Split docs out of bacula.spec

[bacula/bacula] / bacula / projects

                
Projects:
                     Bacula Projects Roadmap 
                    Status updated 14 Jun 2009

Summary:
* => item complete

 Item  1: Ability to restart failed jobs
*Item  2: 'restore' menu: enter a JobId, automatically select dependents
 Item  3: Scheduling syntax that permits more flexibility and options
 Item  4: Data encryption on storage daemon
 Item  5: Deletion of disk Volumes when pruned
 Item  6: Implement Base jobs
 Item  7: Add ability to Verify any specified Job.
 Item  8: Improve Bacula's tape and drive usage and cleaning management
 Item  9: Allow FD to initiate a backup
 Item 10: Restore from volumes on multiple storage daemons
 Item 11: Implement Storage daemon compression
 Item 12: Reduction of communications bandwidth for a backup
 Item 13: Ability to reconnect a disconnected comm line
 Item 14: Start spooling even when waiting on tape
 Item 15: Enable/disable compression depending on storage device (disk/tape)
 Item 16: Include all conf files in specified directory
 Item 17: Multiple threads in file daemon for the same job
 Item 18: Possibilty to schedule Jobs on last Friday of the month
 Item 19: Include timestamp of job launch in "stat clients" output
 Item 20: Cause daemons to use a specific IP address to source communications
 Item 21: Message mailing based on backup types
 Item 22: Ability to import/export Bacula database entities
 Item 23: "Maximum Concurrent Jobs" for drives when used with changer device
 Item 24: Implementation of running Job speed limit.
 Item 25: Add an override in Schedule for Pools based on backup types
 Item 26: Automatic promotion of backup levels based on backup size
 Item 27: Allow inclusion/exclusion of files in a fileset by creation/mod times
 Item 28: Archival (removal) of User Files to Tape
 Item 29: An option to operate on all pools with update vol parameters
 Item 30: Automatic disabling of devices
*Item 31: List InChanger flag when doing restore.
 Item 32: Ability to defer Batch Insert to a later time
 Item 33: Add MaxVolumeSize/MaxVolumeBytes statement to Storage resource
 Item 34: Enable persistent naming/number of SQL queries
 Item 35: Port bat to Win32
 Item 36: Bacula Dir, FD and SD to support proxies
 Item 37: Add Minumum Spool Size directive
 Item 38: Backup and Restore of Windows Encrypted Files using Win raw encryption
 Item 39: Implement an interface between Bacula and Amazon's S3.
 Item 40: Convert Bacula existing tray monitor on Windows to a stand alone program

Item  1: Ability to restart failed jobs
   Date: 26 April 2009
 Origin: Kern/Eric
 Status: 

  What:  Often jobs fail because of a communications line drop or max run time,
          cancel, or some other non-critical problem.  Currrently any data
          saved is lost.  This implementation should modify the Storage daemon
          so that it saves all the files that it knows are completely backed
          up to the Volume

          The jobs should then be marked as incomplete and a subsequent
          Incremental Accurate backup will then take into account all the
          previously saved job.

  Why:   Avoids backuping data already saved.

  Notes: Requires Accurate to restart correctly.  Must completed have a minimum
          volume of data or files stored on Volume before enabling.


Item  2: 'restore' menu: enter a JobId, automatically select dependents 
Origin: Graham Keeling (graham@equiinet.com)
Date:  13 March 2009
Status: Done in 3.0.2

What:   Add to the bconsole 'restore' menu the ability to select a job
        by JobId, and have bacula automatically select all the
        dependent jobs.

        Why: Currently, you either have to...
        a) laboriously type in a date that is greater than the date of the backup that
        you want and is less than the subsequent backup (bacula then figures out the
        dependent jobs), or
        b) manually figure out all the JobIds that you want and laboriously type them
        all in.
        It would be extremely useful (in a programmatical sense, as well as for humans)
        to be able to just give it a single JobId and let bacula do the hard work (work
        that it already knows how to do).

        Notes (Kern): I think this should either be modified to have Bacula print
        a list of dates that the user can choose from as is done in bwx-console and
        bat or the name of this command must be carefully chosen so that the user
        clearly understands that the JobId is being used to specify what Job and the
        date to which he wishes the restore to happen.


Item  3: Scheduling syntax that permits more flexibility and options
   Date: 15 December 2006
  Origin: Gregory Brauer (greg at wildbrain dot com) and
          Florian Schnabel <florian.schnabel at docufy dot de>
  Status:

   What: Currently, Bacula only understands how to deal with weeks of the
          month or weeks of the year in schedules.  This makes it impossible
          to do a true weekly rotation of tapes.  There will always be a
          discontinuity that will require disruptive manual intervention at
          least monthly or yearly because week boundaries never align with
          month or year boundaries.

          A solution would be to add a new syntax that defines (at least)
          a start timestamp, and repetition period.

          An easy option to skip a certain job  on a certain date.
   

     Why: Rotated backups done at weekly intervals are useful, and Bacula
          cannot currently do them without extensive hacking.

          You could then easily skip tape backups on holidays.  Especially
          if you got no autochanger and can only fit one backup on a tape
          that would be really handy, other jobs could proceed normally
          and you won't get errors that way.


   Notes: Here is an example syntax showing a 3-week rotation where full
          Backups would be performed every week on Saturday, and an
          incremental would be performed every week on Tuesday.  Each
          set of tapes could be removed from the loader for the following
          two cycles before coming back and being reused on the third
          week.  Since the execution times are determined by intervals
          from a given point in time, there will never be any issues with
          having to adjust to any sort of arbitrary time boundary.  In
          the example provided, I even define the starting schedule
          as crossing both a year and a month boundary, but the run times
          would be based on the "Repeat" value and would therefore happen
          weekly as desired.


          Schedule {
              Name = "Week 1 Rotation"
              #Saturday.  Would run Dec 30, Jan 20, Feb 10, etc.
              Run {
                  Options {
                      Type   = Full
                      Start  = 2006-12-30 01:00
                      Repeat = 3w
                  }
              }
              #Tuesday.  Would run Jan 2, Jan 23, Feb 13, etc.
              Run {
                  Options {
                      Type   = Incremental
                      Start  = 2007-01-02 01:00
                      Repeat = 3w
                  }
              }
          }

          Schedule {
              Name = "Week 2 Rotation"
              #Saturday.  Would run Jan 6, Jan 27, Feb 17, etc.
              Run {
                  Options {
                      Type   = Full
                      Start  = 2007-01-06 01:00
                      Repeat = 3w
                  }
              }
              #Tuesday.  Would run Jan 9, Jan 30, Feb 20, etc.
              Run {
                  Options {
                      Type   = Incremental
                      Start  = 2007-01-09 01:00
                      Repeat = 3w
                  }
              }
          }

          Schedule {
              Name = "Week 3 Rotation"
              #Saturday.  Would run Jan 13, Feb 3, Feb 24, etc.
              Run {
                  Options {
                      Type   = Full
                      Start  = 2007-01-13 01:00
                      Repeat = 3w
                  }
              }
              #Tuesday.  Would run Jan 16, Feb 6, Feb 27, etc.
              Run {
                  Options {
                      Type   = Incremental
                      Start  = 2007-01-16 01:00
                      Repeat = 3w
                  }
              }
          }

   Notes: Kern: I have merged the previously separate project of skipping 
          jobs (via Schedule syntax) into this.


Item  4: Data encryption on storage daemon
  Origin: Tobias Barth <tobias.barth at web-arts.com>
  Date:  04 February 2009
  Status: new

  What:  The storage demon should be able to do the data encryption that can currently be done by the file daemon.

  Why:   This would have 2 advantages: 1) one could encrypt the data of unencrypted tapes by doing a migration job, and 2) the storage daemon would be the only machine that would have to keep the encryption keys.

  Notes from Landon:
          As an addendum to the feature request, here are some crypto  
          implementation details I wrote up regarding SD-encryption back in Jan  
          2008:
          http://www.mail-archive.com/bacula-users@lists.sourceforge.net/msg28860.html


Item  5: Deletion of disk Volumes when pruned
  Date:  Nov 25, 2005
  Origin: Ross Boylan <RossBoylan at stanfordalumni dot org> (edited
          by Kern)
  Status:        

   What: Provide a way for Bacula to automatically remove Volumes
          from the filesystem, or optionally to truncate them.
          Obviously, the Volume must be pruned prior removal.

  Why:   This would allow users more control over their Volumes and
          prevent disk based volumes from consuming too much space.

  Notes: The following two directives might do the trick:

          Volume Data Retention = <time period>
          Remove Volume After = <time period>

          The migration project should also remove a Volume that is
          migrated. This might also work for tape Volumes.

  Notes: (Kern). The data fields to control this have been added
          to the new 3.0.0 database table structure.


Item  6: Implement Base jobs 
  Date:  28 October 2005
  Origin: Kern
  Status:
  
  What:  A base job is sort of like a Full save except that you 
          will want the FileSet to contain only files that are
          unlikely to change in the future (i.e.  a snapshot of
          most of your system after installing it).  After the
          base job has been run, when you are doing a Full save,
          you specify one or more Base jobs to be used.  All
          files that have been backed up in the Base job/jobs but
          not modified will then be excluded from the backup.
          During a restore, the Base jobs will be automatically
          pulled in where necessary.

  Why:   This is something none of the competition does, as far as
          we know (except perhaps BackupPC, which is a Perl program that
          saves to disk only).  It is big win for the user, it
          makes Bacula stand out as offering a unique
          optimization that immediately saves time and money.
          Basically, imagine that you have 100 nearly identical
          Windows or Linux machine containing the OS and user
          files.  Now for the OS part, a Base job will be backed
          up once, and rather than making 100 copies of the OS,
          there will be only one.  If one or more of the systems
          have some files updated, no problem, they will be
          automatically restored.

  Notes: Huge savings in tape usage even for a single machine.
          Will require more resources because the DIR must send
          FD a list of files/attribs, and the FD must search the
          list and compare it for each file to be saved.


Item  7: Add ability to Verify any specified Job.
Date: 17 January 2008
Origin: portrix.net Hamburg, Germany.
Contact: Christian Sabelmann
Status: 70% of the required Code is part of the Verify function since v. 2.x

   What:
   The ability to tell Bacula which Job should verify instead of 
   automatically verify just the last one.

   Why: 
   It is sad that such a powerfull feature like Verify Jobs
   (VolumeToCatalog) is restricted to be used only with the last backup Job
   of a client.  Actual users who have to do daily Backups are forced to
   also do daily Verify Jobs in order to take advantage of this useful
   feature.  This Daily Verify after Backup conduct is not always desired
   and Verify Jobs have to be sometimes scheduled.  (Not necessarily
   scheduled in Bacula).  With this feature Admins can verify Jobs once a
   Week or less per month, selecting the Jobs they want to verify.  This
   feature is also not to difficult to implement taking in account older bug
   reports about this feature and the selection of the Job to be verified.
          
   Notes: For the verify Job, the user could select the Job to be verified 
   from a List of the latest Jobs of a client. It would also be possible to 
   verify a certain volume.  All of these would naturaly apply only for 
   Jobs whose file information are still in the catalog.


Item  8: Improve Bacula's tape and drive usage and cleaning management 
  Date:  8 November 2005, November 11, 2005
  Origin: Adam Thornton <athornton at sinenomine dot net>,
          Arno Lehmann <al at its-lehmann dot de>
  Status:

  What:  Make Bacula manage tape life cycle information, tape reuse
          times and drive cleaning cycles.

  Why:   All three parts of this project are important when operating
          backups.
          We need to know which tapes need replacement, and we need to
          make sure the drives are cleaned when necessary.  While many
          tape libraries and even autoloaders can handle all this
          automatically, support by Bacula can be helpful for smaller
          (older) libraries and single drives.  Limiting the number of
          times a tape is used might prevent tape errors when using
          tapes until the drives can't read it any more.  Also, checking
          drive status during operation can prevent some failures (as I
          [Arno] had to learn the hard way...)

  Notes: First, Bacula could (and even does, to some limited extent)
          record tape and drive usage.  For tapes, the number of mounts,
          the amount of data, and the time the tape has actually been
          running could be recorded.  Data fields for Read and Write
          time and Number of mounts already exist in the catalog (I'm
          not sure if VolBytes is the sum of all bytes ever written to
          that volume by Bacula).  This information can be important
          when determining which media to replace.  The ability to mark
          Volumes as "used up" after a given number of write cycles
          should also be implemented so that a tape is never actually
          worn out.  For the tape drives known to Bacula, similar
          information is interesting to determine the device status and
          expected life time: Time it's been Reading and Writing, number
          of tape Loads / Unloads / Errors.  This information is not yet
          recorded as far as I [Arno] know.  A new volume status would
          be necessary for the new state, like "Used up" or "Worn out".
          Volumes with this state could be used for restores, but not
          for writing. These volumes should be migrated first (assuming
          migration is implemented) and, once they are no longer needed,
          could be moved to a Trash pool.

          The next step would be to implement a drive cleaning setup.
          Bacula already has knowledge about cleaning tapes.  Once it
          has some information about cleaning cycles (measured in drive
          run time, number of tapes used, or calender days, for example)
          it can automatically execute tape cleaning (with an
          autochanger, obviously) or ask for operator assistance loading
          a cleaning tape.

          The final step would be to implement TAPEALERT checks not only
          when changing tapes and only sending the information to the
          administrator, but rather checking after each tape error,
          checking on a regular basis (for example after each tape
          file), and also before unloading and after loading a new tape.
          Then, depending on the drives TAPEALERT state and the known
          drive cleaning state Bacula could automatically schedule later
          cleaning, clean immediately, or inform the operator.

          Implementing this would perhaps require another catalog change
          and perhaps major changes in SD code and the DIR-SD protocol,
          so I'd only consider this worth implementing if it would
          actually be used or even needed by many people.

          Implementation of these projects could happen in three distinct
          sub-projects: Measuring Tape and Drive usage, retiring
          volumes, and handling drive cleaning and TAPEALERTs.


Item  9: Allow FD to initiate a backup
Origin:  Frank Volf (frank at deze dot org)
Date:    17 November 2005
Status: 

What: Provide some means, possibly by a restricted console that
       allows a FD to initiate a backup, and that uses the connection
       established by the FD to the Director for the backup so that
       a Director that is firewalled can do the backup.
Why:  Makes backup of laptops much easier.


Item 10: Restore from volumes on multiple storage daemons
Origin: Graham Keeling (graham@equiinet.com)
Date:  12 March 2009
Status: Proposing

What:  The ability to restore from volumes held by multiple storage daemons
        would be very useful.

Why:   It is useful to be able to backup to any number of different storage
        daemons. For example, your first storage daemon may run out of space, so you
        switch to your second and carry on. Bacula will currently let you do this.
        However, once you come to restore, bacula cannot cope when volumes on different
        storage daemons are required.

        Notes: The director knows that more than one storage daemon is needed, as
        bconsole outputs something like the following table.

        The job will require the following
           Volume(s)                 Storage(s)                SD Device(s)
        ===========================================================================
           
           backup-0001               Disk 1                    Disk 1.0                 
           backup-0002               Disk 2                    Disk 2.0             

        However, the bootstrap file that it creates gets sent to the first storage
        daemon only, which then stalls for a long time, 'waiting for a mount request'
        for the volume that it doesn't have.
        The bootstrap file contains no knowledge of the storage daemon.
        Under the current design:

                The director connects to the storage daemon, and gets an sd_auth_key.
                The director then connects to the file daemon, and gives it the
                        sd_auth_key with the 'jobcmd'.
                (restoring of files happens)
                The director does a 'wait_for_storage_daemon_termination()'.
                The director waits for the file daemon to indicate the end of the job.

        With my idea:

        The director connects to the file daemon.
        Then, for each storage daemon in the .bsr file...  {
                The director connects to the storage daemon, and gets an sd_auth_key.
                The director then connects to the file daemon, and gives it the
                        sd_auth_key with the 'storaddr' command.
                (restoring of files happens)
                The director does a 'wait_for_storage_daemon_termination()'.
                The director waits for the file daemon to indicate the end of the
                        work on this storage.
        }
        The director tells the file daemon that there are no more storages to contact.
        The director waits for the file daemon to indicate the end of the job.

        As you can see, each restore between the file daemon and storage daemon is
        handled in the same way that it is currently handled, using the same method
        for authentication, except that the sd_auth_key is moved from the 'jobcmd' to
        the 'storaddr' command - where it logically belongs.


Item 11: Implement Storage daemon compression
  Date:  18 December 2006
  Origin: Vadim A. Umanski , e-mail umanski@ext.ru
  Status:
  What:  The ability to compress backup data on the SD receiving data
          instead of doing that on client sending data.
  Why:   The need is practical. I've got some machines that can send
          data to the network 4 or 5 times faster than compressing
          them (I've measured that). They're using fast enough SCSI/FC
          disk subsystems but rather slow CPUs (ex. UltraSPARC II).
          And the backup server has got a quite fast CPUs (ex. Dual P4
          Xeons) and quite a low load. When you have 20, 50 or 100 GB
          of raw data - running a job 4 to 5 times faster - that
          really matters. On the other hand, the data can be
          compressed 50% or better - so losing twice more space for
          disk backup is not good at all. And the network is all mine
          (I have a dedicated management/provisioning network) and I
          can get as high bandwidth as I need - 100Mbps, 1000Mbps...
          That's why the server-side compression feature is needed!
  Notes:


Item 12: Reduction of communications bandwidth for a backup
   Date: 14 October 2008
 Origin: Robin O'Leary (Equiinet)
 Status: 

  What:  Using rdiff techniques, Bacula could significantly reduce
          the network data transfer volume to do a backup.

  Why:   Faster backup across the Internet

  Notes: This requires retaining certain data on the client during a Full
          backup that will speed up subsequent backups.
     
     
Item 13: Ability to reconnect a disconnected comm line
  Date:  26 April 2009
  Origin: Kern/Eric
  Status: 

  What:  Often jobs fail because of a communications line drop. In that 
          case, Bacula should be able to reconnect to the other daemon and
          resume the job.

  Why:   Avoids backuping data already saved.

  Notes: *Very* complicated from a design point of view because of authenication.

Item 14: Start spooling even when waiting on tape
  Origin: Tobias Barth <tobias.barth@web-arts.com>
  Date:  25 April 2008
  Status:

  What: If a job can be spooled to disk before writing it to tape, it should
          be spooled immediately.  Currently, bacula waits until the correct
          tape is inserted into the drive.

  Why:   It could save hours.  When bacula waits on the operator who must insert
          the correct tape (e.g.  a new tape or a tape from another media
          pool), bacula could already prepare the spooled data in the spooling
          directory and immediately start despooling when the tape was
          inserted by the operator.
         
          2nd step: Use 2 or more spooling directories.  When one directory is
          currently despooling, the next (on different disk drives) could
          already be spooling the next data.

  Notes: I am using bacula 2.2.8, which has none of those features
         implemented.


Item 15: Enable/disable compression depending on storage device (disk/tape)
  Origin: Ralf Gross ralf-lists@ralfgross.de
  Date:  2008-01-11
  Status: Initial Request

  What: Add a new option to the storage resource of the director.  Depending
          on this option, compression will be enabled/disabled for a device.

  Why: If different devices (disks/tapes) are used for full/diff/incr
          backups, software compression will be enabled for all backups
          because of the FileSet compression option.  For backup to tapes
          wich are able to do hardware compression this is not desired.
          

  Notes:
         http://news.gmane.org/gmane.comp.sysutils.backup.bacula.devel/cutoff=11124
         It must be clear to the user, that the FileSet compression option
         must still be enabled use compression for a backup job at all.
         Thus a name for the new option in the director must be
         well-defined.

  Notes: KES I think the Storage definition should probably override what
         is in the Job definition or vice-versa, but in any case, it must
         be well defined.


Item 16: Include all conf files in specified directory
Date:  18 October 2008
Origin: Database, Lda. Maputo, Mozambique
Contact:Cameron Smith / cameron.ord@database.co.mz 
Status: New request

What: A directive something like "IncludeConf = /etc/bacula/subconfs" Every
      time Bacula Director restarts or reloads, it will walk the given
      directory (non-recursively) and include the contents of any files
      therein, as though they were appended to bacula-dir.conf

Why: Permits simplified and safer configuration for larger installations with
      many client PCs.  Currently, through judicious use of JobDefs and
      similar directives, it is possible to reduce the client-specific part of
      a configuration to a minimum.  The client-specific directives can be
      prepared according to a standard template and dropped into a known
      directory.  However it is still necessary to add a line to the "master"
      (bacula-dir.conf) referencing each new file.  This exposes the master to
      unnecessary risk of accidental mistakes and makes automation of adding
      new client-confs, more difficult (it is easier to automate dropping a
      file into a dir, than rewriting an existing file).  Ken has previously
      made a convincing argument for NOT including Bacula's core configuration
      in an RDBMS, but I believe that the present request is a reasonable
      extension to the current "flat-file-based" configuration philosophy.
 
Notes: There is NO need for any special syntax to these files.  They should
       contain standard directives which are simply "inlined" to the parent
       file as already happens when you explicitly reference an external file.

Notes: (kes) this can already be done with scripting
     From: John Jorgensen <jorgnsn@lcd.uregina.ca>
     The bacula-dir.conf at our site contains these lines:

   #
   # Include subfiles associated with configuration of clients.
   # They define the bulk of the Clients, Jobs, and FileSets.
   #
   @|"sh -c 'for f in /etc/bacula/clientdefs/*.conf ; do echo @${f} ; done'"

    and when we get a new client, we just put its configuration into
    a new file called something like:

    /etc/bacula/clientdefs/clientname.conf


Item 17: Multiple threads in file daemon for the same job
  Date:  27 November 2005
  Origin: Ove Risberg (Ove.Risberg at octocode dot com)
  Status:

  What:  I want the file daemon to start multiple threads for a backup
          job so the fastest possible backup can be made.

          The file daemon could parse the FileSet information and start
          one thread for each File entry located on a separate
          filesystem.

          A confiuration option in the job section should be used to
          enable or disable this feature. The confgutration option could
          specify the maximum number of threads in the file daemon.

          If the theads could spool the data to separate spool files
          the restore process will not be much slower.

  Why:   Multiple concurrent backups of a large fileserver with many
          disks and controllers will be much faster.


Item 18: Possibilty to schedule Jobs on last Friday of the month
Origin: Carsten Menke <bootsy52 at gmx dot net>
Date:   02 March 2008
Status:

   What: Currently if you want to run your monthly Backups on the last
           Friday of each month this is only possible with workarounds (e.g
           scripting) (As some months got 4 Fridays and some got 5 Fridays)
           The same is true if you plan to run your yearly Backups on the
           last Friday of the year.  It would be nice to have the ability to
           use the builtin scheduler for this.

   Why:   In many companies the last working day of the week is Friday (or 
           Saturday), so to get the most data of the month onto the monthly
           tape, the employees are advised to insert the tape for the
           monthly backups on the last friday of the month.

   Notes: To give this a complete functionality it would be nice if the
           "first" and "last" Keywords could be implemented in the
           scheduler, so it is also possible to run monthy backups at the
           first friday of the month and many things more.  So if the syntax
           would expand to this {first|last} {Month|Week|Day|Mo-Fri} of the
           {Year|Month|Week} you would be able to run really flexible jobs.

           To got a certain Job run on the last Friday of the Month for example one could 
           then write

              Run = pool=Monthly last Fri of the Month at 23:50

              ## Yearly Backup

              Run = pool=Yearly last Fri of the Year at 23:50

              ## Certain Jobs the last Week of a Month

              Run = pool=LastWeek last Week of the Month at 23:50

              ## Monthly Backup on the last day of the month

              Run = pool=Monthly last Day of the Month at 23:50


Item 19: Include timestamp of job launch in "stat clients" output
  Origin: Mark Bergman <mark.bergman@uphs.upenn.edu>
  Date:  Tue Aug 22 17:13:39 EDT 2006
  Status:

  What:  The "stat clients" command doesn't include any detail on when
          the active backup jobs were launched.

  Why:   Including the timestamp would make it much easier to decide whether
          a job is running properly. 

  Notes: It may be helpful to have the output from "stat clients" formatted 
          more like that from "stat dir" (and other commands), in a column
          format. The per-client information that's currently shown (level,
          client name, JobId, Volume, pool, device, Files, etc.) is good, but
          somewhat hard to parse (both programmatically and visually), 
          particularly when there are many active clients.


Item 20: Cause daemons to use a specific IP address to source communications
 Origin: Bill Moran <wmoran@collaborativefusion.com>
 Date:   18 Dec 2006
 Status: Done
 What:   Cause Bacula daemons (dir, fd, sd) to always use the ip address
          specified in the [DIR|DF|SD]Addr directive as the source IP
          for initiating communication.
 Why:    On complex networks, as well as extremely secure networks, it's
          not unusual to have multiple possible routes through the network.
          Often, each of these routes is secured by different policies
          (effectively, firewalls allow or deny different traffic depending
          on the source address)
          Unfortunately, it can sometimes be difficult or impossible to
          represent this in a system routing table, as the result is
          excessive subnetting that quickly exhausts available IP space.
          The best available workaround is to provide multiple IPs to
          a single machine that are all on the same subnet.  In order
          for this to work properly, applications must support the ability
          to bind outgoing connections to a specified address, otherwise
          the operating system will always choose the first IP that
          matches the required route.
 Notes:  Many other programs support this.  For example, the following
          can be configured in BIND:
          query-source address 10.0.0.1;
          transfer-source 10.0.0.2;
          Which means queries from this server will always come from
          10.0.0.1 and zone transfers will always originate from
          10.0.0.2.


Item 21: Message mailing based on backup types
 Origin: Evan Kaufman <evan.kaufman@gmail.com>
   Date: January 6, 2006
 Status:

   What: In the "Messages" resource definitions, allowing messages
          to be mailed based on the type (backup, restore, etc.) and level
          (full, differential, etc) of job that created the originating
          message(s).

 Why:    It would, for example, allow someone's boss to be emailed
          automatically only when a Full Backup job runs, so he can
          retrieve the tapes for offsite storage, even if the IT dept.
          doesn't (or can't) explicitly notify him.  At the same time, his
          mailbox wouldnt be filled by notifications of Verifies, Restores,
          or Incremental/Differential Backups (which would likely be kept
          onsite).

 Notes:  One way this could be done is through additional message types, for example:

   Messages {
     # email the boss only on full system backups
     Mail = boss@mycompany.com = full, !incremental, !differential, !restore, 
            !verify, !admin
     # email us only when something breaks
     MailOnError = itdept@mycompany.com = all
   }

   Notes: Kern: This should be rather trivial to implement.


Item 22: Ability to import/export Bacula database entities
   Date: 26 April 2009
 Origin: Eric
 Status: 

  What:  Create a Bacula ASCII SQL database independent format that permits
          importing and exporting database catalog Job entities.

  Why:   For achival, database clustering, tranfer to other databases
          of any SQL engine.

  Notes: Job selection should be by Job, time, Volume, Client, Pool and possibly
          other criteria.


Item 23: "Maximum Concurrent Jobs" for drives when used with changer device
  Origin: Ralf Gross ralf-lists <at> ralfgross.de
  Date:  2008-12-12
  Status: Initial Request

  What:  respect the "Maximum Concurrent Jobs" directive in the _drives_
          Storage section in addition to the changer section

  Why:   I have a 3 drive changer where I want to be able to let 3 concurrent
          jobs run in parallel. But only one job per drive at the same time.
          Right now I don't see how I could limit the number of concurrent jobs
          per drive in this situation.

  Notes: Using different priorities for these jobs lead to problems that other
          jobs are blocked. On the user list I got the advice to use the "Prefer Mounted
          Volumes" directive, but Kern advised against using "Prefer Mounted
          Volumes" in an other thread:
          http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.sysutils.backup.bacula.devel/11876/

          In addition I'm not sure if this would be the same as respecting the
          drive's "Maximum Concurrent Jobs" setting.

          Example:

          Storage {
            Name = Neo4100
            Address = ....
            SDPort = 9103
            Password = "wiped"
            Device = Neo4100
            Media Type = LTO4
            Autochanger = yes
            Maximum Concurrent Jobs = 3
          }
          
          Storage {
            Name = Neo4100-LTO4-D1
            Address = ....
            SDPort = 9103
            Password = "wiped"
            Device = ULTRIUM-TD4-D1
            Media Type = LTO4
            Maximum Concurrent Jobs = 1
          }
          
          [2 more drives] 

          The "Maximum Concurrent Jobs = 1" directive in the drive's section is ignored.


Item 24: Implementation of running Job speed limit.
Origin: Alex F, alexxzell at yahoo dot com
Date: 29 January 2009

What: I noticed the need for an integrated bandwidth limiter for
      running jobs.  It would be very useful just to specify another
      field in bacula-dir.conf, like speed = how much speed you wish
      for that specific job to run at

Why: Because of a couple of reasons.  First, it's very hard to implement a
     traffic shaping utility and also make it reliable.  Second, it is very
     uncomfortable to have to implement these apps to, let's say 50 clients
     (including desktops, servers).  This would also be unreliable because you
     have to make sure that the apps are properly working when needed; users
     could also disable them (accidentally or not).  It would be very useful
     to provide Bacula this ability.  All information would be centralized,
     you would not have to go to 50 different clients in 10 different
     locations for configuration; eliminating 3rd party additions help in
     establishing efficiency.  Would also avoid bandwidth congestion,
     especially where there is little available.


Item 25: Add an override in Schedule for Pools based on backup types
Date:    19 Jan 2005
Origin:  Chad Slater <chad.slater@clickfox.com>
Status: 
                                                
  What:  Adding a FullStorage=BigTapeLibrary in the Schedule resource
          would help those of us who use different storage devices for different
          backup levels cope with the "auto-upgrade" of a backup.

  Why:   Assume I add several new devices to be backed up, i.e. several
          hosts with 1TB RAID.  To avoid tape switching hassles, incrementals are
          stored in a disk set on a 2TB RAID.  If you add these devices in the
          middle of the month, the incrementals are upgraded to "full" backups,
          but they try to use the same storage device as requested in the
          incremental job, filling up the RAID holding the differentials.  If we
          could override the Storage parameter for full and/or differential
          backups, then the Full job would use the proper Storage device, which
          has more capacity (i.e. a 8TB tape library.


Item 26: Automatic promotion of backup levels based on backup size
   Date: 19 January 2006
  Origin: Adam Thornton <athornton@sinenomine.net>
  Status: 

    What: Other backup programs have a feature whereby it estimates the space
          that a differential, incremental, and full backup would take.  If
          the difference in space required between the scheduled level and the
          next level up is beneath some user-defined critical threshold, the
          backup level is bumped to the next type.  Doing this minimizes the
          number of volumes necessary during a restore, with a fairly minimal
          cost in backup media space.

    Why: I know at least one (quite sophisticated and smart) user for whom the
          absence of this feature is a deal-breaker in terms of using Bacula;
          if we had it it would eliminate the one cool thing other backup
          programs can do and we can't (at least, the one cool thing I know
          of).


Item 27: Allow inclusion/exclusion of files in a fileset by creation/mod times
  Origin: Evan Kaufman <evan.kaufman@gmail.com>
  Date:  January 11, 2006
  Status:

  What:  In the vein of the Wild and Regex directives in a Fileset's
          Options, it would be helpful to allow a user to include or exclude
          files and directories by creation or modification times.

          You could factor the Exclude=yes|no option in much the same way it
          affects the Wild and Regex directives.  For example, you could exclude
          all files modified before a certain date:

   Options {
     Exclude = yes
     Modified Before = ####
   }

           Or you could exclude all files created/modified since a certain date:

   Options {
      Exclude = yes
     Created Modified Since = ####
   }

           The format of the time/date could be done several ways, say the number
           of seconds since the epoch:
           1137008553 = Jan 11 2006, 1:42:33PM   # result of `date +%s`

           Or a human readable date in a cryptic form:
           20060111134233 = Jan 11 2006, 1:42:33PM   # YYYYMMDDhhmmss

  Why:   I imagine a feature like this could have many uses. It would
          allow a user to do a full backup while excluding the base operating
          system files, so if I installed a Linux snapshot from a CD yesterday,
          I'll *exclude* all files modified *before* today.  If I need to
          recover the system, I use the CD I already have, plus the tape backup.
          Or if, say, a Windows client is hit by a particularly corrosive
          virus, and I need to *exclude* any files created/modified *since* the
          time of infection.

  Notes: Of course, this feature would work in concert with other
          in/exclude rules, and wouldnt override them (or each other).

  Notes: The directives I'd imagine would be along the lines of
          "[Created] [Modified] [Before|Since] = <date>".
          So one could compare against 'ctime' and/or 'mtime', but ONLY 'before'
           or 'since'.


Item 28: Archival (removal) of User Files to Tape
  Date:  Nov. 24/2005 
  Origin: Ray Pengelly [ray at biomed dot queensu dot ca
  Status: 

  What:  The ability to archive data to storage based on certain parameters
          such as age, size, or location.  Once the data has been written to
          storage and logged it is then pruned from the originating
          filesystem. Note! We are talking about user's files and not
          Bacula Volumes.

  Why:   This would allow fully automatic storage management which becomes
          useful for large datastores.  It would also allow for auto-staging
          from one media type to another.

          Example 1) Medical imaging needs to store large amounts of data.
          They decide to keep data on their servers for 6 months and then put
          it away for long term storage.  The server then finds all files
          older than 6 months writes them to tape.  The files are then removed
          from the server.

          Example 2) All data that hasn't been accessed in 2 months could be
          moved from high-cost, fibre-channel disk storage to a low-cost
          large-capacity SATA disk storage pool which doesn't have as quick of
          access time.  Then after another 6 months (or possibly as one
          storage pool gets full) data is migrated to Tape.


Item 29: An option to operate on all pools with update vol parameters
  Origin: Dmitriy Pinchukov <absh@bossdev.kiev.ua>
   Date: 16 August 2006
  Status: Patch made by  Nigel Stepp

   What: When I do update -> Volume parameters -> All Volumes
          from Pool, then I have to select pools one by one.  I'd like
          console to have an option like "0: All Pools" in the list of
          defined pools.

   Why:  I have many pools and therefore unhappy with manually
          updating each of them using update -> Volume parameters -> All
          Volumes from Pool -> pool #.


Item 30: Automatic disabling of devices
   Date: 2005-11-11
  Origin: Peter Eriksson <peter at ifm.liu dot se>
  Status:

   What: After a configurable amount of fatal errors with a tape drive
          Bacula should automatically disable further use of a certain
          tape drive. There should also be "disable"/"enable" commands in
          the "bconsole" tool.

   Why:  On a multi-drive jukebox there is a possibility of tape drives
          going bad during large backups (needing a cleaning tape run,
          tapes getting stuck). It would be advantageous if Bacula would
          automatically disable further use of a problematic tape drive
          after a configurable amount of errors has occurred.

          An example: I have a multi-drive jukebox (6 drives, 380+ slots)
          where tapes occasionally get stuck inside the drive. Bacula will
          notice that the "mtx-changer" command will fail and then fail
          any backup jobs trying to use that drive. However, it will still
          keep on trying to run new jobs using that drive and fail -
          forever, and thus failing lots and lots of jobs... Since we have
          many drives Bacula could have just automatically disabled
          further use of that drive and used one of the other ones
          instead.


Item 31: List InChanger flag when doing restore.
 Origin: Jesper Krogh<jesper@krogh.cc>
   Date: 17 Oct 2008
 Status: Done in version 3.0.2

   What: When doing a restore the restore selection dialog ends by telling stuff 
      like this:
  The job will require the following
   Volume(s)                 Storage(s)                SD Device(s)
   ===========================================================================
    000741L3                  LTO-4                     LTO3 
    000866L3                  LTO-4                     LTO3 
    000765L3                  LTO-4                     LTO3 
    000764L3                  LTO-4                     LTO3 
    000756L3                  LTO-4                     LTO3 
    001759L3                  LTO-4                     LTO3 
    001763L3                  LTO-4                     LTO3 
    001762L3                  LTO-4                     LTO3 
    001767L3                  LTO-4                     LTO3 

   When having an autochanger, it would be really nice with an inChanger 
   column so the operator knew if this restore job would stop waiting for 
   operator intervention. This is done just by selecting the inChanger flag 
   from the catalog and printing it in a seperate column.


   Why:   This would help getting large restores through minimizing the 
      time spent waiting for operator to drop by and change tapes in the library.

  Notes: [Kern] I think it would also be good to have the Slot as well,
      or some indication that Bacula thinks the volume is in the autochanger
      because it depends on both the InChanger flag and the Slot being
      valid.


Item 32: Ability to defer Batch Insert to a later time
   Date: 26 April 2009
 Origin: Eric
 Status: 

  What:  Instead of doing a Job Batch Insert at the end of the Job
          which might create resource contention with lots of Job,
          defer the insert to a later time.

  Why:   Permits to focus on getting the data on the Volume and
          putting the metadata into the Catalog outside the backup
          window.

  Notes: Will use the proposed Bacula ASCII database import/export
          format (i.e. dependent on the import/export entities project).


Item 33: Add MaxVolumeSize/MaxVolumeBytes statement to Storage resource
   Origin: Bastian Friedrich <bastian.friedrich@collax.com>
   Date:  2008-07-09
   Status: -

   What:  SD has a "Maximum Volume Size" statement, which is deprecated and
           superseded by the Pool resource statement "Maximum Volume Bytes".
           It would be good if either statement could be used in Storage
           resources.

   Why:   Pools do not have to be restricted to a single storage type/device;
           thus, it may be impossible to define Maximum Volume Bytes in the
           Pool resource.  The old MaxVolSize statement is deprecated, as it
           is SD side only.  I am using the same pool for different devices.

   Notes: State of idea currently unknown.  Storage resources in the dir
           config currently translate to very slim catalog entries; these
           entries would require extensions to implement what is described
           here.  Quite possibly, numerous other statements that are currently
           available in Pool resources could be used in Storage resources too
           quite well.


Item 34: Enable persistent naming/number of SQL queries
  Date:  24 Jan, 2007 
  Origin: Mark Bergman 
  Status: 

  What: 
        Change the parsing of the query.sql file and the query command so that
        queries are named/numbered by a fixed value, not their order in the
        file.


  Why:  
        One of the real strengths of bacula is the ability to query the
        database, and the fact that complex queries can be saved and
        referenced from a file is very powerful. However, the choice
        of query (both for interactive use, and by scripting input
        to the bconsole command) is completely dependent on the order
        within the query.sql file. The descriptve labels are helpful for
        interactive use, but users become used to calling a particular
        query "by number", or may use scripts to execute queries. This
        presents a problem if the number or order of queries in the file
        changes.

        If the query.sql file used the numeric tags as a real value (rather
        than a comment), then users could have a higher confidence that they
        are executing the intended query, that their local changes wouldn't
        conflict with future bacula upgrades.

        For scripting, it's very important that the intended query is
        what's actually executed. The current method of parsing the
        query.sql file discourages scripting because the addition or
        deletion of queries within the file will require corresponding
        changes to scripts. It may not be obvious to users that deleting
        query "17" in the query.sql file will require changing all
        references to higher numbered queries. Similarly, when new
        bacula distributions change the number of "official" queries,
        user-developed queries cannot simply be appended to the file
        without also changing any references to those queries in scripts
        or procedural documentation, etc.

        In addition, using fixed numbers for queries would encourage more
        user-initiated development of queries, by supporting conventions
        such as:

                queries numbered 1-50 are supported/developed/distributed by
                        with official bacula releases
                        
                queries numbered 100-200 are community contributed, and are
                related to media management

                queries numbered 201-300 are community contributed, and are
                related to checksums, finding duplicated files across
                different backups, etc.

                queries numbered 301-400 are community contributed, and are
                related to backup statistics (average file size, size per
                client per backup level, time for all clients by backup level,
                storage capacity by media type, etc.)

                queries numbered 500-999 are locally created

  Notes:
        Alternatively, queries could be called by keyword (tag), rather
        than by number.


Item 35: Port bat to Win32
   Date: 26 April 2009
 Origin: Kern/Eric
 Status: 

  What:  Make bat run on Win32/64.

  Why:   To have GUI on Windows

  Notes: 


Item 36: Bacula Dir, FD and SD to support proxies
Origin: Karl Grindley @ MIT Lincoln Laboratory <kgrindley at ll dot mit dot edu>
Date:  25 March 2009
Status: proposed

What:  Support alternate methods for nailing up a TCP session such
        as SOCKS5, SOCKS4 and HTTP (CONNECT) proxies.  Such a feature
        would allow tunneling of bacula traffic in and out of proxied
        networks.

Why:   Currently, bacula is architected to only function on a flat network, with
        no barriers or limitations.  Due to the large configuration states of
        any network and the infinite configuration where file daemons and
        storage daemons may sit in relation to one another, bacula often is
        not usable on a network where filtered or air-gaped networks exist.
        While often solutions such as ACL modifications to firewalls or port
        redirection via SNAT or DNAT will solve the issue, often however,
        these solutions are not adequate or not allowed by hard policy.

        In an air-gapped network with only a highly locked down proxy services
        are provided (SOCKS4/5 and/or HTTP and/or SSH outbound) ACLs or
        iptable rules will not work.

Notes: Director resource tunneling: This configuration option to utilize a
        proxy to connect to a client should be specified in the client
        resource Client resource tunneling: should be configured in the client
        resource in the director config file?  Or configured on the bacula-fd
        configuration file on the fd host itself?  If the ladder, this would
        allow only certain clients to use a proxy, where others do not when
        establishing the TCP connection to the storage server. 

        Also worth noting, there are other 3rd party, light weight apps that
        could be utilized to bootstrap this.  Instead of sockifing bacula
        itself, use an external program to broker proxy authentication, and
        connection to the remote host.  OpenSSH does this by using the
        "ProxyCommand" syntax in the client configuration and uses stdin and
        stdout to the command.  Connect.c is a very popular one.
        (http://bent.latency.net/bent/darcs/goto-san-connect-1.85/src/connect.html).
        One could also possibly use stunnel, netcat, etc.


Item 37: Add Minumum Spool Size directive
Date: 20 March 2008
Origin: Frank Sweetser <fs@wpi.edu>

   What: Add a new SD directive, "minimum spool size" (or similar).  This
         directive would specify a minimum level of free space available for
         spooling.  If the unused spool space is less than this level, any
         new spooling requests would be blocked as if the "maximum spool
         size" threshold had bee reached.  Already spooling jobs would be
         unaffected by this directive.

   Why: I've been bitten by this scenario a couple of times:

        Assume a maximum spool size of 100M. Two concurrent jobs, A and B,
        are both running.  Due to timing quirks and previously running jobs,
        job A has used 99.9M of space in the spool directory.  While A is
        busy despooling to disk, B is happily using the remaining 0.1M of
        spool space.  This ends up in a spool/despool sequence every 0.1M of
        data.  In addition to fragmenting the data on the volume far more
        than was necessary, in larger data sets (ie, tens or hundreds of
        gigabytes) it can easily produce multi-megabyte report emails!


Item 38: Backup and Restore of Windows Encrypted Files using Win raw encryption
  Origin: Michael Mohr, SAG  Mohr.External@infineon.com
  Date:  22 February 2008
  Origin: Alex Ehrlich (Alex.Ehrlich-at-mail.ee)
  Date:  05 August 2008
  Status:

  What: Make it possible to backup and restore Encypted Files from and to
          Windows systems without the need to decrypt it by using the raw
          encryption functions API (see:
          http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa363783.aspx)
          that is provided for that reason by Microsoft.
          If a file ist encrypted could be examined by evaluating the 
          FILE_ATTRIBUTE_ENCRYTED flag of the GetFileAttributes
          function.
          For each file backed up or restored by FD on Windows, check if
          the file is encrypted; if so then use OpenEncryptedFileRaw,
          ReadEncryptedFileRaw, WriteEncryptedFileRaw,
          CloseEncryptedFileRaw instead of BackupRead and BackupWrite
          API calls.

  Why:   Without the usage of this interface the fd-daemon running
          under the system account can't read encypted Files because
          the key needed for the decrytion is missed by them. As a result 
          actually encrypted files are not backed up
          by bacula and also no error is shown while missing these files.

   Notes: Using xxxEncryptedFileRaw API would allow to backup and
           restore EFS-encrypted files without decrypting their data.
           Note that such files cannot be restored "portably" (at least,
           easily) but they would be restoreable to a different (or
           reinstalled) Win32 machine; the restore would require setup
           of a EFS recovery agent in advance, of course, and this shall
           be clearly reflected in the documentation, but this is the
           normal Windows SysAdmin's business.
           When "portable" backup is requested the EFS-encrypted files
           shall be clearly reported as errors.
           See MSDN on the "Backup and Restore of Encrypted Files" topic:
           http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa363783.aspx
           Maybe the EFS support requires a new flag in the database for
           each file, too?
           Unfortunately, the implementation is not as straightforward as
           1-to-1 replacement of BackupRead with ReadEncryptedFileRaw,
           requiring some FD code rewrite to work with
           encrypted-file-related callback functions.


Item 39: Implement an interface between Bacula and Storage clould like Amazon's S3.
  Date:  25 August 2008
  Origin: Soren Hansen <soren@ubuntu.com>
  Status: Not started.
  What:  Enable the storage daemon to store backup data on Amazon's
          S3 service.

  Why:   Amazon's S3 is a cheap way to store data off-site. 

  Notes: If we configure the Pool to put only one job per volume (they don't
         support append operation), and the volume size isn't to big (100MB?),
         it should be easy to adapt the disk-changer script to add get/put
         procedure with curl. So, the data would be safetly copied during the
         Job. 

         Cloud should be only used with Copy jobs, users should always have
         a copy of their data on their site.

         We should also think to have our own cache, trying always to have
         cloud volume on the local disk. (I don't know if users want to store
         100GB on cloud, so it shouldn't be a disk size problem). For example,
         if bacula want to recycle a volume, it will start by downloading the
         file to truncate it few seconds later, if we can avoid that...

Item 40: Convert Bacula existing tray monitor on Windows to a stand alone program
   Date: 26 April 2009
 Origin: Kern/Eric
 Status: 

  What:  Separate Win32 tray monitor to be a separate program.

  Why:   Vista does not allow SYSTEM services to interact with the 
          desktop, so the current tray monitor does not work on Vista
          machines.  

  Notes: Requires communicating with the FD via the network (simulate
          a console connection).



========= End items voted on May 2009 ==================

========= New items after last vote ====================

Item 1:   Relabel disk volume after recycling
  Origin: Pasi Kärkkäinen <pasik@iki.fi>
  Date:   07 May 2009.
  Status: Not implemented yet, no code written.

  What:   The ability to relabel the disk volume (and thus rename the file on the disk) 
          after it has been recycled. Useful when you have a single job per disk volume, 
          and you use a custom Label format, for example: 
          Label Format = "${Client}-${Level}-${NumVols:p/4/0/r}-${Year}_${Month}_${Day}-${Hour}_${Minute}"

  Why:    Disk volumes in Bacula get the label/filename when they are used for the first time.
          If you use recycling and custom label format like above, the disk
          volume name doesn't match the contents after it has been recycled.
          This feature makes it possible to keep the label/filename in sync
          with the content and thus makes it easy to check/monitor the backups
          from the shell and/or normal file management tools, because the filenames 
          of the disk volumes match the content.

  Notes:  The configuration option could be "Relabel after Recycling = Yes".


========= Add new items above this line =================


============= Empty Feature Request form ===========
Item  n: One line summary ...
  Date:  Date submitted 
  Origin: Name and email of originator.
  Status: 

  What:  More detailed explanation ...

  Why:   Why it is important ...

  Notes: Additional notes or features (omit if not used)
============== End Feature Request form ==============


========== Items put on hold by Kern ============================