
WorkingDirectory = "/home/kern/bacula/bin/working"
PidDirectory = "/home/kern/bacula/bin/working"
Password = "XkSfzu/Cf/wX4L8Zh4G4/yhCbpLcz3YVdmVoQvU3EyF/"
}
# Define the backup Job
Job {
Name = "NightlySave"
Type = Backup
Level = Incremental # default
Client=rufus-fd
FileSet="Full Set"
Schedule = "WeeklyCycle"
Storage = DLTDrive
Messages = Standard
Pool = Default
}
Job {
Name = "Restore"
Type = Restore
Client=rufus-fd
FileSet="Full Set"
Where = /tmp/bacula-restores
Storage = DLTDrive
Messages = Standard
Pool = Default
}
# List of files to be backed up
FileSet {
Name = "Full Set"
Include {
Options {signature=SHA1}
#
# Put your list of files here, one per line or include an
# external list with:
#
# @file-name
#
# Note: / backs up everything
File = /
}
Exclude {}
}
# When to do the backups
Schedule {
Name = "WeeklyCycle"
Run = level=Full sun at 2:05
Run = level=Incremental mon-sat at 2:05
}
# Client (File Services) to backup
Client {
Name = rufus-fd
Address = rufus
Catalog = MyCatalog
Password = "MQk6lVinz4GG2hdIZk1dsKE/LxMZGo6znMHiD7t7vzF+"
File Retention = 60d # sixty day file retention
Job Retention = 1y # 1 year Job retention
AutoPrune = yes # Auto apply retention periods
}
# Definition of DLT tape storage device
Storage {
Name = DLTDrive
Address = rufus
Password = "jMeWZvfikUHvt3kzKVVPpQ0ccmV6emPnF2cPYFdhLApQ"
Device = "HP DLT 80" # same as Device in Storage daemon
Media Type = DLT8000 # same as MediaType in Storage daemon
}
# Definition for a DLT autochanger device
Storage {
Name = Autochanger
Address = rufus
Password = "jMeWZvfikUHvt3kzKVVPpQ0ccmV6emPnF2cPYFdhLApQ"
Device = "Autochanger" # same as Device in Storage daemon
Media Type = DLT-8000 # Different from DLTDrive
Autochanger = yes
}
# Definition of DDS tape storage device
Storage {
Name = SDT-10000
Address = rufus
Password = "jMeWZvfikUHvt3kzKVVPpQ0ccmV6emPnF2cPYFdhLApQ"
Device = SDT-10000 # same as Device in Storage daemon
Media Type = DDS-4 # same as MediaType in Storage daemon
}
# Definition of 8mm tape storage device
Storage {
Name = "8mmDrive"
Address = rufus
Password = "jMeWZvfikUHvt3kzKVVPpQ0ccmV6emPnF2cPYFdhLApQ"
Device = "Exabyte 8mm"
MediaType = "8mm"
}
# Definition of file storage device
Storage {
Name = File
Address = rufus
Password = "jMeWZvfikUHvt3kzKVVPpQ0ccmV6emPnF2cPYFdhLApQ"
Device = FileStorage
Media Type = File
}
# Generic catalog service
Catalog {
Name = MyCatalog
dbname = bacula; user = bacula; password = ""
}
# Reasonable message delivery -- send most everything to
# the email address and to the console
Messages {
Name = Standard
mail = root@localhost = all, !skipped, !terminate
operator = root@localhost = mount
console = all, !skipped, !saved
}
# Default pool definition
Pool {
Name = Default
Pool Type = Backup
AutoPrune = yes
Recycle = yes
}
#
# Restricted console used by tray-monitor to get the status of the director
#
Console {
Name = Monitor
Password = "GN0uRo7PTUmlMbqrJ2Gr1p0fk0HQJTxwnFyE4WSST3MWZseR"
CommandACL = status, .status
}