+Item 13: Restore only file attributes (permissions, ACL, owner, group...)
+ Origin: Eric Bollengier
+ Date: 30/12/2006
+ Status: Implemented by Eric, see project-restore-attributes-only.patch
+
+ What: The goal of this project is to be able to restore only rights
+ and attributes of files without crushing them.
+
+ Why: Who have never had to repair a chmod -R 777, or a wild update
+ of recursive right under Windows? At this time, you must have
+ enough space to restore data, dump attributes (easy with acl,
+ more complex with unix/windows rights) and apply them to your
+ broken tree. With this options, it will be very easy to compare
+ right or ACL over the time.
+
+ Notes: If the file is here, we skip restore and we change rights.
+ If the file isn't here, we can create an empty one and apply
+ rights or do nothing.
+
+ This will not work with win32 stream, because it seems that we
+ can't split the WriteBackup stream to get only ACL and ownerchip.
+
+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:
+
+ 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 18: Better control over Job execution
+ Date: 18 August 2007
+ Origin: Kern
+ Status:
+
+ What: Bacula needs a few extra features for better Job execution:
+ 1. A way to prevent multiple Jobs of the same name from
+ being scheduled at the same time (ususally happens when
+ a job is missed because a client is down).
+ 2. Directives that permit easier upgrading of Job types
+ based on a period of time. I.e. "do a Full at least
+ once every 2 weeks", or "do a differential at least
+ once a week". If a lower level job is scheduled when
+ it begins to run it will be upgraded depending on
+ the specified criteria.
+
+ Why: Obvious.
+
+
+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.
+
+
+
+
+
+========= Added since the last vote =================
+
+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: Store and restore extended attributes, especially selinux file contexts
+ Date: 28 December 2007
+ Origin: Frank Sweetser <fs@wpi.edu>
+ What: The ability to store and restore extended attributes on
+ filesystems that support them, such as ext3.
+
+ Why: Security Enhanced Linux (SELinux) enabled systems make extensive
+ use of extended attributes. In addition to the standard user,
+ group, and permission, each file has an associated SELinux context
+ stored as an extended attribute. This context is used to define
+ which operations a given program is permitted to perform on that
+ file. Storing contexts on an SELinux system is as critical as
+ storing ownership and permissions. In the case of a full system
+ restore, the system will not even be able to boot until all
+ critical system files have been properly relabeled.
+
+ Notes: Fedora ships with a version of tar that has been patched to handle
+ extended attributes. The patch has not been integrated upstream
+ yet, so could serve as a good starting point.
+
+ http://linux.die.net/man/2/getxattr
+ http://linux.die.net/man/2/setxattr
+ http://linux.die.net/man/2/listxattr
+ ===
+ http://linux.die.net/man/3/getfilecon
+ http://linux.die.net/man/3/setfilecon
+
+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.
+
+ encrypted-file-related callback functions.
+========== Already implemented ================================
+
+Item n: make changing "spooldata=yes|no" possible for
+ manual/interactive jobs
+ Origin: Marc Schiffbauer <marc@schiffbauer.net>
+ Date: 12 April 2007)
+ Status:
+
+ What: Make it possible to modify the spooldata option
+ for a job when being run from within the console.
+ Currently it is possible to modify the backup level
+ and the spooldata setting in a Schedule resource.
+ It is also possible to modify the backup level when using
+ the "run" command in the console.
+ But it is currently not possible to to the same
+ with "spooldata=yes|no" like:
+
+ run job=MyJob level=incremental spooldata=yes
+
+ Why: In some situations it would be handy to be able to switch
+ spooldata on or off for interactive/manual jobs based on
+ which data the admin expects or how fast the LAN/WAN
+ connection currently is.
+
+ Notes: ./.
+
+Item 1: Implement an option to modify the last written date for volumes
+Date: 16 September 2008
+Origin: Franck (xeoslaenor at gmail dot com)
+Status: Proposing
+What: The ability to modify the last written date for a volume
+Why: It's sometime necessary to jump a volume when you have a pool of volume
+ which recycles the oldest volume at each backup.
+ Sometime, it needs to cancel a set of backup (one day
+ backup, completely) and we want to avoid that bacula
+ choose the volume (which is not written at all) from
+ the cancelled backup (It has to jump to next volume).
+ in this case, we just need to update the written date
+ manually to avoir the "oldest volume" purge.
+Notes: An option can be add to "update volume" command (like 'written date'
+ choice for example)
+
+============= 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 on put hold by Kern ============================
+
+Item h1: Split documentation
+ Origin: Maxx <maxxatworkat gmail dot com>
+ Date: 27th July 2006
+ Status: Approved, awaiting implementation
+
+ What: Split documentation in several books
+
+ Why: Bacula manual has now more than 600 pages, and looking for
+ implementation details is getting complicated. I think
+ it would be good to split the single volume in two or
+ maybe three parts:
+
+ 1) Introduction, requirements and tutorial, typically
+ are useful only until first installation time
+
+ 2) Basic installation and configuration, with all the
+ gory details about the directives supported 3)
+ Advanced Bacula: testing, troubleshooting, GUI and
+ ancillary programs, security managements, scripting,
+ etc.
+
+ Notes: This is a project that needs to be done, and will be implemented,
+ but it is really a developer issue of timing, and does not
+ needed to be included in the voting.
+
+
+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.