-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 #.