Projects:
Bacula Projects Roadmap
- Status updated 7 July 2007
- After re-ordering in vote priority
-
-Items Completed:
-Item: 2 Implement a Bacula GUI/management tool.
-Item: 18 Quick release of FD-SD connection after backup.
-Item: 23 Implement from-client and to-client on restore command line.
-Item: 25 Implement huge exclude list support using dlist
-Item: 41 Enable to relocate files and directories when restoring
-Item: 42 Batch attribute inserts (ten times faster)
-Item: 43 More concurrency in SD using micro-locking
-Item: 44 Performance enhancements (POSIX/Win32 OS file access hints).
-Item: 40 Include JobID in spool file name
+ Status updated 04 February 2009
Summary:
-Item: 1 Accurate restoration of renamed/deleted files
-Item: 2* Implement a Bacula GUI/management tool.
-Item: 3 Allow FD to initiate a backup
-Item: 4 Merge multiple backups (Synthetic Backup or Consolidation).
-Item: 5 Deletion of Disk-Based Bacula Volumes
-Item: 6 Implement Base jobs.
-Item: 7 Implement creation and maintenance of copy pools
-Item: 8 Directive/mode to backup only file changes, not entire file
-Item: 9 Implement a server-side compression feature
-Item: 10 Improve Bacula's tape and drive usage and cleaning management.
-Item: 11 Allow skipping execution of Jobs
-Item: 12 Add a scheduling syntax that permits weekly rotations
-Item: 13 Archival (removal) of User Files to Tape
-Item: 14 Cause daemons to use a specific IP address to source communications
-Item: 15 Multiple threads in file daemon for the same job
-Item: 16 Add Plug-ins to the FileSet Include statements.
-Item: 17 Restore only file attributes (permissions, ACL, owner, group...)
-Item: 18* Quick release of FD-SD connection after backup.
-Item: 19 Implement a Python interface to the Bacula catalog.
-Item: 20 Archive data
-Item: 21 Split documentation
-Item: 22 Implement support for stacking arbitrary stream filters, sinks.
-Item: 23* Implement from-client and to-client on restore command line.
-Item: 24 Add an override in Schedule for Pools based on backup types.
-Item: 25* Implement huge exclude list support using hashing.
-Item: 26 Implement more Python events in Bacula.
-Item: 27 Incorporation of XACML2/SAML2 parsing
-Item: 28 Filesystem watch triggered backup.
-Item: 29 Allow inclusion/exclusion of files in a fileset by creation/mod times
-Item: 30 Tray monitor window cleanups
-Item: 31 Implement multiple numeric backup levels as supported by dump
-Item: 32 Automatic promotion of backup levels
-Item: 33 Clustered file-daemons
-Item: 34 Commercial database support
-Item: 35 Automatic disabling of devices
-Item: 36 An option to operate on all pools with update vol parameters
-Item: 37 Add an item to the restore option where you can select a pool
-Item: 38 Include timestamp of job launch in "stat clients" output
-Item: 39 Message mailing based on backup types
-Item: 40* Include JobID in spool file name
-Item: 41* Enable to relocate files and directories when restoring
-Item: 42* Batch attribute inserts (ten times faster)
-Item: 43* More concurrency in SD using micro-locking
-Item: 44* Performance enhancements (POSIX/Win32 OS file access hints).
-
-Item 1: Accurate restoration of renamed/deleted files
- Date: 28 November 2005
- Origin: Martin Simmons (martin at lispworks dot com)
- Status: Robert Nelson will implement this
-
- What: When restoring a fileset for a specified date (including "most
- recent"), Bacula should give you exactly the files and directories
- that existed at the time of the last backup prior to that date.
-
- Currently this only works if the last backup was a Full backup.
- When the last backup was Incremental/Differential, files and
- directories that have been renamed or deleted since the last Full
- backup are not currently restored correctly. Ditto for files with
- extra/fewer hard links than at the time of the last Full backup.
-
- Why: Incremental/Differential would be much more useful if this worked.
-
- Notes: Merging of multiple backups into a single one seems to
- rely on this working, otherwise the merged backups will not be
- truly equivalent to a Full backup.
-
- Kern: notes shortened. This can be done without the need for
- inodes. It is essentially the same as the current Verify job,
- but one additional database record must be written, which does
- not need any database change.
-
- Kern: see if we can correct restoration of directories if
- replace=ifnewer is set. Currently, if the directory does not
- exist, a "dummy" directory is created, then when all the files
- are updated, the dummy directory is newer so the real values
- are not updated.
-
-Item 2: Implement a Bacula GUI/management tool.
- Origin: Kern
- Date: 28 October 2005
- Status: In progress
-
- What: Implement a Bacula console, and management tools
- probably using Qt3 and C++.
-
- Why: Don't we already have a wxWidgets GUI? Yes, but
- it is written in C++ and changes to the user interface
- must be hand tailored using C++ code. By developing
- the user interface using Qt designer, the interface
- can be very easily updated and most of the new Python
- code will be automatically created. The user interface
- changes become very simple, and only the new features
- must be implement. In addition, the code will be in
- Python, which will give many more users easy (or easier)
- access to making additions or modifications.
-
- Notes: There is a partial Python-GTK implementation
- Lucas Di Pentima <lucas at lunix dot com dot ar> but
- it is no longer being developed.
-
-Item 3: Allow FD to initiate a backup
+Item 2: Allow FD to initiate a backup
+Item 6: Deletion of disk Volumes when pruned
+Item 7: Implement Base jobs
+Item 9: Scheduling syntax that permits more flexibility and options
+Item 10: Message mailing based on backup types
+Item 11: Cause daemons to use a specific IP address to source communications
+Item 14: Add an override in Schedule for Pools based on backup types
+Item 15: Implement more Python events and functions --- Abandoned for plugins
+Item 16: Allow inclusion/exclusion of files in a fileset by creation/mod times
+Item 17: Automatic promotion of backup levels based on backup size
+Item 19: Automatic disabling of devices
+Item 20: An option to operate on all pools with update vol parameters
+Item 21: Include timestamp of job launch in "stat clients" output
+Item 22: Implement Storage daemon compression
+Item 23: Improve Bacula's tape and drive usage and cleaning management
+Item 24: Multiple threads in file daemon for the same job
+Item 25: Archival (removal) of User Files to Tape
+
+
+Item 2: Allow FD to initiate a backup
Origin: Frank Volf (frank at deze dot org)
Date: 17 November 2005
Status:
Why: Makes backup of laptops much easier.
-Item 4: Merge multiple backups (Synthetic Backup or Consolidation).
- Origin: Marc Cousin and Eric Bollengier
- Date: 15 November 2005
- Status: Waiting implementation. Depends on first implementing
- project Item 2 (Migration) which is now done.
-
- What: A merged backup is a backup made without connecting to the Client.
- It would be a Merge of existing backups into a single backup.
- In effect, it is like a restore but to the backup medium.
-
- For instance, say that last Sunday we made a full backup. Then
- all week long, we created incremental backups, in order to do
- them fast. Now comes Sunday again, and we need another full.
- The merged backup makes it possible to do instead an incremental
- backup (during the night for instance), and then create a merged
- backup during the day, by using the full and incrementals from
- the week. The merged backup will be exactly like a full made
- Sunday night on the tape, but the production interruption on the
- Client will be minimal, as the Client will only have to send
- incrementals.
-
- In fact, if it's done correctly, you could merge all the
- Incrementals into single Incremental, or all the Incrementals
- and the last Differential into a new Differential, or the Full,
- last differential and all the Incrementals into a new Full
- backup. And there is no need to involve the Client.
-
- Why: The benefit is that :
- - the Client just does an incremental ;
- - the merged backup on tape is just as a single full backup,
- and can be restored very fast.
-
- This is also a way of reducing the backup data since the old
- data can then be pruned (or not) from the catalog, possibly
- allowing older volumes to be recycled
-
-Item 5: Deletion of Disk-Based Bacula Volumes
+
+Item 6: Deletion of disk Volumes when pruned
Date: Nov 25, 2005
Origin: Ross Boylan <RossBoylan at stanfordalumni dot org> (edited
by Kern)
The migration project should also remove a Volume that is
migrated. This might also work for tape Volumes.
-Item 6: Implement Base jobs.
+Item 7: Implement Base jobs
Date: 28 October 2005
Origin: Kern
Status:
FD a list of files/attribs, and the FD must search the
list and compare it for each file to be saved.
-Item 7: Implement creation and maintenance of copy pools
- Date: 27 November 2005
- Origin: David Boyes (dboyes at sinenomine dot net)
- Status:
-
- What: I would like Bacula to have the capability to write copies
- of backed-up data on multiple physical volumes selected
- from different pools without transferring the data
- multiple times, and to accept any of the copy volumes
- as valid for restore.
-
- Why: In many cases, businesses are required to keep offsite
- copies of backup volumes, or just wish for simple
- protection against a human operator dropping a storage
- volume and damaging it. The ability to generate multiple
- volumes in the course of a single backup job allows
- customers to simple check out one copy and send it
- offsite, marking it as out of changer or otherwise
- unavailable. Currently, the library and magazine
- management capability in Bacula does not make this process
- simple.
-
- Restores would use the copy of the data on the first
- available volume, in order of copy pool chain definition.
-
- This is also a major scalability issue -- as the number of
- clients increases beyond several thousand, and the volume
- of data increases, transferring the data multiple times to
- produce additional copies of the backups will become
- physically impossible due to transfer speed
- issues. Generating multiple copies at server side will
- become the only practical option.
-
- How: I suspect that this will require adding a multiplexing
- SD that appears to be a SD to a specific FD, but 1-n FDs
- to the specific back end SDs managing the primary and copy
- pools. Storage pools will also need to acquire parameters
- to define the pools to be used for copies.
-
- Notes: I would commit some of my developers' time if we can agree
- on the design and behavior.
-
-Item 8: 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.
-
-Item 9: Implement a server-side compression feature
- Date: 18 December 2006
- Origin: Vadim A. Umanski , e-mail umanski@ext.ru
- Status:
- What: The ability to compress backup data on server 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 10: 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 11: Allow skipping execution of Jobs
- Date: 29 November 2005
- Origin: Florian Schnabel <florian.schnabel at docufy dot de>
- Status:
-
- What: An easy option to skip a certain job on a certain date.
- Why: 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.
-Item 12: Add a scheduling syntax that permits weekly rotations
+Item 9: Scheduling syntax that permits more flexibility and options
Date: 15 December 2006
- Origin: Gregory Brauer (greg at wildbrain dot com)
+ 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
A solution would be to add a new syntax that defines (at least)
a start timestamp, and repetition period.
- Why: Rotated backups done at weekly intervals are useful, and Bacula
+ 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
}
}
-Item 13: Archival (removal) of User Files to Tape
- Date: Nov. 24/2005
- Origin: Ray Pengelly [ray at biomed dot queensu dot ca
- Status:
+ Notes: Kern: I have merged the previously separate project of skipping
+ jobs (via Schedule syntax) into this.
- 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.
+Item 10: Message mailing based on backup types
+ Origin: Evan Kaufman <evan.kaufman@gmail.com>
+ Date: January 6, 2006
+ Status:
- 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.
+ 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).
- 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.
+ 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
+ }
-Item 14: Cause daemons to use a specific IP address to source communications
+ 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:
10.0.0.1 and zone transfers will always originate from
10.0.0.2.
-Item 15: 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 16: Add Plug-ins to the FileSet Include statements.
- Date: 28 October 2005
- Origin:
- Status: Partially coded in 1.37 -- much more to do.
-
- What: Allow users to specify wild-card and/or regular
- expressions to be matched in both the Include and
- Exclude directives in a FileSet. At the same time,
- allow users to define plug-ins to be called (based on
- regular expression/wild-card matching).
-
- Why: This would give the users the ultimate ability to control
- how files are backed up/restored. A user could write a
- plug-in knows how to backup his Oracle database without
- stopping/starting it, for example.
-
-Item 17: Restore only file attributes (permissions, ACL, owner, group...)
- Origin: Eric Bollengier
- Date: 30/12/2006
- Status:
-
- 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.
+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.
- 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.
+ 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 18: Quick release of FD-SD connection after backup.
- Origin: Frank Volf (frank at deze dot org)
- Date: 17 November 2005
- Status: Done -- implemented by Kern -- in CVS 26Jan07
-
- What: In the Bacula implementation a backup is finished after all data
- and attributes are successfully written to storage. When using a
- tape backup it is very annoying that a backup can take a day,
- simply because the current tape (or whatever) is full and the
- administrator has not put a new one in. During that time the
- system cannot be taken off-line, because there is still an open
- session between the storage daemon and the file daemon on the
- client.
- Although this is a very good strategy for making "safe backups"
- This can be annoying for e.g. laptops, that must remain
- connected until the backup is completed.
-
- Using a new feature called "migration" it will be possible to
- spool first to harddisk (using a special 'spool' migration
- scheme) and then migrate the backup to tape.
-
- There is still the problem of getting the attributes committed.
- If it takes a very long time to do, with the current code, the
- job has not terminated, and the File daemon is not freed up. The
- Storage daemon should release the File daemon as soon as all the
- file data and all the attributes have been sent to it (the SD).
- Currently the SD waits until everything is on tape and all the
- attributes are transmitted to the Director before signaling
- completion to the FD. I don't think I would have any problem
- changing this. The reason is that even if the FD reports back to
- the Dir that all is OK, the job will not terminate until the SD
- has done the same thing -- so in a way keeping the SD-FD link
- open to the very end is not really very productive ...
-
- Why: Makes backup of laptops much faster.
-
-Item 19: Implement a Python interface to the Bacula catalog.
+Item 15: Implement more Python events and functions
Date: 28 October 2005
Origin: Kern
- Status:
+ 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.
- What: Implement an interface for Python scripts to access
- the catalog through Bacula.
+ Implement an interface for Python scripts to access the
+ catalog through Bacula.
Why: This will permit users to customize Bacula through
Python scripts.
-Item 20: Archive data
- Date: 15/5/2006
- Origin: calvin streeting calvin at absentdream dot com
- Status:
-
- What: The abilty to archive to media (dvd/cd) in a uncompressed format
- for dead filing (archiving not backing up)
+ 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).
- Why: At my works when jobs are finished and moved off of the main file
- servers (raid based systems) onto a simple linux file server (ide based
- system) so users can find old information without contacting the IT
- dept.
- So this data dosn't realy change it only gets added to,
- But it also needs backing up. At the moment it takes
- about 8 hours to back up our servers (working data) so
- rather than add more time to existing backups i am trying
- to implement a system where we backup the acrhive data to
- cd/dvd these disks would only need to be appended to
- (burn only new/changed files to new disks for off site
- storage). basialy understand the differnce between
- achive data and live data.
+ to start the appropriate job.
- Notes: Scan the data and email me when it needs burning divide
- into predifind chunks keep a recored of what is on what
- disk make me a label (simple php->mysql=>pdf stuff) i
- could do this bit ability to save data uncompresed so
- it can be read in any other system (future proof data)
- save the catalog with the disk as some kind of menu
- system
-Item 21: Split documentation
- Origin: Maxx <maxxatworkat gmail dot com>
- Date: 27th July 2006
+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: 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:
+ 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.
- 1) Introduction, requirements and tutorial, typically
- are useful only until first installation time
+ 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:
- 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.
+ Options {
+ Exclude = yes
+ Modified Before = ####
+ }
-
-Item 22: 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.
-
-Item 23: Implement from-client and to-client on restore command line.
- Date: 11 December 2006
- Origin: Discussion on Bacula-users entitled 'Scripted restores to
- different clients', December 2006
- Status: New feature request
-
- What: While using bconsole interactively, you can specify the client
- that a backup job is to be restored for, and then you can
- specify later a different client to send the restored files
- back to. However, using the 'restore' command with all options
- on the command line, this cannot be done, due to the ambiguous
- 'client' parameter. Additionally, this parameter means different
- things depending on if it's specified on the command line or
- afterwards, in the Modify Job screens.
-
- Why: This feature would enable restore jobs to be more completely
- automated, for example by a web or GUI front-end.
-
- Notes: client can also be implied by specifying the jobid on the command
- line
-
-Item 24: 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 device 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 25: Implement huge exclude list support using hashing (dlists).
- Date: 28 October 2005
- Origin: Kern
- Status: Done in 2.1.2 but was done with dlists (doubly linked lists
- since hashing will not help. The huge list also supports
- large include lists).
-
- What: Allow users to specify very large exclude list (currently
- more than about 1000 files is too many).
-
- Why: This would give the users the ability to exclude all
- files that are loaded with the OS (e.g. using rpms
- or debs). If the user can restore the base OS from
- CDs, there is no need to backup all those files. A
- complete restore would be to restore the base OS, then
- do a Bacula restore. By excluding the base OS files, the
- backup set will be *much* smaller.
-
-Item 26: Implement more Python events in Bacula.
- 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.
-
- 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).
-
-
-Item 27: Incorporation of XACML2/SAML2 parsing
- Date: 19 January 2006
- Origin: Adam Thornton <athornton@sinenomine.net>
- Status: Blue sky
-
- What: XACML is "eXtensible Access Control Markup Language" and
- "SAML is the "Security Assertion Markup Language"--an XML standard
- for making statements about identity and authorization. Having these
- would give us a framework to approach ACLs in a generic manner, and
- in a way flexible enough to support the four major sorts of ACLs I
- see as a concern to Bacula at this point, as well as (probably) to
- deal with new sorts of ACLs that may appear in the future.
-
- Why: Bacula is beginning to need to back up systems with ACLs
- that do not map cleanly onto traditional Unix permissions. I see
- four sets of ACLs--in general, mutually incompatible with one
- another--that we're going to need to deal with. These are: NTFS
- ACLs, POSIX ACLs, NFSv4 ACLS, and AFS ACLS. (Some may question the
- relevance of AFS; AFS is one of Sine Nomine's core consulting
- businesses, and having a reputable file-level backup and restore
- technology for it (as Tivoli is probably going to drop AFS support
- soon since IBM no longer supports AFS) would be of huge benefit to
- our customers; we'd most likely create the AFS support at Sine Nomine
- for inclusion into the Bacula (and perhaps some changes to the
- OpenAFS volserver) core code.)
-
- Now, obviously, Bacula already handles NTFS just fine. However, I
- think there's a lot of value in implementing a generic ACL model, so
- that it's easy to support whatever particular instances of ACLs come
- down the pike: POSIX ACLS (think SELinux) and NFSv4 are the obvious
- things arriving in the Linux world in a big way in the near future.
- XACML, although overcomplicated for our needs, provides this
- framework, and we should be able to leverage other people's
- implementations to minimize the amount of work *we* have to do to get
- a generic ACL framework. Basically, the costs of implementation are
- high, but they're largely both external to Bacula and already sunk.
-
-Item 28: Filesystem watch triggered backup.
- Date: 31 August 2006
- Origin: Jesper Krogh <jesper@krogh.cc>
- Status: Unimplemented, depends probably on "client initiated backups"
-
- 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
- to start the appropriate job.
-
-Item 29: 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:
+ Or you could exclude all files created/modified since a certain date:
Options {
Exclude = yes
So one could compare against 'ctime' and/or 'mtime', but ONLY 'before'
or 'since'.
-
-Item 30: Tray monitor window cleanups
- Origin: Alan Brown ajb2 at mssl dot ucl dot ac dot uk
- Date: 24 July 2006
- Status:
- What: Resizeable and scrollable windows in the tray monitor.
-
- Why: With multiple clients, or with many jobs running, the displayed
- window often ends up larger than the available screen, making
- the trailing items difficult to read.
-
-
-Item 31: Implement multiple numeric backup levels as supported by dump
-Date: 3 April 2006
-Origin: Daniel Rich <drich@employees.org>
-Status:
-What: Dump allows specification of backup levels numerically instead of just
- "full", "incr", and "diff". In this system, at any given level, all
- files are backed up that were were modified since the last backup of a
- higher level (with 0 being the highest and 9 being the lowest). A
- level 0 is therefore equivalent to a full, level 9 an incremental, and
- the levels 1 through 8 are varying levels of differentials. For
- bacula's sake, these could be represented as "full", "incr", and
- "diff1", "diff2", etc.
-
-Why: Support of multiple backup levels would provide for more advanced backup
- rotation schemes such as "Towers of Hanoi". This would allow better
- flexibility in performing backups, and can lead to shorter recover
- times.
-
-Notes: Legato Networker supports a similar system with full, incr, and 1-9 as
- levels.
-Item 32: Automatic promotion of backup levels
+Item 17: Automatic promotion of backup levels based on backup size
Date: 19 January 2006
Origin: Adam Thornton <athornton@sinenomine.net>
Status:
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 33: Clustered file-daemons
- Origin: Alan Brown ajb2 at mssl dot ucl dot ac dot uk
- Date: 24 July 2006
- Status:
- What: A "virtual" filedaemon, which is actually a cluster of real ones.
-
- Why: In the case of clustered filesystems (SAN setups, GFS, or OCFS2, etc)
- multiple machines may have access to the same set of filesystems
-
- For performance reasons, one may wish to initate backups from
- several of these machines simultaneously, instead of just using
- one backup source for the common clustered filesystem.
-
- For obvious reasons, normally backups of $A-FD/$PATH and
- B-FD/$PATH are treated as different backup sets. In this case
- they are the same communal set.
-
- Likewise when restoring, it would be easier to just specify
- one of the cluster machines and let bacula decide which to use.
-
- This can be faked to some extent using DNS round robin entries
- and a virtual IP address, however it means "status client" will
- always give bogus answers. Additionally there is no way of
- spreading the load evenly among the servers.
- What is required is something similar to the storage daemon
- autochanger directives, so that Bacula can keep track of
- operating backups/restores and direct new jobs to a "free"
- client.
-
- Notes:
-
-Item 34: Commercial database support
- Origin: Russell Howe <russell_howe dot wreckage dot org>
- Date: 26 July 2006
- Status:
-
- What: It would be nice for the database backend to support more
- databases. I'm thinking of SQL Server at the moment, but I guess Oracle,
- DB2, MaxDB, etc are all candidates. SQL Server would presumably be
- implemented using FreeTDS or maybe an ODBC library?
-
- Why: We only really have one database server, which is MS SQL Server
- 2000. Maintaining a second one for the backup software (we grew out of
- SQLite, which I liked, but which didn't work so well with our database
- size). We don't really have a machine with the resources to run
- postgres, and would rather only maintain a single DBMS. We're stuck with
- SQL Server because pretty much all the company's custom applications
- (written by consultants) are locked into SQL Server 2000. I can imagine
- this scenario is fairly common, and it would be nice to use the existing
- properly specced database server for storing Bacula's catalog, rather
- than having to run a second DBMS.
-
-Item 35: Automatic disabling of devices
+Item 19: Automatic disabling of devices
Date: 2005-11-11
Origin: Peter Eriksson <peter at ifm.liu dot se>
Status:
further use of that drive and used one of the other ones
instead.
-Item 36: An option to operate on all pools with update vol parameters
+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:
+ 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
updating each of them using update -> Volume parameters -> All
Volumes from Pool -> pool #.
-Item 37: Add an item to the restore option where you can select a pool
- Origin: kshatriyak at gmail dot com
- Date: 1/1/2006
- Status:
- What: In the restore option (Select the most recent backup for a
- client) it would be useful to add an option where you can limit
- the selection to a certain pool.
-
- Why: When using cloned jobs, most of the time you have 2 pools - a
- disk pool and a tape pool. People who have 2 pools would like to
- select the most recent backup from disk, not from tape (tape
- would be only needed in emergency). However, the most recent
- backup (which may just differ a second from the disk backup) may
- be on tape and would be selected. The problem becomes bigger if
- you have a full and differential - the most "recent" full backup
- may be on disk, while the most recent differential may be on tape
- (though the differential on disk may differ even only a second or
- so). Bacula will complain that the backups reside on different
- media then. For now the only solution now when restoring things
- when you have 2 pools is to manually search for the right
- job-id's and enter them by hand, which is a bit fault tolerant.
-
-Item 38: Include timestamp of job launch in "stat clients" output
+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:
particularly when there are many active clients.
-Item 39: 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).
+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:
- 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).
+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:
- Notes: One way this could be done is through additional message types, for example:
+ What: Make Bacula manage tape life cycle information, tape reuse
+ times and drive cleaning cycles.
- 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
- }
+ 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.
-Item 40: Include JobID in spool file name ****DONE****
- Origin: Mark Bergman <mark.bergman@uphs.upenn.edu>
- Date: Tue Aug 22 17:13:39 EDT 2006
- Status: Done. (patches/testing/project-include-jobid-in-spool-name.patch)
- No need to vote for this item.
+ 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.
- What: Change the name of the spool file to include the JobID
+ 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.
- Why: JobIDs are the common key used to refer to jobs, yet the
- spoolfile name doesn't include that information. The date/time
- stamp is useful (and should be retained).
+ 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.
-============= New Freature Requests after vote of 26 Jan 2007 ========
-Item 41: Enable to relocate files and directories when restoring
- Date: 2007-03-01
- Origin: Eric Bollengier <eric@eb.homelinux.org>
- Status: Done.
+ Implementation of these projects could happen in three distinct
+ sub-projects: Measuring Tape and Drive usage, retiring
+ volumes, and handling drive cleaning and TAPEALERTs.
- What: The where= option is not powerful enough. It will be
- a great feature if bacula can restore a file in the
- same directory, but with a different name, or in
- an other directory without recreating the full path.
+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:
- Why: When i want to restore a production environment to a
- development environment, i just want change the first
- directory. ie restore /prod/data/file.dat to /rect/data/file.dat.
- At this time, i have to move by hand files. You must have a big
- dump space to restore and move data after.
+ What: I want the file daemon to start multiple threads for a backup
+ job so the fastest possible backup can be made.
- When i use Linux or SAN snapshot, i mount them to /mnt/snap_xxx
- so, when a restore a file, i have to move by hand
- from /mnt/snap_xxx/file to /xxx/file. I can't replace a file
- easily.
+ The file daemon could parse the FileSet information and start
+ one thread for each File entry located on a separate
+ filesystem.
- When a user ask me to restore a file in its personal folder,
- (without replace the existing one), i can't restore from
- my_file.txt to my_file.txt.old witch is very practical.
+ 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.
-
- Notes: I think we can enhance the where= option very easily by
- allowing regexp expression.
+ If the theads could spool the data to separate spool files
+ the restore process will not be much slower.
- Since, many users think that regexp are not user friendly, i think
- that bat, bconsole or brestore must provide a simple way to
- configure where= option (i think to something like in
- openoffice "search and replace").
+ Why: Multiple concurrent backups of a large fileserver with many
+ disks and controllers will be much faster.
- Ie, if user uses where=/tmp/bacula-restore, we keep the old
- fashion.
+Item 25: Archival (removal) of User Files to Tape
+ Date: Nov. 24/2005
+ Origin: Ray Pengelly [ray at biomed dot queensu dot ca
+ Status:
- If user uses something like where=s!/prod!/test!, files will
- be restored from /prod/xxx to /test/xxx.
+ 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.
- If user uses something like where=s/$/.old/, files will
- be restored from /prod/xxx.txt to /prod/xxx.txt.old.
+ 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.
- If user uses something like where=s/txt$/old.txt/, files will
- be restored from /prod/xxx.txt to /prod/xxx.old.txt
+ Example 1) Medical imaging needs to store large amounts of data.
+ They decide to keep data on their servers for 6 months and then put
+ it away for long term storage. The server then finds all files
+ older than 6 months writes them to tape. The files are then removed
+ from the server.
- if user uses something like where=s/([a-z]+)$/old.$1/, files will
- be restored from /prod/xxx.ext to /prod/xxx.old.ext
+ 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 n: Implement Catalog directive for Pool resource in Director
-configuration
- Origin: Alan Davis adavis@ruckus.com
- Date: 6 March 2007
- Status: Submitted
-
- What: The current behavior is for the director to create all pools
- found in the configuration file in all catalogs. Add a
- Catalog directive to the Pool resource to specify which
- catalog to use for each pool definition.
-
- Why: This allows different catalogs to have different pool
- attributes and eliminates the side-effect of adding
- pools to catalogs that don't need/use them.
+
+========= New Items since the last vote =================
+
+Item 26: Add a new directive to bacula-dir.conf which permits inclusion of all subconfiguration files in a given directory
+Date: 18 October 2008
+Origin: Database, Lda. Maputo, Mozambique
+Contact:Cameron Smith / cameron.ord@database.co.mz
+Status: New request
+
+What: A directive something like "IncludeConf = /etc/bacula/subconfs" Every
+ time Bacula Director restarts or reloads, it will walk the given
+ directory (non-recursively) and include the contents of any files
+ therein, as though they were appended to bacula-dir.conf
+
+Why: Permits simplified and safer configuration for larger installations with
+ many client PCs. Currently, through judicious use of JobDefs and
+ similar directives, it is possible to reduce the client-specific part of
+ a configuration to a minimum. The client-specific directives can be
+ prepared according to a standard template and dropped into a known
+ directory. However it is still necessary to add a line to the "master"
+ (bacula-dir.conf) referencing each new file. This exposes the master to
+ unnecessary risk of accidental mistakes and makes automation of adding
+ new client-confs, more difficult (it is easier to automate dropping a
+ file into a dir, than rewriting an existing file). Ken has previously
+ made a convincing argument for NOT including Bacula's core configuration
+ in an RDBMS, but I believe that the present request is a reasonable
+ extension to the current "flat-file-based" configuration philosophy.
- Notes:
+Notes: There is NO need for any special syntax to these files. They should
+ contain standard directives which are simply "inlined" to the parent
+ file as already happens when you explicitly reference an external file.
+
+Notes: (kes) this can already be done with scripting
+ From: John Jorgensen <jorgnsn@lcd.uregina.ca>
+ The bacula-dir.conf at our site contains these lines:
+
+ #
+ # Include subfiles associated with configuration of clients.
+ # They define the bulk of the Clients, Jobs, and FileSets.
+ #
+ @|"sh -c 'for f in /etc/bacula/clientdefs/*.conf ; do echo @${f} ; done'"
+
+ and when we get a new client, we just put its configuration into
+ a new file called something like:
+
+ /etc/bacula/clientdefs/clientname.conf
+
+
+ Item n: List inChanger flag when doing restore.
+ Origin: Jesper Krogh<jesper@krogh.cc>
+ Date: 17 oct. 2008
+ Status:
+
+ What: When doing a restore the restore selection dialog ends by telling stuff
+ like this:
+ The job will require the following
+ Volume(s) Storage(s) SD Device(s)
+ ===========================================================================
+ 000741L3 LTO-4 LTO3
+ 000866L3 LTO-4 LTO3
+ 000765L3 LTO-4 LTO3
+ 000764L3 LTO-4 LTO3
+ 000756L3 LTO-4 LTO3
+ 001759L3 LTO-4 LTO3
+ 001763L3 LTO-4 LTO3
+ 001762L3 LTO-4 LTO3
+ 001767L3 LTO-4 LTO3
+
+ When having an autochanger, it would be really nice with an inChanger
+ column so the operator knew if this restore job would stop waiting for
+ operator intervention. This is done just by selecting the inChanger flag
+ from the catalog and printing it in a seperate column.
+
+
+ Why: This would help getting large restores through minimizing the
+ time spent waiting for operator to drop by and change tapes in the library.
+
+ Notes: [Kern] I think it would also be good to have the Slot as well,
+ or some indication that Bacula thinks the volume is in the autochanger
+ because it depends on both the InChanger flag and the Slot being
+ valid.
+
+
+Item 1: Implement an interface between Bacula and Amazon's S3.
+ Date: 25 August 2008
+ Origin: Soren Hansen <soren@ubuntu.com>
+ Status: Not started.
+ What: Enable the storage daemon to store backup data on Amazon's
+ S3 service.
+
+ Why: Amazon's S3 is a cheap way to store data off-site. Current
+ ways to integrate Bacula and S3 involve storing all the data
+ locally and syncing them to S3, and manually fetching them
+ again when they're needed. This is very cumbersome.
+
+
+Item 1: enable/disable compression depending on storage device (disk/tape)
+ Origin: Ralf Gross ralf-lists@ralfgross.de
+ Date: 2008-01-11
+ Status: Initial Request
+
+ What: Add a new option to the storage resource of the director. Depending
+ on this option, compression will be enabled/disabled for a device.
+
+ Why: If different devices (disks/tapes) are used for full/diff/incr
+ backups, software compression will be enabled for all backups
+ because of the FileSet compression option. For backup to tapes
+ wich are able to do hardware compression this is not desired.
+
+
+ Notes:
+ http://news.gmane.org/gmane.comp.sysutils.backup.bacula.devel/cutoff=11124
+ It must be clear to the user, that the FileSet compression option
+ must still be enabled use compression for a backup job at all.
+ Thus a name for the new option in the director must be
+ well-defined.
+
+ Notes: KES I think the Storage definition should probably override what
+ is in the Job definition or vice-versa, but in any case, it must
+ be well defined.
+
+
+Item 1: Backup and Restore of Windows Encrypted Files through raw encryption
+ functions
+
+ Origin: Michael Mohr, SAG Mohr.External@infineon.com
+
+ Date: 22 February 2008
+
+ Status:
+
+ What: Make it possible to backup and restore Encypted Files from and to
+ Windows systems without the need to decrypt it by using the raw
+ encryption functions API (see:
+ http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa363783.aspx)
+
+ that is provided for that reason by Microsoft.
+ If a file ist encrypted could be examined by evaluating the
+ FILE_ATTRIBUTE_ENCRYTED flag of the GetFileAttributes
+ function.
+
+ Why: Without the usage of this interface the fd-daemon running
+ under the system account can't read encypted Files because
+ the key needed for the decrytion is missed by them. As a result
+ actually encrypted files are not backed up
+ by bacula and also no error is shown while missing these files.
+
+ Notes: ./.
+
+ Item 1: Possibilty to schedule Jobs on last Friday of the month
+ Origin: Carsten Menke <bootsy52 at gmx dot net>
+ Date: 02 March 2008
+ Status:
+
+ What: Currently if you want to run your monthly Backups on the last
+ Friday of each month this is only possible with workarounds (e.g
+ scripting) (As some months got 4 Fridays and some got 5 Fridays)
+ The same is true if you plan to run your yearly Backups on the
+ last Friday of the year. It would be nice to have the ability to
+ use the builtin scheduler for this.
+
+ Why: In many companies the last working day of the week is Friday (or
+ Saturday), so to get the most data of the month onto the monthly
+ tape, the employees are advised to insert the tape for the
+ monthly backups on the last friday of the month.
+
+ Notes: To give this a complete functionality it would be nice if the
+ "first" and "last" Keywords could be implemented in the
+ scheduler, so it is also possible to run monthy backups at the
+ first friday of the month and many things more. So if the syntax
+ would expand to this {first|last} {Month|Week|Day|Mo-Fri} of the
+ {Year|Month|Week} you would be able to run really flexible jobs.
+
+ To got a certain Job run on the last Friday of the Month for example one could
+ then write
+
+ Run = pool=Monthly last Fri of the Month at 23:50
+
+ ## Yearly Backup
+
+ Run = pool=Yearly last Fri of the Year at 23:50
+
+ ## Certain Jobs the last Week of a Month
+
+ Run = pool=LastWeek last Week of the Month at 23:50
+
+ ## Monthly Backup on the last day of the month
+
+ Run = pool=Monthly last Day of the Month at 23:50
+
+ Date: 20 March 2008
+
+ Origin: Frank Sweetser <fs@wpi.edu>
+
+ What: Add a new SD directive, "minimum spool size" (or similar). This
+ directive would specify a minimum level of free space available for
+ spooling. If the unused spool space is less than this level, any
+ new spooling requests would be blocked as if the "maximum spool
+ size" threshold had bee reached. Already spooling jobs would be
+ unaffected by this directive.
+
+ Why: I've been bitten by this scenario a couple of times:
+
+ Assume a maximum spool size of 100M. Two concurrent jobs, A and B,
+ are both running. Due to timing quirks and previously running jobs,
+ job A has used 99.9M of space in the spool directory. While A is
+ busy despooling to disk, B is happily using the remaining 0.1M of
+ spool space. This ends up in a spool/despool sequence every 0.1M of
+ data. In addition to fragmenting the data on the volume far more
+ than was necessary, in larger data sets (ie, tens or hundreds of
+ gigabytes) it can easily produce multi-megabyte report emails!
+
+ Item n?: Expand the Verify Job capability to verify Jobs older than the
+ last one. For VolumeToCatalog Jobs
+ Date: 17 Januar 2008
+ Origin: portrix.net Hamburg, Germany.
+ Contact: Christian Sabelmann
+ Status: 70% of the required Code is part of the Verify function since v. 2.x
+
+ What:
+ The ability to tell Bacula which Job should verify instead of
+ automatically verify just the last one.
+
+ Why:
+ It is sad that such a powerfull feature like Verify Jobs
+ (VolumeToCatalog) is restricted to be used only with the last backup Job
+ of a client. Actual users who have to do daily Backups are forced to
+ also do daily Verify Jobs in order to take advantage of this useful
+ feature. This Daily Verify after Backup conduct is not always desired
+ and Verify Jobs have to be sometimes scheduled. (Not necessarily
+ scheduled in Bacula). With this feature Admins can verify Jobs once a
+ Week or less per month, selecting the Jobs they want to verify. This
+ feature is also not to difficult to implement taking in account older bug
+ reports about this feature and the selection of the Job to be verified.
+
+ Notes: For the verify Job, the user could select the Job to be verified
+ from a List of the latest Jobs of a client. It would also be possible to
+ verify a certain volume. All of these would naturaly apply only for
+ Jobs whose file information are still in the catalog.
+
+Item X: Add EFS support on Windows
+ Origin: Alex Ehrlich (Alex.Ehrlich-at-mail.ee)
+ Date: 05 August 2008
+ Status:
+
+ What: For each file backed up or restored by FD on Windows, check if
+ the file is encrypted; if so then use OpenEncryptedFileRaw,
+ ReadEncryptedFileRaw, WriteEncryptedFileRaw,
+ CloseEncryptedFileRaw instead of BackupRead and BackupWrite
+ API calls.
+
+ Why: Many laptop users utilize the EFS functionality today; so do.
+ some non-laptop ones, too.
+ Currently files encrypted by means of EFS cannot be backed up.
+ It means a Windows boutique cannot rely on Bacula as its
+ backup solution, at least when using Windows 2K, XPP,
+ "better" Vista etc on workstations, unless EFS is
+ forbidden by policies.
+ The current situation might result into "false sense of
+ security" among the end-users.
+
+ Notes: Using xxxEncryptedFileRaw API would allow to backup and
+ restore EFS-encrypted files without decrypting their data.
+ Note that such files cannot be restored "portably" (at least,
+ easily) but they would be restoreable to a different (or
+ reinstalled) Win32 machine; the restore would require setup
+ of a EFS recovery agent in advance, of course, and this shall
+ be clearly reflected in the documentation, but this is the
+ normal Windows SysAdmin's business.
+ When "portable" backup is requested the EFS-encrypted files
+ shall be clearly reported as errors.
+ See MSDN on the "Backup and Restore of Encrypted Files" topic:
+ http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa363783.aspx
+ Maybe the EFS support requires a new flag in the database for
+ each file, too?
+ Unfortunately, the implementation is not as straightforward as
+ 1-to-1 replacement of BackupRead with ReadEncryptedFileRaw,
+ requiring some FD code rewrite to work with
+ encrypted-file-related callback functions.
+
+Item n: Data encryption on storage daemon
+ Origin: Tobias Barth <tobias.barth at web-arts.com>
+ Date: 04 February 2009
+ Status: new
+
+ What: The storage demon should be able to do the data encryption that can currently be done by the file daemon.
+
+ Why: This would have 2 advantages: 1) one could encrypt the data of unencrypted tapes by doing a migration job, and 2) the storage daemon would be the only machine that would have to keep the encryption keys.
+
+ 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 1: "Maximum Concurrent Jobs" for drives when used with changer device
+ Origin: Ralf Gross ralf-lists <at> ralfgross.de
+ Date: 2008-12-12
+ Status: Initial Request
+
+ What: respect the "Maximum Concurrent Jobs" directive in the _drives_
+ Storage section in addition to the changer section
+
+ Why: I have a 3 drive changer where I want to be able to let 3 concurrent
+ jobs run in parallel. But only one job per drive at the same time.
+ Right now I don't see how I could limit the number of concurrent jobs
+ per drive in this situation.
+
+ Notes: Using different priorities for these jobs lead to problems that other
+ jobs are blocked. On the user list I got the advice to use the "Prefer Mounted
+ Volumes" directive, but Kern advised against using "Prefer Mounted
+ Volumes" in an other thread:
+ http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.sysutils.backup.bacula.devel/11876/
+
+ In addition I'm not sure if this would be the same as respecting the
+ drive's "Maximum Concurrent Jobs" setting.
+
+ Example:
+
+ Storage {
+ Name = Neo4100
+ Address = ....
+ SDPort = 9103
+ Password = "wiped"
+ Device = Neo4100
+ Media Type = LTO4
+ Autochanger = yes
+ Maximum Concurrent Jobs = 3
+ }
+
+ Storage {
+ Name = Neo4100-LTO4-D1
+ Address = ....
+ SDPort = 9103
+ Password = "wiped"
+ Device = ULTRIUM-TD4-D1
+ Media Type = LTO4
+ Maximum Concurrent Jobs = 1
+ }
+
+ [2 more drives]
+
+ The "Maximum Concurrent Jobs = 1" directive in the drive's section is ignored.
+
+ Item n: Add MaxVolumeSize/MaxVolumeBytes statement to Storage resource
+ Origin: Bastian Friedrich <bastian.friedrich@collax.com>
+ Date: 2008-07-09
+ Status: -
+
+ What: SD has a "Maximum Volume Size" statement, which is deprecated
+ and superseded by the Pool resource statement "Maximum Volume Bytes". It
+ would be good if either statement could be used in Storage resources.
+
+ Why: Pools do not have to be restricted to a single storage
+ type/device; thus, it may be impossible to define Maximum Volume Bytes in
+ the Pool resource. The old MaxVolSize statement is deprecated, as it is
+ SD side only.
+ I am using the same pool for different devices.
+
+ Notes: State of idea currently unknown. Storage resources in the dir
+ config currently translate to very slim catalog entries; these entries
+ would require extensions to implement what is described here. Quite
+ possibly, numerous other statements that are currently available in Pool
+ resources could be used in Storage resources too quite well.
+
+Item 1: Start spooling even when waiting on tape
+ Origin: Tobias Barth <tobias.barth@web-arts.com>
+ Date: 25 April 2008
+ Status:
+
+ What: If a job can be spooled to disk before writing it to tape, it
+should be spooled immediately.
+ Currently, bacula waits until the correct tape is inserted
+into the drive.
+
+ Why: It could save hours. When bacula waits on the operator who
+must insert the correct tape (e.g. a new
+ tape or a tape from another media pool), bacula could already
+prepare the spooled data in the
+ spooling directory and immediately start despooling when the
+tape was inserted by the operator.
+
+ 2nd step: Use 2 or more spooling directories. When one directory is
+currently despooling, the next (on different
+ disk drives) could already be spooling the next data.
+
+ Notes: I am using bacula 2.2.8, which has none of those features
+implemented.
+
+Item 1: enable persistent naming/number of SQL queries
+
+ Date: 24 Jan, 2007
+ Origin: Mark Bergman
+ Status:
+
+ What:
+ Change the parsing of the query.sql file and the query command so that
+ queries are named/numbered by a fixed value, not their order in the
+ file.
+
+
+ Why:
+ One of the real strengths of bacula is the ability to query the
+ database, and the fact that complex queries can be saved and
+ referenced from a file is very powerful. However, the choice
+ of query (both for interactive use, and by scripting input
+ to the bconsole command) is completely dependent on the order
+ within the query.sql file. The descriptve labels are helpful for
+ interactive use, but users become used to calling a particular
+ query "by number", or may use scripts to execute queries. This
+ presents a problem if the number or order of queries in the file
+ changes.
+
+ If the query.sql file used the numeric tags as a real value (rather
+ than a comment), then users could have a higher confidence that they
+ are executing the intended query, that their local changes wouldn't
+ conflict with future bacula upgrades.
+
+ For scripting, it's very important that the intended query is
+ what's actually executed. The current method of parsing the
+ query.sql file discourages scripting because the addition or
+ deletion of queries within the file will require corresponding
+ changes to scripts. It may not be obvious to users that deleting
+ query "17" in the query.sql file will require changing all
+ references to higher numbered queries. Similarly, when new
+ bacula distributions change the number of "official" queries,
+ user-developed queries cannot simply be appended to the file
+ without also changing any references to those queries in scripts
+ or procedural documentation, etc.
+
+ In addition, using fixed numbers for queries would encourage more
+ user-initiated development of queries, by supporting conventions
+ such as:
+
+ queries numbered 1-50 are supported/developed/distributed by
+ with official bacula releases
+
+ queries numbered 100-200 are community contributed, and are
+ related to media management
+
+ queries numbered 201-300 are community contributed, and are
+ related to checksums, finding duplicated files across
+ different backups, etc.
+
+ queries numbered 301-400 are community contributed, and are
+ related to backup statistics (average file size, size per
+ client per backup level, time for all clients by backup level,
+ storage capacity by media type, etc.)
+
+ queries numbered 500-999 are locally created
+
+ Notes:
+ Alternatively, queries could be called by keyword (tag), rather
+ than by number.
+
+Item 1: 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 n: Restore from volumes on multiple storage daemons
+Origin: Graham Keeling (graham@equiinet.com)
+Date: 12 March 2009
+Status: Proposing
+
+What: The ability to restore from volumes held by multiple storage daemons
+ would be very useful.
+
+Why: It is useful to be able to backup to any number of different storage
+ daemons. For example, your first storage daemon may run out of space, so you
+ switch to your second and carry on. Bacula will currently let you do this.
+ However, once you come to restore, bacula cannot cope when volumes on different
+ storage daemons are required.
+
+ Notes: The director knows that more than one storage daemon is needed, as
+ bconsole outputs something like the following table.
+
+ The job will require the following
+ Volume(s) Storage(s) SD Device(s)
+ ===========================================================================
+
+ backup-0001 Disk 1 Disk 1.0
+ backup-0002 Disk 2 Disk 2.0
+
+ However, the bootstrap file that it creates gets sent to the first storage
+ daemon only, which then stalls for a long time, 'waiting for a mount request'
+ for the volume that it doesn't have.
+ The bootstrap file contains no knowledge of the storage daemon.
+ Under the current design:
+
+ The director connects to the storage daemon, and gets an sd_auth_key.
+ The director then connects to the file daemon, and gives it the
+ sd_auth_key with the 'jobcmd'.
+ (restoring of files happens)
+ The director does a 'wait_for_storage_daemon_termination()'.
+ The director waits for the file daemon to indicate the end of the job.
+
+ With my idea:
+
+ The director connects to the file daemon.
+ Then, for each storage daemon in the .bsr file... {
+ The director connects to the storage daemon, and gets an sd_auth_key.
+ The director then connects to the file daemon, and gives it the
+ sd_auth_key with the 'storaddr' command.
+ (restoring of files happens)
+ The director does a 'wait_for_storage_daemon_termination()'.
+ The director waits for the file daemon to indicate the end of the
+ work on this storage.
+ }
+ The director tells the file daemon that there are no more storages to contact.
+ The director waits for the file daemon to indicate the end of the job.
+
+ As you can see, each restore between the file daemon and storage daemon is
+ handled in the same way that it is currently handled, using the same method
+ for authentication, except that the sd_auth_key is moved from the 'jobcmd' to
+ the 'storaddr' command - where it logically belongs.
+
+Item n:'restore' menu: enter a JobId, automatically select dependents
+Origin: Graham Keeling (graham@equiinet.com)
+Date: 13 March 2009
+
+Status: Proposing
+
+What: Add to the bconsole 'restore' menu the ability to select a job
+ by JobId, and have bacula automatically select all the dependent jobs.
+
+ Why: Currently, you either have to...
+ a) laboriously type in a date that is greater than the date of the backup that
+ you want and is less than the subsequent backup (bacula then figures out the
+ dependent jobs), or
+ b) manually figure out all the JobIds that you want and laboriously type them
+ all in.
+ It would be extremely useful (in a programmatical sense, as well as for humans)
+ to be able to just give it a single JobId and let bacula do the hard work (work
+ that it already knows how to do).
+
+ Notes (Kern): I think this should either be modified to have Bacula print
+ a list of dates that the user can choose from as is done in bwx-console and
+ bat or the name of this command must be carefully chosen so that the user
+ clearly understands that the JobId is being used to specify what Job and the
+ date to which he wishes the restore to happen.
+
+Item 1: 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. Storage
+ resource tunneling: right now bacula does not initiate TCP session
+ from the storage resource, however, if Item 2 is implemented, proxy
+ support would be highly desired here as well.
+
+ 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.
+
+
+========= 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 ============================
+
+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.
-Item n: Implement NDMP protocol support
+ I do not plan on changing the network or tape data structures to
+ support defining arbitrary stream filters, but supporting that
+ functionality is the ultimate goal.
+
+ Assistance with either code or testing would be fantastic.
+
+ Notes: Kern: this project has a lot of merit, and we need to do it, but
+ it is really an issue for developers rather than a new feature
+ for users, so I have removed it from the voting list, but kept it
+ here, but at some point, it will be implemented.
+
+Item h3: Filesystem watch triggered backup.
+ Date: 31 August 2006
+ Origin: Jesper Krogh <jesper@krogh.cc>
+ Status:
+
+ What: With inotify and similar filesystem triggeret notification
+ systems is it possible to have the file-daemon to monitor
+ filesystem changes and initiate backup.
+
+ Why: There are 2 situations where this is nice to have.
+ 1) It is possible to get a much finer-grained backup than
+ the fixed schedules used now.. A file created and deleted
+ a few hours later, can automatically be caught.
+
+ 2) The introduced load on the system will probably be
+ distributed more even on the system.
+
+ Notes: This can be combined with configration that specifies
+ something like: "at most every 15 minutes or when changes
+ consumed XX MB".
+
+Kern Notes: I would rather see this implemented by an external program
+ that monitors the Filesystem changes, then uses the console
+
+
+Item h4: Directive/mode to backup only file changes, not entire file
+ Date: 11 November 2005
+ Origin: Joshua Kugler <joshua dot kugler at uaf dot edu>
+ Marek Bajon <mbajon at bimsplus dot com dot pl>
+ Status:
+
+ What: Currently when a file changes, the entire file will be backed up in
+ the next incremental or full backup. To save space on the tapes
+ it would be nice to have a mode whereby only the changes to the
+ file would be backed up when it is changed.
+
+ Why: This would save lots of space when backing up large files such as
+ logs, mbox files, Outlook PST files and the like.
+
+ Notes: This would require the usage of disk-based volumes as comparing
+ files would not be feasible using a tape drive.
+
+ Notes: Kern: I don't know how to implement this. Put on hold until someone
+ provides a detailed implementation plan.
+
+
+Item h5: Implement multiple numeric backup levels as supported by dump
+Date: 3 April 2006
+Origin: Daniel Rich <drich@employees.org>
+Status:
+What: Dump allows specification of backup levels numerically instead of just
+ "full", "incr", and "diff". In this system, at any given level,
+ all files are backed up that were were modified since the last
+ backup of a higher level (with 0 being the highest and 9 being the
+ lowest). A level 0 is therefore equivalent to a full, level 9 an
+ incremental, and the levels 1 through 8 are varying levels of
+ differentials. For bacula's sake, these could be represented as
+ "full", "incr", and "diff1", "diff2", etc.
+
+Why: Support of multiple backup levels would provide for more advanced
+ backup rotation schemes such as "Towers of Hanoi". This would
+ allow better flexibility in performing backups, and can lead to
+ shorter recover times.
+
+Notes: Legato Networker supports a similar system with full, incr, and 1-9 as
+ levels.
+
+Notes: Kern: I don't see the utility of this, and it would be a *huge*
+ modification to existing code.
+
+Item h6: Implement NDMP protocol support
Origin: Alan Davis
Date: 06 March 2007
- Status: Submitted
+ Status:
What: Network Data Management Protocol is implemented by a number of
NAS filer vendors to enable backups using third-party
reference implementation from Traakan is known to
compile on Solaris 10.
- Notes (Kern): I am not at all in favor of this until NDMP becomes
+ Notes: Kern: I am not at all in favor of this until NDMP becomes
an Open Standard or until there are Open Source libraries
that interface to it.
-Item n: make changing "spooldata=yes|no" possible for
- manual/interactive jobs
+Item h7: Commercial database support
+ Origin: Russell Howe <russell_howe dot wreckage dot org>
+ Date: 26 July 2006
+ Status:
-Origin: Marc Schiffbauer <marc@schiffbauer.net>
+ What: It would be nice for the database backend to support more databases.
+ I'm thinking of SQL Server at the moment, but I guess Oracle, DB2,
+ MaxDB, etc are all candidates. SQL Server would presumably be
+ implemented using FreeTDS or maybe an ODBC library?
-Date: 12 April 2007)
+ Why: We only really have one database server, which is MS SQL Server 2000.
+ Maintaining a second one for the backup software (we grew out of
+ SQLite, which I liked, but which didn't work so well with our
+ database size). We don't really have a machine with the resources
+ to run postgres, and would rather only maintain a single DBMS.
+ We're stuck with SQL Server because pretty much all the company's
+ custom applications (written by consultants) are locked into SQL
+ Server 2000. I can imagine this scenario is fairly common, and it
+ would be nice to use the existing properly specced database server
+ for storing Bacula's catalog, rather than having to run a second
+ DBMS.
+
+ Notes: This might be nice, but someone other than me will probably need to
+ implement it, and at the moment, proprietary code cannot legally
+ be mixed with Bacula GPLed code. This would be possible only
+ providing the vendors provide GPLed (or OpenSource) interface
+ code.
+
+Item h8: Incorporation of XACML2/SAML2 parsing
+ Date: 19 January 2006
+ Origin: Adam Thornton <athornton@sinenomine.net>
+ Status: Blue sky
-Status: NEW
+ What: XACML is "eXtensible Access Control Markup Language" and "SAML is
+ the "Security Assertion Markup Language"--an XML standard for
+ making statements about identity and authorization. Having these
+ would give us a framework to approach ACLs in a generic manner,
+ and in a way flexible enough to support the four major sorts of
+ ACLs I see as a concern to Bacula at this point, as well as
+ (probably) to deal with new sorts of ACLs that may appear in the
+ future.
+
+ Why: Bacula is beginning to need to back up systems with ACLs that do not
+ map cleanly onto traditional Unix permissions. I see four sets of
+ ACLs--in general, mutually incompatible with one another--that
+ we're going to need to deal with. These are: NTFS ACLs, POSIX
+ ACLs, NFSv4 ACLS, and AFS ACLS. (Some may question the relevance
+ of AFS; AFS is one of Sine Nomine's core consulting businesses,
+ and having a reputable file-level backup and restore technology
+ for it (as Tivoli is probably going to drop AFS support soon since
+ IBM no longer supports AFS) would be of huge benefit to our
+ customers; we'd most likely create the AFS support at Sine Nomine
+ for inclusion into the Bacula (and perhaps some changes to the
+ OpenAFS volserver) core code.)
-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:
+ Now, obviously, Bacula already handles NTFS just fine. However, I
+ think there's a lot of value in implementing a generic ACL model,
+ so that it's easy to support whatever particular instances of ACLs
+ come down the pike: POSIX ACLS (think SELinux) and NFSv4 are the
+ obvious things arriving in the Linux world in a big way in the
+ near future. XACML, although overcomplicated for our needs,
+ provides this framework, and we should be able to leverage other
+ people's implementations to minimize the amount of work *we* have
+ to do to get a generic ACL framework. Basically, the costs of
+ implementation are high, but they're largely both external to
+ Bacula and already sunk.
+
+ Notes: As you indicate this is a bit of "blue sky" or in other words,
+ at the moment, it is a bit esoteric to consider for Bacula.
+
+Item h9: Archive data
+ Date: 15/5/2006
+ Origin: calvin streeting calvin at absentdream dot com
+ Status:
- run job=MyJob level=incremental spooldata=yes
+ What: The abilty to archive to media (dvd/cd) in a uncompressed format
+ for dead filing (archiving not backing up)
-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.
+ Why: At work when jobs are finished and moved off of the main
+ file servers (raid based systems) onto a simple Linux
+ file server (ide based system) so users can find old
+ information without contacting the IT dept.
-Notes: ./.
+ So this data dosn't realy change it only gets added to,
+ But it also needs backing up. At the moment it takes
+ about 8 hours to back up our servers (working data) so
+ rather than add more time to existing backups i am trying
+ to implement a system where we backup the acrhive data to
+ cd/dvd these disks would only need to be appended to
+ (burn only new/changed files to new disks for off site
+ storage). basialy understand the differnce between
+ achive data and live data.
-============= Empty Feature Request form ===========
-Item n: One line summary ...
- Date: Date submitted
- Origin: Name and email of originator.
- Status:
+ Notes: Scan the data and email me when it needs burning divide
+ into predefined chunks keep a recored of what is on what
+ disk make me a label (simple php->mysql=>pdf stuff) i
+ could do this bit ability to save data uncompresed so
+ it can be read in any other system (future proof data)
+ save the catalog with the disk as some kind of menu
+ system
- What: More detailed explanation ...
+ Notes: Kern: I don't understand this item, and in any case, if it
+ is specific to DVD/CDs, which we do not recommend using,
+ it is unlikely to be implemented except as a user
+ submitted patch.
- Why: Why it is important ...
- Notes: Additional notes or features (omit if not used)
-============== End Feature Request form ==============
+Item h10: Clustered file-daemons
+ Origin: Alan Brown ajb2 at mssl dot ucl dot ac dot uk
+ Date: 24 July 2006
+ Status:
+ What: A "virtual" filedaemon, which is actually a cluster of real ones.
+
+ Why: In the case of clustered filesystems (SAN setups, GFS, or OCFS2, etc)
+ multiple machines may have access to the same set of filesystems
+
+ For performance reasons, one may wish to initate backups from
+ several of these machines simultaneously, instead of just using
+ one backup source for the common clustered filesystem.
+
+ For obvious reasons, normally backups of $A-FD/$PATH and
+ B-FD/$PATH are treated as different backup sets. In this case
+ they are the same communal set.
+
+ Likewise when restoring, it would be easier to just specify
+ one of the cluster machines and let bacula decide which to use.
+
+ This can be faked to some extent using DNS round robin entries
+ and a virtual IP address, however it means "status client" will
+ always give bogus answers. Additionally there is no way of
+ spreading the load evenly among the servers.
+
+ What is required is something similar to the storage daemon
+ autochanger directives, so that Bacula can keep track of
+ operating backups/restores and direct new jobs to a "free"
+ client.
+
+ Notes: Kern: I don't understand the request enough to be able to
+ implement it. A lot more design detail should be presented
+ before voting on this project.
+
+ Feature Request Form