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4 <td class="contentTopic"> Support for Bacula </td>
9 If you need professional support, please see the professional support
10 page of this site at: <a href="http://www.bacula.org/en/?page=professional">
11 http://www.bacula.org/en/?page=professional</a>.<br>
13 <p>Please keep in mind that we are not getting paid for this.
14 Nevertheless, our desire is to see as many people using
15 <b>Bacula</b> as possible. So we are very willing to
16 provide a reasonable level of email support.
18 <p>Before asking for help, it could be useful to check against the
19 email archive as often solution to your problem has been discussed
20 or a patch has been released. Please see:
21 <a href="http://news.gmane.org/search.php?match=bacula">
22 http://news.gmane.org/search.php?match=bacula</a>.
24 Also, if you are using Bacula in production, we highly recommend
25 subscribing to the bugs database at: <a href="http://bugs.bacula.org">
26 http://bugs.bacula.org</a> to keep informed of problems and
27 patches. However, please do not submit support requests to the
30 <p>For support, send an email to
31 <b>bacula-users at lists.sourceforge.net</b>, and if you are
32 specific enough, some kind Bacula user will help you. Please
33 note that if you don't at least specify what version of Bacula
34 and what platform you are using, it will not be easy to get a
35 valid answer. The email address noted above
36 was modified to prevent easy use by spammers.
37 To use it, you must replace the <b>at</b> with an @ symbol. Due
38 to the increasing volumes of spam on the list, you must
39 be subscribed to it to be able to send and email to it. The
40 link to your left entitled <b>Email Lists</b> provides links
41 to where you can subscribe to each of the Bacula email lists.
43 The users constantly monitor this list and will generally provide
44 support. Please see <b>Information Needed</b> below for what to
45 include in your support request. If you don't supply the necessary
46 information, it will take longer to respond to your request, and
47 users may be afraid to try to respond,
48 if your request is too complicated or not well formulated.
51 <p>I (Kern) get a number of "off-list" emails sent
52 directly to me. Unfortunately, I am no longer able to provide
53 direct user support. However, I do read all the email sent and
54 occasionally provide a tip or two. If you do send email to me,
55 please always copy the appropriate list, if you
56 do not copy the list, I may not answer you, or I will answer by copying
57 the list. If you <em>really</em> have something confidential,
58 please clearly indicate it.</p>
60 <p>Please do not send general support requests to the bacula-devel list.
61 You may send a preliminary bug question, a development question,
62 or minor enhancement request to the bacula-devel list. If
63 you do not provide the information
64 requested below, particularly the Bacula version, it is <b>very</b>
65 frustrating for us, because it is quite often the case that your problem is
66 version dependent, and possibly already fixed. In such case, we will note
67 the problem, but you will be unlikely to get a response, especially if we
68 are busy, because it forces us to first ask you what version you are using
69 (or other information), then deal with your response, thus doubling the
70 time for us. If we do ask you for information, please include <b>all</b>
71 the previous correspondence in each email, to avoid us having to search
72 the archives to find what you previously wrote. In short, if you want a
73 response, please see "Information Needed" below.
75 <p>If you are looking for live-support you might check out our irc-channel
76 in the <a href="http://www.freenode.net">Freenode</a> net, called #bacula.
78 <h3>Information Needed</h3>
79 For us to respond to a bug report, we normally need the following
80 as the minimum information, which you can enter into the appropriate
81 fields of the bug reporting system:
83 <li>Your operating system</li>
84 <li>The version of Bacula you are using</li>
85 <li>A <a href="http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/bugs.html">clear and concise</a> description of the problem</li>
86 <li>If you say "it crashes", "it doesn't work" or something
87 similar, you should include some output from Bacula that shows this.</li>
88 <li>If we respond to your email, and you answer, possibly supplying more
89 information, please be sure to include the <b>full</b> text of previous
90 emails so that we have all the information in one place.</li>
92 If you are having tape problems, please include:
94 <li>The kind of tape drive you have </li>
95 <li>Have you run the <b>btape</b> "test" command?</li>
98 If you are having database problems, please include:
100 <li>The database you are using: MySQL, PostgreSQL, SQLite, SQLite3 </li>
101 <li>The version of the database you are using</li>
104 The first two of these items can be fulfilled by sending
105 us a copy of your <b>config.out</b> file, which is in the
106 main <b>Bacula</b> source directory after you have done
107 your <b>./configure</b>.
108 <p>In addition, we will sometimes need a copy of your Bacula
109 configuration files (especially bacula-dir.conf). If you
110 think it is a configuration problem, please don't hesitate
111 to send them if necessary.</td>
114 <td style="font-size: 14px; padding: 0px 20px 0px 20px">
115 Please read that little Bug-Report-<a href="http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/bugs.html">HowTo</a> as well.
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