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Projects:
                     Bacula Projects Roadmap 
                    Status updated 8 August 2010

Summary:
* => item complete

Item  1: Ability to restart failed jobs
Item  2: SD redesign
Item  3: NDMP backup
Item  4: SAP backup
Item  5: Oracle backup
Item  6: Include timestamp of job launch in "stat clients" output
Item  7: Include all conf files in specified directory
Item  8: Reduction of communications bandwidth for a backup
Item  9: Concurrent spooling and despooling within a single job.
Item 10: Start spooling even when waiting on tape
Item 11: Add ability to Verify any specified Job.
Item 12: Data encryption on storage daemon
Item 13: Possibilty to schedule Jobs on last Friday of the month
Item 14: Scheduling syntax that permits more flexibility and options
Item 15: Ability to defer Batch Insert to a later time
Item 16: Add MaxVolumeSize/MaxVolumeBytes to Storage resource
Item 17: Message mailing based on backup types
Item 18: Handle Windows Encrypted Files using Win raw encryption
Item 19: Job migration between different SDs
Item 19. Allow FD to initiate a backup
Item 20: Implement Storage daemon compression
Item 21: Ability to import/export Bacula database entities
Item 22: Implementation of running Job speed limit.
Item 23: Add an override in Schedule for Pools based on backup types
Item 24: Automatic promotion of backup levels based on backup size
Item 25: Allow FileSet inclusion/exclusion by creation/mod times
Item 26: Archival (removal) of User Files to Tape
Item 27: Ability to reconnect a disconnected comm line
Item 28: Multiple threads in file daemon for the same job
Item 29: Automatic disabling of devices
Item 30: Enable persistent naming/number of SQL queries
Item 31: Bacula Dir, FD and SD to support proxies
Item 32: Add Minumum Spool Size directive
Item 33: Command that releases all drives in an autochanger
Item 34: Run bscan on a remote storage daemon from within bconsole.
Item 35: Implement a Migration job type that will create a reverse
Item 36: Extend the verify code to make it possible to verify
Item 37: Separate "Storage" and "Device" in the bacula-dir.conf
Item 38: Least recently used device selection for tape drives in autochanger.
Item 39: Implement a Storage device like Amazon's S3.
Item 40: Convert tray monitor on Windows to a stand alone program
Item 41: Improve Bacula's tape and drive usage and cleaning management
Item 42: Relabel disk volume after recycling


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: SD redesign
   Date: 8 August 2010
 Origin: Kern
 Status: 

  What: Various ideas for redesigns planned for the SD:
   1. One thread per drive
   2. Design a class structure for all objects in the SD.
   3. Make Device into C++ classes for each device type
   4. Make Device have a proxy (front end intercept class) that will permit control over locking and changing the real device pointer.  It can also permit delaying opening, so that we can adapt to having another program that tells us the Archive device name.
   5. Allow plugins to create new on the fly devices
   6. Separate SD volume manager
   7. Volume manager tells Bacula what drive or device to use for a given volume
  
  Why:  It will simplify the SD, make it more modular, reduce locking
        conflicts, and allow multiple buffer backups.

Item  3: NDMP backup                                           
   Date: 8 August 2010
 Origin: Bacula Systems
 Status: Enterprise only if implemented by Bacula Systems

  What:  Backup/restore via NDMP -- most important NetApp compatibility

Item  4: SAP backup                                           
   Date: 8 August 2010
 Origin: Bacula Systems
 Status: Enterprise only if implemented by Bacula Systems

  What:  Backup/restore SAP databases (MaxDB, Oracle, possibly DB2)

Item  5: Oracle backup                                           
   Date: 8 August 2010
 Origin: Bacula Systems
 Status: Enterprise only if implemented by Bacula Systems

  What:  Backup/restore Oracle databases

Item  6: 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  7: 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  8: 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  9: Concurrent spooling and despooling within a single job.
Date:  17 nov 2009
Origin: Jesper Krogh <jesper@krogh.cc>
Status: NEW
What:  When a job has spooling enabled and the spool area size is
       less than the total volumes size the storage daemon will:
       1) Spool to spool-area
       2) Despool to tape
       3) Go to 1 if more data to be backed up.

       Typical disks will serve data with a speed of 100MB/s when
       dealing with large files, network it typical capable of doing 115MB/s
       (GbitE). Tape drives will despool with 50-90MB/s (LTO3) 70-120MB/s
       (LTO4) depending on compression and data.

       As bacula currently works it'll hold back data from the client until
       de-spooling is done, now matter if the spool area can handle another
       block of data. Say given a FileSet of 4TB and a spool-area of 100GB and
       a Maximum Job Spool Size set to 50GB then above sequence could be
       changed to allow to spool to the other 50GB while despooling the first
       50GB and not holding back the client while doing it. As above numbers
       show, depending on tape-drive and disk-arrays this potentially leads to
       a cut of the backup-time of 50% for the individual jobs.

       Real-world example, backing up 112.6GB (large files) to LTO4 tapes
       (despools with ~75MB/s, data is gzipped on the remote filesystem.
       Maximum Job Spool Size = 8GB

       Current:
       Size: 112.6GB
       Elapsed time (total time): 46m 15s => 2775s
       Despooling time: 25m 41s => 1541s (55%)
       Spooling time: 20m 34s => 1234s (45%)
       Reported speed: 40.58MB/s
       Spooling speed: 112.6GB/1234s => 91.25MB/s
       Despooling speed: 112.6GB/1541s => 73.07MB/s

       So disk + net can "keep up" with the LTO4 drive (in this test)

       Prosed change would effectively make the backup run in the "despooling
       time" 1541s giving a reduction to 55% of the total run time.

       In the situation where the individual job cannot keep up with LTO-drive
       spooling enables efficient multiplexing of multiple concurrent jobs onto
       the same drive.

Why:   When dealing with larger volumes the general utillization of the
       network/disk is important to maximize in order to be able to run a full
       backup over a weekend. Current work-around is to split the FileSet in
       smaller FileSet and Jobs but that leads to more configuration mangement
       and is harder to review for completeness. Subsequently it makes restores
       more complex.

     

Item 10: 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 11: 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 12: 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
       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 13: 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 14: 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 15: 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 16: Add MaxVolumeSize/MaxVolumeBytes 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 17: 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 18: Handle 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 19: Job migration between different SDs
Origin:  Mariusz Czulada <manieq AT wp DOT eu>
Date:    07 May 2007
Status:  NEW

What:   Allow to specify in migration job devices on Storage Daemon other then
        the one used for migrated jobs (possibly on different/distant host)

Why:    Sometimes we have more then one system which requires backup
        implementation.  Often, these systems are functionally unrelated and
        placed in different locations.  Having a big backup device (a tape
        library) in each location is not cost-effective.  It would be much
        better to have one powerful enough tape library which could handle
        backups from all systems, assuming relatively fast and reliable WAN
        connections.  In such architecture backups are done in service windows
        on local bacula servers, then migrated to central storage off the peak
        hours.

Notes:  If migration to different SD is working, migration to the same SD, as
        now, could be done the same way (i mean 'localhost') to unify the
        whole process

Item 19. 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.
Notes: - The FD already has code for the monitor interface
       - It could be nice to have a .job command that lists authorized
         jobs.
       - Commands need to be restricted on the Director side
         (for example by re-using the runscript flag) 
       - The Client resource can be used to authorize the connection
       - In a first time, the client can't modify job parameters
       - We need a way to run a status command to follow job progression

      This project consists of the following points
       1. Modify the FD to have a "mini-console" interface that
          permits it to connect to the Director and start a
          backup job of itself.
       2. The list of jobs that can be started by the FD are
          defined in the Director (possibly via a restricted
          console).
       3. Modify the existing tray monitor code in the Win32 FD
          so that it is a separate program from the FD.
       4. The tray monitor program should be extended to permit
          initiating a backup.
       5. No new Director directives should be added without
          prior consultation with the Bacula developers.
       6. The comm line used by the FD to connect to the Director
          should be re-used by the Director to do the backup.
          This feature is partially implemented in the Director.
       7. The FD may have a new directive that allows it to start
          a backup when the FD starts.
       8. The console interface to the FD should be extended to
          permit a properly authorized console to initiate a
          backup via the FD.


Item 20: 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 21: 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 22: 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 23: 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 24: 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 25: Allow FileSet inclusion/exclusion 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 26: 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 27: 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 28: 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.

  Notes: (KES) This is not necessary and could be accomplished
         by having two jobs.  In addition, the current VSS code
         is single thread.


Item 29: 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 30: 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 31: 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 32: 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 33: Command that releases all drives in an autochanger
  Origin: Blake Dunlap (blake@nxs.net)
  Date:   10/07/2009
  Status: Request

  What:  It would be nice if there was a release command that
         would release all drives in an autochanger instead of having to
         do each one in turn.

  Why: It can take some time for a release to occur, and the
       commands must be given for each drive in turn, which can quicky
       scale if there are several drives in the library.  (Having to
       watch the console, to give each command can waste a good bit of
       time when you start getting into the 16 drive range when the
       tapes can take up to 3 minutes to eject each)

  Notes: Due to the way some autochangers/libraries work, you
       cannot assume that new tapes inserted will go into slots that are
       not currently believed to be in use by bacula (the tape from that
       slot is in a drive).  This would make any changes in
       configuration quicker/easier, as all drives need to be released
       before any modifications to slots.

Item 34: Run bscan on a remote storage daemon from within bconsole.
  Date:  07 October 2009
  Origin: Graham Keeling <graham@equiinet.com>
  Status: Proposing

  What:  The ability to be able to run bscan on a remote storage daemon from
         within bconsole in order to populate your catalog.

  Why:   Currently, it seems you have to:
         a) log in to a console on the remote machine
         b) figure out where the storage daemon config file is
         c) figure out the storage device from the config file
         d) figure out the catalog IP address
         e) figure out the catalog port
         f) open the port on the catalog firewall
         g) configure the catalog database to accept connections from the
            remote host
         h) build a 'bscan' command from (b)-(e) above and run it
         It would be much nicer to be able to type something like this into
         bconsole:
         *bscan storage=<storage> device=<device> volume=<volume>
         or something like:
         *bscan storage=<storage> all
         It seems to me that the scan could also do a better job than the
         external bscan program currently does. It would possibly be able to
         deduce some extra details, such as the catalog StorageId for the
         volumes.

  Notes: (Kern). If you need to do a bscan, you have done something wrong,
         so this functionality should not need to be integrated into the
         the Storage daemon.  However, I am not opposed to someone implementing
         this feature providing that all the code is in a shared object (or dll)
         and does not add significantly to the size of the Storage daemon. In
         addition, the code should be written in a way such that the same source
         code is used in both the bscan program and the Storage daemon to avoid
         adding a lot of new code that must be maintained by the project.

Item 35: Implement a Migration job type that will create a reverse
          incremental (or decremental) backup from two existing full backups.
  Date:   05 October 2009
  Origin: Griffith College Dublin.  Some sponsorship available.
          Contact: Gavin McCullagh <gavin.mccullagh@gcd.ie>
  Status: 

  What:   The ability to take two full backup jobs and derive a reverse
          incremental backup from them.  The older full backup data may then
          be discarded.

  Why:    Long-term backups based on keeping full backups can be expensive in
          media.  In many cases (eg a NAS), as the client accumulates files
          over months and years, the same file will be duplicated unchanged,
          across many media and datasets.  Eg, Less than 10% (and
          shrinking) of our monthly full mail server backup is new files,
          the other 90% is also in the previous full backup.
          Regularly converting the oldest full backup into a reverse
          incremental backup allows the admin to keep access to old backup
          jobs, but remove all of the duplicated files, freeing up media.

  Notes:  This feature was previously discussed on the bacula-devel list
          here: http://www.mail-archive.com/bacula-devel@lists.sourceforge.net/msg04962.html



Item 36: Extend the verify code to make it possible to verify
          older jobs, not only the last one that has finished
  Date:   10 April 2009
  Origin: Ralf Gross (Ralf-Lists <at> ralfgross.de)
  Status: not implemented or documented

  What:   At the moment a VolumeToCatalog job compares only the
          last job with the data in the catalog. It's not possible
          to compare the data (md5sums) of an older volume with the
          data in the catalog.

  Why:    If a verify job fails, one has to immediately check the
          source of the problem, fix it and rerun the verify job.
          This has to happen before the next backup of the
          verified backup job starts.
          More important: It's not possible to check jobs that are
          kept for a long time (archiv). If a jobid could be
          specified for a verify job, older backups/tapes could be
          checked on a regular base.

  Notes:  verify documentation:
          VolumeToCatalog: This level causes Bacula to read the file
          attribute data written to the Volume from the last Job [...]
          
          Verify Job = <Job-Resource-Name> If you run a verify job
          without this directive, the last job run will be compared
          with the catalog, which means that you must immediately
          follow a backup by a verify command. If you specify a Verify
          Job Bacula will find the last job with that name that ran [...]

          example bconsole verify dialog:

          Run Verify job
          JobName:     VerifyServerXXX
          Level:       VolumeToCatalog
          Client:      ServerXXX-fd
          FileSet:     ServerXXX-Vol1
          Pool:        Full (From Job resource)
          Storage:     Neo4100 (From Pool resource)
          Verify Job:  ServerXXX-Vol1
          Verify List: 
          When:        2009-04-20 09:03:04
          Priority:    10
          OK to run? (yes/mod/no): m
          Parameters to modify:
               1: Level
               2: Storage
               3: Job
               4: FileSet
               5: Client
               6: When
               7: Priority
               8: Pool
               9: Verify Job



Item 37: Separate "Storage" and "Device" in the bacula-dir.conf
  Date:   29 April 2009
  Origin: "James Harper" <james.harper@bendigoit.com.au>
  Status: not implemented or documented

  What:   Separate "Storage" and "Device" in the bacula-dir.conf
          The resulting config would looks something like:

          Storage {
            Name = name_of_server
            Address = hostname/IP address
            SDPort = 9103
            Password = shh_its_a_secret
            Maximum Concurrent Jobs = 7
          }

          Device {
            Name = name_of_device
            Storage = name_of_server
            Device = name_of_device_on_sd
            Media Type = media_type
            Maximum Concurrent Jobs = 1
          }

          Maximum Concurrent Jobs would be specified with a server and a device
          maximum, which would both be honoured by the director. Almost everything
          that mentions a 'Storage' would need to be changed to 'Device', although
          perhaps a 'Storage' would just be a synonym for 'Device' for backwards
          compatibility...

  Why:    If you have multiple Storage definitions pointing to different
          Devices in the same Storage daemon, the "status storage" command
          prompts for each different device, but they all give the same 
          information.

  Notes:  

Item 38: Least recently used device selection for tape drives in autochanger.
Date:    12 October 2009
Origin:  Thomas Carter <tcarter@memc.com>
Status:  Proposal

What: A better tape drive selection algorithm for multi-drive 
      autochangers. The AUTOCHANGER class contains an array list of tape 
      devices. When a tape drive is needed, this list is always searched in 
      order. This causes lower number drives (specifically drive 0) to do a 
      majority of the work with higher numbered drives possibly never being 
      used. When a drive in an autochanger is reserved for use, its entry should 
      be moved to the end of the list; this would give a rough LRU drive 
      selection.

Why:  The current implementation places a majority of use and wear on drive 
      0 of a multi-drive autochanger.

Notes:

Item 39: Implement a Storage device 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 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).

Item 41: 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:  
          1. Measure tape and drive usage (mostly implemented)
          2. Retiring a volume when too old or too many errors
          3. Handle cleaning and tape alerts.

  Why:   Needed


Item 42: 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".



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


Note to renumber items use:
scripts/renumber_projects.pl projects >1


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


========== Items completed in version 5.0.0 ====================
*Item   : 'restore' menu: enter a JobId, automatically select dependents
*Item   : Deletion of disk Volumes when pruned (partial -- truncate when pruned)
*Item   : Implement Base jobs
*Item   : Restore from volumes on multiple storage daemons
*Item   : Enable/disable compression depending on storage device (disk/tape)
*Item   : Cause daemons to use a specific IP address to source communications
*Item   : "Maximum Concurrent Jobs" for drives when used with changer device
*Item   : List InChanger flag when doing restore.
*Item   : Port bat to Win32
*Item   : An option to operate on all pools with update vol parameters