[bacula/bacula] / bacula / projects

                
Projects:
                     Bacula Projects Roadmap 
                    Status updated 04 February 2009

Summary:
Item  2:  Allow FD to initiate a backup
Item  6:  Deletion of disk Volumes when pruned
Item  7:  Implement Base jobs
Item  9:  Scheduling syntax that permits more flexibility and options
Item 10:  Message mailing based on backup types
Item 11:  Cause daemons to use a specific IP address to source communications
Item 14:  Add an override in Schedule for Pools based on backup types
Item 15:  Implement more Python events and functions  --- Abandoned for plugins
Item 16:  Allow inclusion/exclusion of files in a fileset by creation/mod times
Item 17:  Automatic promotion of backup levels based on backup size
Item 19:  Automatic disabling of devices
Item 20:  An option to operate on all pools with update vol parameters
Item 21:  Include timestamp of job launch in "stat clients" output
Item 22:  Implement Storage daemon compression
Item 23:  Improve Bacula's tape and drive usage and cleaning management
Item 24:  Multiple threads in file daemon for the same job
Item 25:  Archival (removal) of User Files to Tape


Item  2:  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  6:  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.

Item  7:  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  9:  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 10:  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 11:  Cause daemons to use a specific IP address to source communications
 Origin:  Bill Moran <wmoran@collaborativefusion.com>
 Date:    18 Dec 2006
 Status:
 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 14:  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 15:  Implement more Python events and functions
  Date:   28 October 2005
  Origin: Kern
  Status: Project abandoned in favor of plugins.

  What:   Allow Python scripts to be called at more places 
          within Bacula and provide additional access to Bacula
          internal variables.

          Implement an interface for Python scripts to access the
          catalog through Bacula.

  Why:    This will permit users to customize Bacula through
          Python scripts.

  Notes:  Recycle event
          Scratch pool event
          NeedVolume event
          MediaFull event
           
          Also add a way to get a listing of currently running
          jobs (possibly also scheduled jobs).


          to start the appropriate job.


Item 16:  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 17:  Automatic promotion of backup levels based on backup size
   Date:  19 January 2006
  Origin: Adam Thornton <athornton@sinenomine.net>
  Status: 

    What: Amanda has 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  
          Amanda can do and we can't (at least, the one cool thing I know of).


Item 19:  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 20:  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 21:  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 22:  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 23:  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 24:  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 25:  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.


========= New Items since the last vote =================

Item 26: Add a new directive to bacula-dir.conf which permits inclusion of all subconfiguration files in a given 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 n: List inChanger flag when doing restore.
 Origin: Jesper Krogh<jesper@krogh.cc>
   Date:   17 oct. 2008
 Status:

   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 1:   Implement an interface between Bacula and 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. Current
          ways to integrate Bacula and S3 involve storing all the data
          locally and syncing them to S3, and manually fetching them
          again when they're needed. This is very cumbersome.


Item 1:   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 1: Backup and Restore of Windows Encrypted Files through raw encryption
        functions

  Origin: Michael Mohr, SAG  Mohr.External@infineon.com
  
  Date:   22 February 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.

  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:  ./.

   Item 1: 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

   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 n?: Expand the Verify Job capability to verify Jobs older than the 
   last one. For VolumeToCatalog Jobs
   Date: 17 Januar 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 X:   Add EFS support on Windows
   Origin: Alex Ehrlich (Alex.Ehrlich-at-mail.ee)
   Date:   05 August 2008
   Status:

   What:   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:    Many laptop users utilize the EFS functionality today; so do.
           some non-laptop ones, too.
           Currently files encrypted by means of EFS cannot be backed up.
           It means a Windows boutique cannot rely on Bacula as its
           backup solution, at least when using Windows 2K, XPP,
           "better" Vista etc on workstations, unless EFS is
           forbidden by policies.
           The current situation might result into "false sense of
           security" among the end-users.

   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 n:   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.


Item 1:   "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 n:   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 1:   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  1:  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.

                                                                                                                                                                                              encrypted-file-related callback functions.


============= 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 ============================

Item h2:  Implement support for stacking arbitrary stream filters, sinks.
Date:     23 November 2006
Origin:   Landon Fuller <landonf@threerings.net>
Status:   Planning. Assigned to landonf.

  What:   Implement support for the following:
          - Stacking arbitrary stream filters (eg, encryption, compression,  
            sparse data handling))
          - Attaching file sinks to terminate stream filters (ie, write out  
            the resultant data to a file)
          - Refactor the restoration state machine accordingly

   Why: The existing stream implementation suffers from the following: - All
           state (compression, encryption, stream restoration), is
             global across the entire restore process, for all streams. There are  
             multiple entry and exit points in the restoration state machine, and  
             thus multiple places where state must be allocated, deallocated,  
             initialized, or reinitialized. This results in exceptional complexity  
             for the author of a stream filter.
           - The developer must enumerate all possible combinations of filters  
             and stream types (ie, win32 data with encryption, without encryption,  
             with encryption AND compression, etc).

  Notes: This feature request only covers implementing the stream filters/
          sinks, and refactoring the file daemon's restoration
          implementation accordingly.  If I have extra time, I will also
          rewrite the backup implementation.  My intent in implementing the
          restoration first is to solve pressing bugs in the restoration
          handling, and to ensure that the new restore implementation
          handles existing backups correctly.

          I do not plan on changing the network or tape data structures to  
          support defining arbitrary stream filters, but supporting that  
          functionality is the ultimate goal.

          Assistance with either code or testing would be fantastic.

  Notes:  Kern: this project has a lot of merit, and we need to do it, but
          it is really an issue for developers rather than a new feature
          for users, so I have removed it from the voting list, but kept it
          here, but at some point, it will be implemented.

Item h3:  Filesystem watch triggered backup.
  Date:   31 August 2006
  Origin: Jesper Krogh <jesper@krogh.cc>
  Status: 

  What:   With inotify and similar filesystem triggeret notification
          systems is it possible to have the file-daemon to monitor
          filesystem changes and initiate backup.

  Why:    There are 2 situations where this is nice to have.
          1) It is possible to get a much finer-grained backup than
             the fixed schedules used now.. A file created and deleted
             a few hours later, can automatically be caught.

          2) The introduced load on the system will probably be
             distributed more even on the system.

  Notes:  This can be combined with configration that specifies
          something like: "at most every 15 minutes or when changes
          consumed XX MB".

Kern Notes: I would rather see this implemented by an external program
          that monitors the Filesystem changes, then uses the console


Item h4:  Directive/mode to backup only file changes, not entire file
  Date:   11 November 2005
  Origin: Joshua Kugler <joshua dot kugler at uaf dot edu>
          Marek Bajon <mbajon at bimsplus dot com dot pl>
  Status: 

  What:   Currently when a file changes, the entire file will be backed up in
          the next incremental or full backup.  To save space on the tapes
          it would be nice to have a mode whereby only the changes to the
          file would be backed up when it is changed.

  Why:    This would save lots of space when backing up large files such as 
          logs, mbox files, Outlook PST files and the like.

  Notes:  This would require the usage of disk-based volumes as comparing 
          files would not be feasible using a tape drive.

  Notes:  Kern: I don't know how to implement this. Put on hold until someone
          provides a detailed implementation plan.


Item h5:  Implement multiple numeric backup levels as supported by dump
Date:     3 April 2006
Origin:   Daniel Rich <drich@employees.org>
Status:
What: Dump allows specification of backup levels numerically instead of just
          "full", "incr", and "diff".  In this system, at any given level,
          all files are backed up that were were modified since the last
          backup of a higher level (with 0 being the highest and 9 being the
          lowest).  A level 0 is therefore equivalent to a full, level 9 an
          incremental, and the levels 1 through 8 are varying levels of
          differentials.  For bacula's sake, these could be represented as
          "full", "incr", and "diff1", "diff2", etc.

Why: Support of multiple backup levels would provide for more advanced
          backup rotation schemes such as "Towers of Hanoi".  This would
          allow better flexibility in performing backups, and can lead to
          shorter recover times.

Notes:    Legato Networker supports a similar system with full, incr, and 1-9 as
          levels.

Notes:    Kern: I don't see the utility of this, and it would be a *huge* 
          modification to existing code.

Item h6:  Implement NDMP protocol support
  Origin: Alan Davis
  Date:   06 March 2007
  Status: 

  What:   Network Data Management Protocol is implemented by a number of
          NAS filer vendors to enable backups using third-party
          software.

  Why:    This would allow NAS filer backups in Bacula without incurring
          the overhead of NFS or SBM/CIFS.

  Notes:  Further information is available:
          http://www.ndmp.org
          http://www.ndmp.org/wp/wp.shtml
          http://www.traakan.com/ndmjob/index.html

          There are currently no viable open-source NDMP
          implementations.  There is a reference SDK and example
          app available from ndmp.org but it has problems
          compiling on recent Linux and Solaris OS'.  The ndmjob
          reference implementation from Traakan is known to
          compile on Solaris 10.

  Notes:  Kern: I am not at all in favor of this until NDMP becomes
          an Open Standard or until there are Open Source libraries
          that interface to it.

Item h7:  Commercial database support
  Origin: Russell Howe <russell_howe dot wreckage dot org>
  Date:   26 July 2006
  Status:

  What: It would be nice for the database backend to support more databases.
          I'm thinking of SQL Server at the moment, but I guess Oracle, DB2,
          MaxDB, etc are all candidates.  SQL Server would presumably be
          implemented using FreeTDS or maybe an ODBC library?

  Why: We only really have one database server, which is MS SQL Server 2000.
          Maintaining a second one for the backup software (we grew out of
          SQLite, which I liked, but which didn't work so well with our
          database size).  We don't really have a machine with the resources
          to run postgres, and would rather only maintain a single DBMS.
          We're stuck with SQL Server because pretty much all the company's
          custom applications (written by consultants) are locked into SQL
          Server 2000.  I can imagine this scenario is fairly common, and it
          would be nice to use the existing properly specced database server
          for storing Bacula's catalog, rather than having to run a second
          DBMS.

  Notes: This might be nice, but someone other than me will probably need to
          implement it, and at the moment, proprietary code cannot legally
          be mixed with Bacula GPLed code.  This would be possible only
          providing the vendors provide GPLed (or OpenSource) interface
          code.

Item h8:  Incorporation of XACML2/SAML2 parsing
   Date:   19 January 2006
   Origin: Adam Thornton <athornton@sinenomine.net>
   Status: Blue sky

   What: XACML is "eXtensible Access Control Markup Language" and "SAML is
          the "Security Assertion Markup Language"--an XML standard for
          making statements about identity and authorization.  Having these
          would give us a framework to approach ACLs in a generic manner,
          and in a way flexible enough to support the four major sorts of
          ACLs I see as a concern to Bacula at this point, as well as
          (probably) to deal with new sorts of ACLs that may appear in the
          future.

   Why: Bacula is beginning to need to back up systems with ACLs that do not
          map cleanly onto traditional Unix permissions.  I see four sets of
          ACLs--in general, mutually incompatible with one another--that
          we're going to need to deal with.  These are: NTFS ACLs, POSIX
          ACLs, NFSv4 ACLS, and AFS ACLS. (Some may question the relevance
          of AFS; AFS is one of Sine Nomine's core consulting businesses,
          and having a reputable file-level backup and restore technology
          for it (as Tivoli is probably going to drop AFS support soon since
          IBM no longer supports AFS) would be of huge benefit to our
          customers; we'd most likely create the AFS support at Sine Nomine
          for inclusion into the Bacula (and perhaps some changes to the
          OpenAFS volserver) core code.)

          Now, obviously, Bacula already handles NTFS just fine.  However, I
          think there's a lot of value in implementing a generic ACL model,
          so that it's easy to support whatever particular instances of ACLs
          come down the pike: POSIX ACLS (think SELinux) and NFSv4 are the
          obvious things arriving in the Linux world in a big way in the
          near future.  XACML, although overcomplicated for our needs,
          provides this framework, and we should be able to leverage other
          people's implementations to minimize the amount of work *we* have
          to do to get a generic ACL framework.  Basically, the costs of
          implementation are high, but they're largely both external to
          Bacula and already sunk.

   Notes: As you indicate this is a bit of "blue sky" or in other words,
          at the moment, it is a bit esoteric to consider for Bacula.

Item h9:  Archive data
  Date:   15/5/2006
  Origin: calvin streeting calvin at absentdream dot com
  Status:

  What:   The abilty to archive to media (dvd/cd) in a uncompressed format
          for dead filing (archiving not backing up)

    Why: At work when jobs are finished and moved off of the main
          file servers (raid based systems) onto a simple Linux
          file server (ide based system) so users can find old
          information without contacting the IT dept.

          So this data dosn't realy change it only gets added to,
          But it also needs backing up.  At the moment it takes
          about 8 hours to back up our servers (working data) so
          rather than add more time to existing backups i am trying
          to implement a system where we backup the acrhive data to
          cd/dvd these disks would only need to be appended to
          (burn only new/changed files to new disks for off site
          storage).  basialy understand the differnce between
          achive data and live data.

  Notes:  Scan the data and email me when it needs burning divide
          into predefined chunks keep a recored of what is on what
          disk make me a label (simple php->mysql=>pdf stuff) i
          could do this bit ability to save data uncompresed so
          it can be read in any other system (future proof data)
          save the catalog with the disk as some kind of menu
          system 

   Notes: Kern: I don't understand this item, and in any case, if it
          is specific to DVD/CDs, which we do not recommend using, 
          it is unlikely to be implemented except as a user 
          submitted patch.


Item h10: Clustered file-daemons
  Origin: Alan Brown ajb2 at mssl dot ucl dot ac dot uk
  Date:   24 July 2006
  Status:
  What:   A "virtual" filedaemon, which is actually a cluster of real ones.

  Why:    In the case of clustered filesystems (SAN setups, GFS, or OCFS2, etc)
          multiple machines may have access to the same set of filesystems

          For performance reasons, one may wish to initate backups from
          several of these machines simultaneously, instead of just using
          one backup source for the common clustered filesystem.

          For obvious reasons, normally backups of $A-FD/$PATH and
          B-FD/$PATH are treated as different backup sets. In this case
          they are the same communal set.

          Likewise when restoring, it would be easier to just specify
          one of the cluster machines and let bacula decide which to use.

          This can be faked to some extent using DNS round robin entries
          and a virtual IP address, however it means "status client" will
          always give bogus answers. Additionally there is no way of
          spreading the load evenly among the servers.

          What is required is something similar to the storage daemon
          autochanger directives, so that Bacula can keep track of
          operating backups/restores and direct new jobs to a "free"
          client.

   Notes: Kern: I don't understand the request enough to be able to
          implement it. A lot more design detail should be presented
          before voting on this project.

      Feature Request Form