
#include "bacula_template.inc" title="Tips and Suggestions" num=16   

<H1>Tips and Suggestions</H1>

<h2><a name="examples">Examples</a></h2>
There are a number of example scripts for various things that
can be found in the <b>example</b> subdirectory and its 
subdirectories of the Bacula source distribution. 

<h2><a name="upgrading">Upgrading Bacula Versions</a></h2>
The first thing to do before upgrading from one version to 
another is to ensure that don't overwrite your production
(current) version of Bacula until you have tested that the
new version works.  
<p>If you have installed Bacula into a single directory,
this is simple: simply make a copy of your Bacula directory.
<p>If you have done a more typical Unix installation where the
binaries are placed in one directory and the configuration files
are placed in another, then the simplest way is to configure
your new Bacula to go into a single file. 
<p>Whatever your situation may be (one of the two just described),
you should probably start with the <b>defaultconf</b> script that
can be found in the <b>examples</b> subdirectory. Copy this script
to the main Bacula directory, modify it as necessary (there should
not need to be many modifications), configure Bacula, build it,
install it, then stop your production Bacula, copy all the
<b>*.conf</b> files from your production Bacula directory to
the test Bacula directory, start the test version,
and run a few test backups.  If all seems good, then you can
proceed to install the new Bacula in place of or possibly over
the old Bacula.  
<p>When installing a new Bacula you need not worry about
losing the changes you made to your configuration files as
the installation process will not overwrite them.

<h2><a name="notification">Getting Notified of Job Completion</a></h2>
One of the first things you should do is to ensure that you are being
properly notified of the status of each Job run by Bacula, or at a minimum
of each Job that terminates with an error.
<p>Until you are completely comfortable with <b>Bacula</b>, we recommend
that you send an email to yourself for each Job that is run. This is
most easily accomplished by adding an email notification address in
the <b>Messages</b> resource of your Director's configuration file.
An email is automatically configured in the default configuration files,
but you must ensure that the default <b>root</b> address is replaced
by your email address.
<p>
For examples of how I (Kern) configure my system, please take a look
at the <b>.conf</b> files found in the <b>examples</b> sub-directory.
We recommend the following configuration (where you change the
paths and email address to correspond to your setup). Note, the
<b>mailcommand</b> and <b>operatorcommand</b> should be on a single
line. They were split here for presentation:
<pre>
Messages {
  Name = Standard
  mailcommand = "/home/bacula/bin/bsmtp -h localhost   
                -f \"\(Bacula\) %r\" 
                -s \"Bacula: %t %e of %c %l\" %r"
  operatorcommand = "/home/bacula/bin/bsmtp -h localhost 
                -f \"\(Bacula\) %r\" 
                -s \"Bacula: Intervention needed for %j\" %r"
  Mail = your-email-address = all, !skipped, !terminate
  append = "/home/bacula/bin/log" = all, !skipped, !terminate
  operator = your-email-address = mount
  console = all, !skipped, !saved
}
</pre>

You will need to ensure that the <b>/home/bacula/bin</b> path on the 
<b>mailcommand</b> and the <b>operatorcommand</b> lines points to your
<b>Bacula</b> binary directory where the <b>bsmtp</b> program will be
installed.  You will also want to ensure that the <b>your-email-address</b>
is replaced by your email address, and finally, you will also need to
ensure that the <b>/home/bacula/bin/log</b> points to the file where you
want to log all messages.
<p>With the above Messages resource, you will be notified by email of
every Job that ran, all the output will be appended to the <b>log</b>
file you specify, all output will be directed to the console program,
and all mount messages will be emailed to you. Note, some messages
will be sent to multiple destinations.
<p>The form of the mailcommand is a bit complicated, but it allows you
to distinguish whether the Job terminated in error or terminated normally.
Please see the <a href="messagesres.html#mailcommand">Mail Command</a>
section of the Messages Resource chapter of this manual for 
the details of the substitution characters used above.
<p>
Once you are totally comfortable with Bacula as I am, or if you
have a large number of nightly Jobs as I do (eight), you will 
probably want to change the <b>Mail</b> command to <b>Mail On Error</b>
which will generate an email message only if the Job terminates in 
error. If the Job terminates normally, no email message will be sent,
but the output will still be appended to the log file as well as sent to
the Console program.

<h2><a name="email">Getting Email Notification to Work</a></h2>
The section above describes how to get email notification of job
status. Occasionally, however, users have problems receiving any
email at all.  In that case, the things to check are the following:
<ul>
  <li>Ensure that you have a valid email address specified on your
      <b>Mail</b> record in the Director's Messages resource. The email
      address should be fully qualified. Simply using <b>root</b> generally
      will not work, rather you should use <b>root@localhost</b> or better
      yet your full domain.</li>
  <li>Ensure that you do not have a <b>Mail</b> record in the Storage
      daemon's or File daemon's configuration files. The only record
      you should have is <b>director</b>:
      <pre>
      director = director-name = all
      </pre>
   <li>If all else fails, try replacing the <b>mailcommand</b> with
<pre>
mailcommand = "mail -s test your@domain.com"
</pre>
      </li>
   <li>Once the above is working, assuming you want to use <b>bsmtp</b>,
       submit the desired bsmtp command by hand and ensure that the email
       is delivered, then put that command into <b>Bacula</b>.  Small
       differences in things such as the parenthesis around the word
       Bacula can make a big difference to some bsmtp programs.
       For example, you might start simply by using:
<pre>
mailcommand = "/home/bacula/bin/bsmtp -f \"root@localhost\" %r"
</pre>
       </li>
</ul>
     

<h2><a name="JobNotification">Getting Notified that Bacula is Running</h2>
If like me, you have setup Bacula so that email is sent
only when a Job has errors, as described in the previous section
of this chapter, inevitably, one day, something will go wrong and
<b>Bacula</b> can stall.      
This could be because Bacula crashes, which is
vary rare, or more likely the network has caused <b>Bacula</b>
to <b>hang</b> for some unknown reason.
<p>To avoid this, you can use the <b>RunAfterJob</b> command  
in the Job resource to schedule a Job nightly, or weekly that
simply emails you a message saying that Bacula is
still running.
For example, I have setup the following Job in my Director's configuration
file:
<pre>
Schedule {
  Name = "Watchdog"
  Run = Level=Full sun-sat at 6:05
}

Job {
  Name = "Watchdog"
  Type = Admin
  Client=Watchdog
  FileSet="Verify Set"
  Messages = Standard
  Storage = DLTDrive
  Pool = Default
  Schedule = "Watchdog"
  RunAfterJob = "/home/kern/bacula/bin/watchdog %c %d"
}

Client {
  Name = Watchdog
  Address = rufus
  FDPort = 9102
  Catalog = Verify
  Password = ""
  File Retention = 1day  
  Job Retention = 1 month 
  AutoPrune = yes    
}
</pre>
Where I established a schedule to run the Job nightly. The
Job itself is type <b>Admin</b> which means that it doesn't
actually do anything, and I've defined a FileSet, Pool, Storage,
and Client, all of which are not really used (and probably don't
need to be specified).  The key aspect of this Job is the
command:
<pre>
  RunAfterJob = "/home/kern/bacula/bin/watchdog %c %d"
</pre> 
which runs my &quot;watchdog&quot; script. 
As an example, I have added the Job codes %c and %d which
will cause the Client name and the Director's name to
be passed to the script. For example, if the Client's
name is <b>Watchdog</b> and the Director's name is <b>main-dir</b>
then referencing $1 in the script would get <b>Watchdog</b> and
referencing $2 would get <b>main-dir</b>.
In this case, having the script
know the Client and Director's name is not really
useful, but in other situations it may be.
<p>                
You can put anything in the watchdog scrip. In my case,
I like to monitor the size of my catalog to be sure that
<b>Bacula</b> is really pruning it.        
The following is my watchdog script:
<pre>
\#!/bin/sh
cd /home/kern/mysql/var/bacula
du . * |
/home/kern/bacula/bin/bsmtp  \\
   -f "\(Bacula\) abuse@whitehouse.com" -h mail.yyyy.com \\
   -s "Bacula running" abuse@whitehouse.com                 
</pre>

If you just wish to send yourself a message, you can do it with:
<pre>
\#!/bin/sh
cd /home/kern/mysql/var/bacula
/home/kern/bacula/bin/bsmtp  \\
   -f "\(Bacula\) abuse@whitehouse.com" -h mail.yyyy.com \\
   -s "Bacula running" abuse@whitehouse.com &lt;&lt;END-OF-DATA 
Bacula is still running!!!
END-OF-DATA
</pre>

<h2><a name="bootstrap">Maintaining a Valid Bootstrap File</h2>
By using a <a href="dirdconf.html#writebootstrap">
<b>WriteBootstrap</b></a> record in each of your Director's
Job resources, you can constantly maintain a 
<a href="bootstrap.html"><b>bootstrap</b></a> file that
will enable you to recover the state of your system as of the last
backup without having the Bacula catalog. This permits you to 
more easily recover from a disaster that destroys your Bacula catalog.
<p>When a Job resource has a <b>WriteBootstrap</b> record, Bacula will
maintain the designated file (normally on another system but mounted by
NSF) with up to date information necessary to restore your system.
For example, in my Director's configuration file, I have the following
record:
<pre>
 Write Bootstrap = "/mnt/deuter/files/backup/client-name.bsr"
</pre>
where I replace <b>client-name</b> by the actual name of
the client that is being
backed up. Thus, Bacula automatically maintains one file
for each of my clients. The necessary bootstrap information is
appended to this file during each <b>Incremental</b> backup, and
the file is totally rewritten during each <b>Full</b> backup.
<p>
Note, one major disadvantage of writing to an NFS mounted volume
as I do is that if the other machine goes down, the OS will wait
forever on the fopen() call that Bacula makes. As a consequence,
Bacula will completely stall until the machine exporting the NSF
mounts comes back up. The solution to this problem was provided by
Andrew Hilborne, and consists of using the <b>soft</b> option     
instead of the <b>hard</b> option when mounting the NFS volume, 
which is typically done in <b>/etc/fstab</b>/.  The NFS documentation
explains these options in detail.
<p>
If you are starting off in the middle of a cycle (i.e. with
Incremental backups) rather than at the beginning (with a Full
backup), the <b>bootstrap</b> file will not be immediately valid
as it must always have the information from a Full backup as the
first record.  If you wish to synchronize your bootstrap file 
immediately, you can do so by running a <b>restore</b> command
for the client and selecting a full restore, but when
the restore command asks for confirmation to run the restore Job,
you simply reply no, then copy the bootstrap file that was
written to the location specified on the <b>Write Bootstrap</b>
record. The restore bootstrap file can be found in <b>restore.bsr</b>
in the working directory that you defined.  In the example given
below for the client <b>rufus</b>, my input is shown in bold. Note,
the JobId output has been partially truncated to fit on the page 
here:
<pre>
(in the Console program)
*<b>restore</b>
First you select one or more JobIds that contain files
to be restored. You will then be presented several methods
of specifying the JobIds. Then you will be allowed to
select which files from those JobIds are to be restored.

To select the JobIds, you have the following choices:
     1: List last 20 Jobs run
     2: List Jobs where a given File is saved
     3: Enter list of JobIds to select
     4: Enter SQL list command
     5: Select the most recent backup for a client
     6: Cancel
Select item:  (1-6): <b>5</b>
The defined Client resources are:
     1: Minimatou
     2: Rufus
     3: Timmy
Select Client (File daemon) resource (1-3): <b>2</b>
The defined FileSet resources are:
     1: Kerns Files
Item 1 selected automatically.
<font size=-2>
+-------+------+-------+---------+---------+------+-------+------------+
| JobId | Levl | Files | StrtTim | VolName | File | SesId | VolSesTime |
+-------+------+-------+---------+---------+------+-------+------------+
| 2     | F    | 84    |  ...    | test1   | 0    | 1     | 1035645259 |
+-------+------+-------+---------+---------+------+-------+------------+
</font>
You have selected the following JobId: 2
Building directory tree for JobId 2 ...

The defined Storage resources are:
     1: File
Item 1 selected automatically.

You are now entering file selection mode where you add and
remove files to be restored. All files are initially added.
Enter "done" to leave this mode.

cwd is: /
$ <b>done</b>

84 files selected to restore.

Run Restore job
JobName:    kernsrestore
Bootstrap:  /home/kern/bacula/working/restore.bsr
Where:      /tmp/bacula-restores
FileSet:    Kerns Files
Client:     Rufus
Storage:    File
JobId:      *None*
OK to run? (yes/mod/no): <b>no</b>
<b>quit</b>

(in a shell window)
<b>cp ../working/restore.bsr /mnt/deuter/files/backup/rufus.bsr</b>
</pre>


<h2><a name="RejectedVolumes">Rejected Volumes After a Crash</a></h2>
Bacula keeps a count of the number of files on each Volume in its
Catalog database so that before appending to a tape,
it can verify that the number of files are correct, and
thus prevent overwriting valid data.  If the Director
or the Storage daemon crashes before the job has completed,
the tape will contain one more file than is noted in the
Catalog, and the next time you attempt to use the same
Volume, Bacula will reject it due to a mismatch between
the physical tape (Volume) and the catalog. 
<p>
The easiest solution to this problem is to label a new
tape and start fresh. If you wish to continue appending
to the current tape, you can do so by using the
<b>update</b> command in the console program to 
change the <b>Volume Files</b> entry in the catalog.
A typical sequence of events would go like the following:
<pre>
- Bacula crashes
- You restart Bacula
</pre>
Bacula then prints:
<pre>
17-Jan-2003 16:45 rufus-dir: Start Backup JobId 13, 
                  Job=kernsave.2003-01-17_16.45.46
17-Jan-2003 16:45 rufus-sd: Volume test01 previously written, 
                  moving to end of data.
17-Jan-2003 16:46 rufus-sd: kernsave.2003-01-17_16.45.46 Error: 
                  I cannot write on this volume because:
                  The number of files mismatch! Volume=11 Catalog=10
17-Jan-2003 16:46 rufus-sd: Job kernsave.2003-01-17_16.45.46 waiting. 
                   Cannot find any appendable volumes.
Please use the "label"  command to create a new Volume for:
    Storage:      SDT-10000
    Media type:   DDS-4
    Pool:         Default
</pre>
(note, lines wrapped for presentation)<br>
The key here is the line that reads:
<pre>
  The number of files mismatch! Volume=11 Catalog=10
</pre>
It says that Bacula found eleven files on the volume, but that
the catalog says there should be ten. When you see this,
you can be reasonably sure that the SD was interrupted while writing
before it had a chance to update the catalog. As a consequence, 
you can just modify the catalog count to eleven, and even if the
catalog contains references to files saved in file 11, everything
will be OK and nothing will be lost. Note that if the SD
had written several file marks to the volume, the difference between
the Volume cound and the Catalog count could be larger than one,
but this is unusual.
<p>If on the other hand the catalog is marked as having more
files than Bacula found on the tape, you need to consider the
possible negative consequences of modifying the catalog.
Please see below for a more complete discussion of this.
<p>
Continuing with the example of <b>Volume = 11 Catalog = 10</b>,
to enable to Bacula to append to the tape, you do the
following:
<pre>
<b>update</b>
Update choice:
     1: Volume parameters
     2: Pool from resource
     3: Slots from autochanger
Choose catalog item to update (1-3): <b>1</b>
Defined Pools:
     1: Default
     2: File
Select the Pool (1-2): 
<font size=-2>
+-------+---------+--------+---------+-----------+------+----------+------+-----+
| MedId | VolName | MedTyp | VolStat | VolBytes  | Last | VolReten | Recy | Slt |
+-------+---------+--------+---------+-----------+------+----------+------+-----+
| 1     | test01  | DDS-4  | Error   | 352427156 | ...  | 31536000 | 1    | 0   |
+-------+---------+--------+---------+-----------+------+----------+------+-----+
</font>
Enter MediaId or Volume name: <b>1</b>
</pre>
(note table output truncated for presentation)
First, you chose to update the Volume parameters by entering
a <b>1</b>. In the volume listing that follows,
notice how the VolStatus is <b>Error</b>. We will correct
that after changing the Volume Files. Continuing, you respond 1,
<pre>
Updating Volume "test01"
Parameters to modify:
     1: Volume Status
     2: Volume Retention Period
     3: Volume Use Duration
     4: Maximum Volume Jobs
     5: Maximum Volume Files
     6: Maximum Volume Bytes
     7: Recycle Flag
     8: Slot
     9: Volume Files
    10: Pool
    11: Done
Select parameter to modify (1-11): <b>9</b>
Warning changing Volume Files can result
in loss of data on your Volume

Current Volume Files is: 10
Enter new number of Files for Volume: <b>11</b>
New Volume Files is: 11
Updating Volume "test01"
Parameters to modify:
     1: Volume Status
     2: Volume Retention Period
     3: Volume Use Duration
     4: Maximum Volume Jobs
     5: Maximum Volume Files
     6: Maximum Volume Bytes
     7: Recycle Flag
     8: Slot
     9: Volume Files
    10: Pool
    11: Done
Select parameter to modify (1-10): <b>1</b>
</pre>
Here, you have selected <b>9</b> in order to update the
Volume Files, then you changed it from <b>10</b> to <b>11</b>,
and you now answer <b>1</b> to change the Volume Status.
<pre>
Current Volume status is: Error
Possible Values are:
     1: Append
     2: Archive
     3: Disabled
     4: Full
     5: Used
     6: Read-Only
Choose new Volume Status (1-6): <b>1</b>
New Volume status is: Append
Updating Volume "test01"
Parameters to modify:
     1: Volume Status
     2: Volume Retention Period
     3: Volume Use Duration
     4: Maximum Volume Jobs
     5: Maximum Volume Files
     6: Maximum Volume Bytes
     7: Recycle Flag
     8: Slot
     9: Volume Files
    10: Pool
    11: Done
Select parameter to modify (1-11): <b>11</b>
Selection done.
</pre>
At this point, you have changed the Volume Files from <b>10</b>
to <b>11</b> to account for the last file that was written but not
updated in the database, and you changed the Volume Status back
to <b>Append</b>.
<p>
This was a lot of words to describe something quite simple.
<p>
The <b>Volume Files</b> option exists only in version 1.29 and
later, and you should be careful using it. Generally, if you
set the value to that which Bacula said is on the tape, you
will be OK, especially if the value is one more than what is
in the catalog.

<p>Now lets consider the case:
<pre>
  The number of files mismatch! Volume=10 Catalog=12
</pre>
Here the Bacula found fewer files on the volume than 
what is marked in the catalog.  Now, in this case, you should hesitate
lot before modifying the count in the catalog, because if you force the catalog
from 12 to 10, Bacula will start writing after the file 10 on the tape, 
possibly overwriting valid data, and if
you ever try to restore any of the files that the catalog has marked as
saved on Files 11 and 12, all chaos will break out.
In this case, you will probably be better off using a new tape. 
In fact, you might want to see what files the catalog claims are 
actually stored on that Volume, and back them up to another
tape and recycle this tape.
   
<h2><a name="security">Security Considerations</a></h2>
Only the File daemon needs to run with root permission (so that it can
access all files). As a consequence, you may run your Director, Storage
daemon, and MySQL or PostgreSQL database server as non-root processes. Version 1.30
has the <b>-u</b> and the <b>-g</b> options that allow you to specify
a userid and groupid on the command line to be used after Bacula 
starts.

<p>As of version 1.33, thanks to Dan Langille, it is easier to configure
the Bacula Director and Storage daemon to run as non-root.

<p>You should protect the Bacula port addresses (normally 9101,
9102, and 9103) from outside access by a firewall or other means of
protection to prevent unauthorized use of your daemons.

<p>You should ensure that the configuration files are not world readable
since they contain passwords that allow access to the daemons. Anyone
who can access the Director using a console program can restore
any file from a backup Volume.           
 
<p>You should protect your Catalog database. If you are using SQLite,
make sure that the working directory is readable only by root (or your
Bacula userid), and ensure that <b>bacula.db</b> has permissions
<b>-rw-r--r--</b> (i.e. 640) or more strict. If you are using MySQL
or PostgreSQL,
please note that the Bacula setup procedure leaves the database open
to anyone. At a minimum, you should assign the user <b>bacula</b>
a userid and add it to your Director's configuration file in the
appropriate Catalog resource.

<h2><a name="holiday">Creating Holiday Schedules</h2>
If you normally change tapes every day or at least every Friday, but Thursday
is a holiday, you can use a trick proposed by Lutz Kittler to ensure
that no job runs on Thursday so that you can insert Friday's tape and be
sure it will be used on Friday. To do so, define a <b>RunJobBefore</b> script
that normally returns zero, so that the Bacula job will normally continue.
You can then modify the script to return non-zero on any day when you
do not want Bacula to run the job.

<h2><a name="autolabel">Automatic Labeling Using Your Autochanger</h2>
If you have an autochanger but it does not support barcodes, using a 
&quot;trick&quot; you can make Bacula automatically label all
the volumes in your autochanger's magazine.  
<p>
First create a file containing one line for each slot in your autochanger
that has a tape to be labeled. The line will contain the slot number a 
colon (:) then the Volume name you want to use. For example, create
a file named <b>volume-list</b>, which contains: 
<pre>
1:Volume001
2:TestVolume02
5:LastVolume
</pre>
The records do not need to be in any order and you don't need to mention
all the slots.  Normally, you will have a consistent set of Volume names
and a sequential set of numbers for each slot you want labeled. In the
example above, I've left out slots 3 and 4 just as an example.
Now, modify your <b>mtx-changer</b> script and comment
out all the lines in the <b>list)</b> case by putting a # in column 1.
Then add the following two lines:
<pre>
  cat &lt;absolute-path&gt;/volume-list
  exit 0
</pre>
so that the whole case looks like:
<pre>
  list)
\#
\# commented out lines
   cat &lt;absolute-path&gt;/volume-list
   exit 0
   ;;
</pre>
where you replace &lt;absolute-path&gt; with the full path to the
volume-list file.  Then using the console, you enter the following
command:
<pre>
   label barcodes
</pre>
and Bacula will proceed to mount the autochanger Volumes in the list and label
them with the Volume names you have supplied. Bacula will think that the
list was provided by the autochanger barcodes, but in reality, it was you
who supplied the &lt;barcodes&gt;. 
<p>
If it seems to work, when it finishes, enter:
<pre>
   list volumes
</pre> 
and you should see all the volumes nicely created.

<h2><a name="DNS">Backing Up Portables Using DHCP</h2>
You may want to backup laptops or portables that are not
always connected to the network. If you are using
DHCP to assign an IP address to those machines when they connect,
you will need to use the Dynamic Update capability of DNS
to assign a name to those machines that can be used in the
Address field of the Client resource in the Director's conf
file.

<h2><a name="Vacation">Going on Vacation</h2>
At some point, you may want to be absent for a week
or two and you want to make sure Bacula has enough
tape left so that the backups will complete.  
You start by doing a <b>list volumes</b> in the 
Console program:

<pre>
<b>list volumes</b>
 
Using default Catalog name=BackupDB DB=bacula
Pool: Default
+---------+---------------+-----------+-----------+----------------+-
| MediaId | VolumeName    | MediaType | VolStatus |       VolBytes | 
+---------+---------------+-----------+-----------+----------------+-
|      23 | DLT-30Nov02   | DLT8000   | Full      | 54,739,278,128 | 
|      24 | DLT-21Dec02   | DLT8000   | Full      | 56,331,524,629 | 
|      25 | DLT-11Jan03   | DLT8000   | Full      | 67,863,514,895 | 
|      26 | DLT-02Feb03   | DLT8000   | Full      | 63,439,314,216 | 
|      27 | DLT-03Mar03   | DLT8000   | Full      | 66,022,754,598 | 
|      28 | DLT-04Apr03   | DLT8000   | Full      | 60,792,559,924 | 
|      29 | DLT-28Apr03   | DLT8000   | Full      | 62,072,494,063 | 
|      30 | DLT-17May03   | DLT8000   | Full      | 65,901,767,839 | 
|      31 | DLT-07Jun03   | DLT8000   | Used      | 56,558,490,015 | 
|      32 | DLT-28Jun03   | DLT8000   | Full      | 64,274,871,265 | 
|      33 | DLT-19Jul03   | DLT8000   | Full      | 64,648,749,480 | 
|      34 | DLT-08Aug03   | DLT8000   | Full      | 64,293,941,255 | 
|      35 | DLT-24Aug03   | DLT8000   | Append    |  9,999,216,782 | 
+---------+---------------+-----------+-----------+----------------+
</pre>

Note, I have truncated the output for presentation purposes.
What is significant for is that I can see that my current tape
has almost 10 Gbytes of data, and that the average amount
of data I get on my tapes is about 60 Gbytes.  So if I go
on vacation now, I don't need to worry about tape capacity
(at least not for short absences).  
<p>
Equally significant is the fact that I did go on vacation the
28th of June 2003, and when I did the <b>list volumes</b>
command, my current tape at that time, DLT-07Jun03 MediaId 31,
had 56.5 Gbytes written. I could see that the
tape would fill shortly.  Consequently, I manually marked it
as <b>Used</b> and replaced it with a fresh tape that
I labeled as DLT-28Jun03, thus assuring myself that the
backups would all complete without my intervention.

<h2><a name="Case">How to Excude File on Windows Regardless of Case</h2>
This tip was submitted by Marc Brueckner who wasn't sure of
the case of some of his files on Win32, which is case insensitive.
The problem is that Bacula thinks that <b>/UNIMPORTANT FILES</b> is
different from <b>/Unimportant Files</b>. Marc was aware that
the file exclusion permits wild-cards. So, he specified:
<pre>
"/[Uu][Nn][Ii][Mm][Pp][Oo][Rr][Tt][Aa][Nn][Tt] [Ff][Ii][Ll][Ee][Ss]"
</pre>
As a consequence, the above exclude works for files of any case.
<p>
Please note that this works only in Bacula Exclude statement and
not in Include.

<h2><a name="RemoteExecution">Executing Scripts on a Remote Machine</h2>
This tip also comes from Marc Brueckner.  (Note, this tip is probably
outdated by the addition of <b>ClientRunBeforJob</b> and <b>ClientRunAfterJob</b> 
Job records, but the technique still could be useful.)
First I thought the "Run Before Job" statement in the Job-resource is 
for executing a script on the remote machine(the machine to be backed
up).  It could be usefull to execute scripts on the remote machine e.g.
for stopping databases or other services while doing the backup.  (Of
cause I have to start the services again when the backup has finished) I
found the following solution:

Bacula could execute scrips on the remote machine by using ssh.
The authentication is done automatically using a private key.
First You have to generate a keypair.
I ve done this by:
<pre>
ssh-keygen -b 4096 -t dsa -f Bacula_key
</pre>
This statement may take a little time to run. It creates
a public/private key pair with no pass phrase.
You could save the keys in /etc/bacula.
Now you have two new files : Bacula_key which contains the private key
and Bacula_key.pub which contains the public key.
<p>
Now you have to append the Bacula_key.pub file to the file 
authorized_keys in
the \root\.ssh directory of the remote machine.
Then you have to add (or uncomment) the line
<pre>
AuthorizedKeysFile           %h/.ssh/authorized_keys
</pre>
to the sshd_config file on the remote machine.
Where the %h stands for the home-directory of the user (root in this case).
<p>
Assuming that your sshd is already running on the remote machine,
you can now enter the folloing 
on the machine where Bacula runs:
<pre>
ssh -i Bacula_key <ip of remote machine> -l root "ls -la"
</pre>
This should execute the "ls -la" command on the remote machine.
<p>
Now you could add lines like the following to your Director's conf
file:
<pre>
...
Run Before Job = ssh -i /etc/bacula/Bacula_key 192.168.1.1 \\
                 "/etc/init.d/database stop"
Run After Job = ssh -i /etc/bacula/Bacula_key 192.168.1.1 \\
                 "/etc/init.d/database start"
...
</pre>
Even though Bacula version 1.32 has a ClientRunBeforeJob,
the ssh method still could be useful for updating all the Bacula clients on 
several remote machines in a single script.

<h2><a name="recycle">Recycling All Your Volumes</h2>
This tip comes from Phil Stracchino.
<p>
If you decide to blow away your catalog and start over, the simplest way
to re-add all your prelabelled tapes with the minimum of fuss (provided
you don't care about the data on the tapes) is to add the tape labels
using the console <b>add</b> command, then go into the catalog and manually
set the VolStatus of every tape to <b>Recycle</b>.
<p>
The SQL command to do this is very simple:
<pre>
update Media set VolStatus = "Recycle";
</pre>

Bacula will then ignore the data already stored on the tapes and just
re-use each tape without further objection.

<h2><a name="ACLs">Backing up ACLs on ext3 or XFS filesystems</h2>
This tip comes from Volker Sauer.
<p>
Although the current implementation of Bacula (1.33) does not backup 
ACLs (access control lists) from ext3 or XFS filesystems, it is possible
to do so using an externel script.
For example, you could dump the ACLs to a file with a script similar
to the following:

<pre>
\#!/bin/sh
BACKUP_DIRS="/foo /bar"
STORE_ACL=/root/acl-backup
umask 077
for i in $BACKUP_DIRS; do
 cd $i /usr/bin/getfacl -R --skip-base . >$STORE_ACL/${i//\//_}
done
</pre>
Then use Bacula to backup <b>/root/acl-backup</b>.  
<p>The ACLs could be restored using Bacula to the <b>/root/acl-backup</b>
file, then restored to your system using:
<pre>
setfacl --restore/root/acl-backup
</pre>

<h2><a name="automate">Total Automation of Bacula Tape Handling</h2>
This tip was provided by Alexander Kuehn.
<p>
<a href="http://www.bacula.org/">Bacula</a> is a really nice backup
program except that the manual tape changing requires user interaction
with the bacula console.
<p>Fortunately I can fix this.<br>
Bacula supports a variety of tape changers through the use of
mtx-changer scripts/programs.  This highly flexible approach allowed me
to create <a href="mtx-changer.txt">this shell script</a> which does the
following:<br> 
Whenever a new tape is required it sends a mail to the
operator to insert the new tape.  Then it wait's until a tape has been
inserted, sends a mail again to say thank you and let's bacula continue
it's backup.<br> 
So you can schedule and run backups without ever having
to log on or see the console.<br>
To make the whole thing work you need to create a Device resource which
looks something like this ("Archive Device", "Maximum Changer Wait",
"Media Type" and "Label media" may have different values):

<pre>Device {
   Name=DDS3
   Archive Device = # use yours not mine! ;)/dev/nsa0
   Changer Device = # not really required/dev/nsa0
   Changer Command = "# use this (maybe change the path)!
         /usr/local/bin/mtx-changer %o %a %S"
   Maximum Changer Wait = 3d          # 3 days in seconds
   AutomaticMount = yes;              # mount on start
   AlwaysOpen = yes;                  # keep device locked
   Media Type = DDS3                  # it's just a name
   RemovableMedia = yes;              # 
   Offline On Unmount = Yes;          # keep this too
   Label media = Yes;                 # 
}
</pre>

As the script has to emulate the complete wisdom of a mtx-changer it has
an internal "database" where which tape is stored, you can see this at
that line:<br>

<pre>labels="VOL-0001 VOL-0002 VOL-0003 VOL-0004 VOL-0005 VOL-0006
VOL-0007 VOL-0008 VOL-0009 VOL-0010 VOL-0011 VOL-0012"</pre>

The above should be all on one line, and it effectivly tells Bacula that
volume "VOL-0001" is located in slot 1 (which is our lowest slot), that
volume "VOL-0002" is located in slot 2 and so on..<br>

The script also maintains a logfile (/var/log/mtx.log) where you can
monitor its operation.<br>
<br>

<hr>

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