1 .\" Hey, EMACS: -*- nroff -*-
2 .\" First parameter, NAME, should be all caps
3 .\" Second parameter, SECTION, should be 1-8, maybe w/ subsection
4 .\" other parameters are allowed: see man(7), man(1)
5 .TH DBCHECK 8 "26 May 2006" "Kern Sibbald" "Network backup, recovery and verification"
6 .\" Please adjust this date whenever revising the manpage.
9 dbcheck \- Bacula's Catalog Database Check/Clean program
19 This manual page documents briefly the
23 dbcheck is a simple program that will search for logical
24 inconsistencies in the Bacula tables in your database, and optionally fix them.
25 It is a database maintenance routine, in the sense that it can
26 detect and remove unused rows, but it is not a database repair
27 routine. To repair a database, see the tools furnished by the
28 database vendor. Normally dbcheck should never need to be run,
29 but if Bacula has crashed or you have a lot of Clients, Pools, or
30 Jobs that you have removed, it could be useful.
34 Usage: dbcheck [-c config] [-C catalog name] [-d debug_level] []
36 -C catalog name in the director conf file
37 -c director conf filename
38 -dnn set debug level to nn
39 -f fix inconsistencies
43 If the -c option is given with the Director's conf file, there is no
44 need to enter any of the command line arguments, in particular the working
45 directory as dbcheck will read them from the file.
47 If the -f option is specified, dbcheck will repair (fix) the
48 inconsistencies it finds. Otherwise, it will report only.
50 If the -b option is specified, dbcheck will run in batch mode, and
51 it will proceed to examine and fix (if -f is set) all programmed inconsistency
52 checks. If the -b option is not specified, dbcheck will enter
53 interactive mode and prompt with the following:
55 Hello, this is the database check/correct program.
56 Please select the function you want to perform.
57 1) Toggle modify database flag
58 2) Toggle verbose flag
59 3) Repair bad Filename records
60 4) Repair bad Path records
61 5) Eliminate duplicate Filename records
62 6) Eliminate duplicate Path records
63 7) Eliminate orphaned Jobmedia records
64 8) Eliminate orphaned File records
65 9) Eliminate orphaned Path records
66 10) Eliminate orphaned Filename records
67 11) Eliminate orphaned FileSet records
68 12) Eliminate orphaned Client records
69 13) Eliminate orphaned Job records
70 14) Eliminate all Admin records
71 15) Eliminate all Restore records
74 Select function number:
76 By entering 1 or 2, you can toggle the modify database flag (-f option) and
77 the verbose flag (-v). It can be helpful and reassuring to turn off the modify
78 database flag, then select one or more of the consistency checks (items 3
79 through 9) to see what will be done, then toggle the modify flag on and re-run
82 The inconsistencies examined are the following:
85 Duplicate filename records. This can happen if you accidentally run two
86 copies of Bacula at the same time, and they are both adding filenames
87 simultaneously. It is a rare occurrence, but will create an inconsistent
88 database. If this is the case, you will receive error messages during Jobs
89 warning of duplicate database records. If you are not getting these error
90 messages, there is no reason to run this check.
93 Repair bad Filename records. This checks and corrects filenames that
94 have a trailing slash. They should not.
97 Repair bad Path records. This checks and corrects path names that do
98 not have a trailing slash. They should.
101 Duplicate path records. This can happen if you accidentally run two
102 copies of Bacula at the same time, and they are both adding filenames
103 simultaneously. It is a rare occurrence, but will create an inconsistent
104 database. See the item above for why this occurs and how you know it is
108 Orphaned JobMedia records. This happens when a Job record is deleted
109 (perhaps by a user issued SQL statement), but the corresponding JobMedia
110 record (one for each Volume used in the Job) was not deleted. Normally, this
111 should not happen, and even if it does, these records generally do not take
112 much space in your database. However, by running this check, you can
113 eliminate any such orphans.
116 Orphaned File records. This happens when a Job record is deleted
117 (perhaps by a user issued SQL statement), but the corresponding File record
118 (one for each Volume used in the Job) was not deleted. Note, searching for
119 these records can be {\bf very} time consuming (i.e. it may take hours) for a
120 large database. Normally this should not happen as Bacula takes care to
121 prevent it. Just the same, this check can remove any orphaned File records.
122 It is recommended that you run this once a year since orphaned File records
123 can take a large amount of space in your database. You might
124 want to ensure that you have indexes on JobId, FilenameId, and
125 PathId for the File table in your catalog before running this
129 Orphaned Path records. This condition happens any time a directory is
130 deleted from your system and all associated Job records have been purged.
131 During standard purging (or pruning) of Job records, Bacula does not check
132 for orphaned Path records. As a consequence, over a period of time, old
133 unused Path records will tend to accumulate and use space in your database.
134 This check will eliminate them. It is recommended that you run this
135 check at least once a year.
138 Orphaned Filename records. This condition happens any time a file is
139 deleted from your system and all associated Job records have been purged.
140 This can happen quite frequently as there are quite a large number of files
141 that are created and then deleted. In addition, if you do a system update or
142 delete an entire directory, there can be a very large number of Filename
143 records that remain in the catalog but are no longer used.
145 During standard purging (or pruning) of Job records, Bacula does not check
146 for orphaned Filename records. As a consequence, over a period of time, old
147 unused Filename records will accumulate and use space in your database. This
148 check will eliminate them. It is strongly recommended that you run this check
149 at least once a year, and for large database (more than 200 Megabytes), it is
150 probably better to run this once every 6 months.
153 Orphaned Client records. These records can remain in the database long
154 after you have removed a client.
157 Orphaned Job records. If no client is defined for a job or you do not
158 run a job for a long time, you can accumulate old job records. This option
159 allow you to remove jobs that are not attached to any client (and thus
163 All Admin records. This command will remove all Admin records,
164 regardless of their age.
167 All Restore records. This command will remove all Restore records,
168 regardless of their age.
170 By the way, I personally run dbcheck only where I have messed up
171 my database due to a bug in developing Bacula code, so normally
172 you should never need to run dbcheck inspite of the
173 recommendations given above, which are given so that users don't
174 waste their time running dbcheck too often.
181 This manual page was written by Jose Luis Tallon
183 <jltallon@adv\-solutions.net>.