Projects:
Bacula Projects Roadmap
- Status updated 26 April 2009
+ Status updated 04 Jun 2009
Summary:
-Item 1: Allow FD to initiate a backup
-Item 2: Ability to restart failed jobs
-Item 3: Port bat to Win32
-Item 4: Convert Bacula existing tray monitor on Windows to a stand alone program
-Item 5: Ability to import/export Bacula database entities
-Item 6: Ability to defer Batch Insert to a later time
-Item 7: List InChanger flag when doing restore.
-Item 8: Deletion of disk Volumes when pruned
-Item 9: Implement Base jobs
-Item 10: Scheduling syntax that permits more flexibility and options
-Item 11: Reduction of communications bandwidth for a backup
-Item 12: Bacula Dir, FD and SD to support proxies
-Item 13: Message mailing based on backup types
-Item 14: Ability to reconnect a disconnected comm line
-Item 15: Include timestamp of job launch in "stat clients" output
-Item 16: Add an override in Schedule for Pools based on backup types
-Item 17: Automatic promotion of backup levels based on backup size
-Item 18: Allow inclusion/exclusion of files in a fileset by creation/mod times
-Item 19: Archival (removal) of User Files to Tape
-Item 20: Include all conf files in specified directory
-Item 21: Implement an interface between Bacula and Amazon's S3.
-Item 22: Enable/disable compression depending on storage device (disk/tape)
-Item 23: Backup and Restore of Windows Encrypted Files using Win raw encryption
-Item 24: Data encryption on storage daemon
-Item 25: "Maximum Concurrent Jobs" for drives when used with changer device
-Item 26: Add MaxVolumeSize/MaxVolumeBytes statement to Storage resource
-Item 27: Start spooling even when waiting on tape
-Item 28: Enable persistent naming/number of SQL queries
-Item 29: Implementation of running Job speed limit.
-Item 30: Restore from volumes on multiple storage daemons
-Item 31: 'restore' menu: enter a JobId, automatically select dependents
-Item 32: Possibilty to schedule Jobs on last Friday of the month
-Item 33: Add Minumum Spool Size directive
-Item 34:*Cause daemons to use a specific IP address to source communications
-Item 35: Add ability to Verify any specified Job.
-Item 36: Automatic disabling of devices
-Item 37: An option to operate on all pools with update vol parameters
-Item 38: Implement Storage daemon compression
-Item 39: Improve Bacula's tape and drive usage and cleaning management
-Item 40: Multiple threads in file daemon for the same job
-
-
-Item 1: Allow FD to initiate a backup
-Origin: Frank Volf (frank at deze dot org)
-Date: 17 November 2005
-Status:
-
-What: Provide some means, possibly by a restricted console that
- allows a FD to initiate a backup, and that uses the connection
- established by the FD to the Director for the backup so that
- a Director that is firewalled can do the backup.
-Why: Makes backup of laptops much easier.
-Item 2: Ability to restart failed jobs
+Item 1: Ability to restart failed jobs
+Item 2: 'restore' menu: enter a JobId, automatically select dependents
+Item 3: Scheduling syntax that permits more flexibility and options
+Item 4: Data encryption on storage daemon
+Item 5: Deletion of disk Volumes when pruned
+Item 6: Implement Base jobs
+Item 7: Add ability to Verify any specified Job.
+Item 8: Improve Bacula's tape and drive usage and cleaning management
+Item 9: Allow FD to initiate a backup
+Item 10: Restore from volumes on multiple storage daemons
+Item 11: Implement Storage daemon compression
+Item 12: Reduction of communications bandwidth for a backup
+Item 13: Ability to reconnect a disconnected comm line
+Item 14: Start spooling even when waiting on tape
+Item 15: Enable/disable compression depending on storage device (disk/tape)
+Item 16: Include all conf files in specified directory
+Item 17: Multiple threads in file daemon for the same job
+Item 18: Possibilty to schedule Jobs on last Friday of the month
+Item 19: Include timestamp of job launch in "stat clients" output
+Item 20: Cause daemons to use a specific IP address to source communications
+Item 21: Message mailing based on backup types
+Item 22: Ability to import/export Bacula database entities
+Item 23: "Maximum Concurrent Jobs" for drives when used with changer device
+Item 24: Implementation of running Job speed limit.
+Item 25: Add an override in Schedule for Pools based on backup types
+Item 26: Automatic promotion of backup levels based on backup size
+Item 27: Allow inclusion/exclusion of files in a fileset by creation/mod times
+Item 28: Archival (removal) of User Files to Tape
+Item 29: An option to operate on all pools with update vol parameters
+Item 30: Automatic disabling of devices
+Item 31: List InChanger flag when doing restore.
+Item 32: Ability to defer Batch Insert to a later time
+Item 33: Add MaxVolumeSize/MaxVolumeBytes statement to Storage resource
+Item 34: Enable persistent naming/number of SQL queries
+Item 35: Port bat to Win32
+Item 36: Bacula Dir, FD and SD to support proxies
+Item 37: Add Minumum Spool Size directive
+Item 38: Backup and Restore of Windows Encrypted Files using Win raw encryption
+Item 39: Implement an interface between Bacula and Amazon's S3.
+Item 40: Convert Bacula existing tray monitor on Windows to a stand alone program
+
+Item 1: Ability to restart failed jobs
Date: 26 April 2009
Origin: Kern/Eric
Status:
Notes: Requires Accurate to restart correctly. Must completed have a minimum
volume of data or files stored on Volume before enabling.
-Item 3: Port bat to Win32
- Date: 26 April 2009
- Origin: Kern/Eric
- Status:
-
- What: Make bat run on Win32/64.
-
- Why: To have GUI on Windows
-
- Notes:
-
-Item 4: Convert Bacula existing tray monitor on Windows to a stand alone program
- Date: 26 April 2009
- Origin: Kern/Eric
- Status:
-
- What: Separate Win32 tray monitor to be a separate program.
-
- Why: Vista does not allow SYSTEM services to interact with the
- desktop, so the current tray monitor does not work on Vista
- machines.
-
- Notes: Requires communicating with the FD via the network (simulate
- a console connection).
-
-
-
-Item 5: Ability to import/export Bacula database entities
- Date: 26 April 2009
- Origin: Eric
- Status:
-
- What: Create a Bacula ASCII SQL database independent format that permits
- importing and exporting database catalog Job entities.
-
- Why: For achival, database clustering, tranfer to other databases
- of any SQL engine.
-
- Notes: Job selection should be by Job, time, Volume, Client, Pool and possibly
- other criteria.
-
-
-Item 6: Ability to defer Batch Insert to a later time
- Date: 26 April 2009
- Origin: Eric
- Status:
-
- What: Instead of doing a Job Batch Insert at the end of the Job
- which might create resource contention with lots of Job,
- defer the insert to a later time.
-
- Why: Permits to focus on getting the data on the Volume and
- putting the metadata into the Catalog outside the backup
- window.
-
- Notes: Will use the proposed Bacula ASCII database import/export
- format (i.e. dependent on the import/export entities project).
-
-
-Item 7: 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 8: Deletion of disk Volumes when pruned
- Date: Nov 25, 2005
- Origin: Ross Boylan <RossBoylan at stanfordalumni dot org> (edited
- by Kern)
- Status:
-
- What: Provide a way for Bacula to automatically remove Volumes
- from the filesystem, or optionally to truncate them.
- Obviously, the Volume must be pruned prior removal.
-
- Why: This would allow users more control over their Volumes and
- prevent disk based volumes from consuming too much space.
-
- Notes: The following two directives might do the trick:
-
- Volume Data Retention = <time period>
- Remove Volume After = <time period>
-
- The migration project should also remove a Volume that is
- migrated. This might also work for tape Volumes.
-
- Notes: (Kern). The data fields to control this have been added
- to the new 3.0.0 database table structure.
+Item 2: 'restore' menu: enter a JobId, automatically select dependents
+Origin: Graham Keeling (graham@equiinet.com)
+Date: 13 March 2009
+Status: Proposing
-Item 9: Implement Base jobs
- Date: 28 October 2005
- Origin: Kern
- Status:
-
- What: A base job is sort of like a Full save except that you
- will want the FileSet to contain only files that are
- unlikely to change in the future (i.e. a snapshot of
- most of your system after installing it). After the
- base job has been run, when you are doing a Full save,
- you specify one or more Base jobs to be used. All
- files that have been backed up in the Base job/jobs but
- not modified will then be excluded from the backup.
- During a restore, the Base jobs will be automatically
- pulled in where necessary.
+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: This is something none of the competition does, as far as
- we know (except perhaps BackupPC, which is a Perl program that
- saves to disk only). It is big win for the user, it
- makes Bacula stand out as offering a unique
- optimization that immediately saves time and money.
- Basically, imagine that you have 100 nearly identical
- Windows or Linux machine containing the OS and user
- files. Now for the OS part, a Base job will be backed
- up once, and rather than making 100 copies of the OS,
- there will be only one. If one or more of the systems
- have some files updated, no problem, they will be
- automatically restored.
+ 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: Huge savings in tape usage even for a single machine.
- Will require more resources because the DIR must send
- FD a list of files/attribs, and the FD must search the
- list and compare it for each file to be saved.
+ 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 10: Scheduling syntax that permits more flexibility and options
+Item 3: Scheduling syntax that permits more flexibility and options
Date: 15 December 2006
Origin: Gregory Brauer (greg at wildbrain dot com) and
Florian Schnabel <florian.schnabel at docufy dot de>
Notes: Kern: I have merged the previously separate project of skipping
jobs (via Schedule syntax) into this.
-Item 11: Reduction of communications bandwidth for a backup
- Date: 14 October 2008
- Origin: Robin O'Leary (Equiinet)
- Status:
-
- What: Using rdiff techniques, Bacula could significantly reduce
- the network data transfer volume to do a backup.
- Why: Faster backup across the Internet
+Item 4: Data encryption on storage daemon
+ Origin: Tobias Barth <tobias.barth at web-arts.com>
+ Date: 04 February 2009
+ Status: new
- Notes: This requires retaining certain data on the client during a Full
- backup that will speed up subsequent backups.
-
+ What: The storage demon should be able to do the data encryption that can currently be done by the file daemon.
-Item 12: 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
+ 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.
-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.
+ 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
-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.
+Item 5: Deletion of disk Volumes when pruned
+ Date: Nov 25, 2005
+ Origin: Ross Boylan <RossBoylan at stanfordalumni dot org> (edited
+ by Kern)
+ Status:
-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.
+ What: Provide a way for Bacula to automatically remove Volumes
+ from the filesystem, or optionally to truncate them.
+ Obviously, the Volume must be pruned prior removal.
- 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.
+ Why: This would allow users more control over their Volumes and
+ prevent disk based volumes from consuming too much space.
+ Notes: The following two directives might do the trick:
-Item 13: Message mailing based on backup types
- Origin: Evan Kaufman <evan.kaufman@gmail.com>
- Date: January 6, 2006
- Status:
+ Volume Data Retention = <time period>
+ Remove Volume After = <time period>
- 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).
+ The migration project should also remove a Volume that is
+ migrated. This might also work for tape Volumes.
- 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: (Kern). The data fields to control this have been added
+ to the new 3.0.0 database table structure.
- 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,
+Item 6: Implement Base jobs
+ Date: 28 October 2005
+ Origin: Kern
+ Status:
+
+ What: A base job is sort of like a Full save except that you
+ will want the FileSet to contain only files that are
+ unlikely to change in the future (i.e. a snapshot of
+ most of your system after installing it). After the
+ base job has been run, when you are doing a Full save,
+ you specify one or more Base jobs to be used. All
+ files that have been backed up in the Base job/jobs but
+ not modified will then be excluded from the backup.
+ During a restore, the Base jobs will be automatically
+ pulled in where necessary.
+
+ Why: This is something none of the competition does, as far as
+ we know (except perhaps BackupPC, which is a Perl program that
+ saves to disk only). It is big win for the user, it
+ makes Bacula stand out as offering a unique
+ optimization that immediately saves time and money.
+ Basically, imagine that you have 100 nearly identical
+ Windows or Linux machine containing the OS and user
+ files. Now for the OS part, a Base job will be backed
+ up once, and rather than making 100 copies of the OS,
+ there will be only one. If one or more of the systems
+ have some files updated, no problem, they will be
+ automatically restored.
+
+ Notes: Huge savings in tape usage even for a single machine.
+ Will require more resources because the DIR must send
+ FD a list of files/attribs, and the FD must search the
+ list and compare it for each file to be saved.
+
+
+Item 7: Add ability to Verify any specified Job.
+Date: 17 January 2008
+Origin: portrix.net Hamburg, Germany.
+Contact: Christian Sabelmann
+Status: 70% of the required Code is part of the Verify function since v. 2.x
+
+ What:
+ The ability to tell Bacula which Job should verify instead of
+ automatically verify just the last one.
+
+ Why:
+ It is sad that such a powerfull feature like Verify Jobs
+ (VolumeToCatalog) is restricted to be used only with the last backup Job
+ of a client. Actual users who have to do daily Backups are forced to
+ also do daily Verify Jobs in order to take advantage of this useful
+ feature. This Daily Verify after Backup conduct is not always desired
+ and Verify Jobs have to be sometimes scheduled. (Not necessarily
+ scheduled in Bacula). With this feature Admins can verify Jobs once a
+ Week or less per month, selecting the Jobs they want to verify. This
+ feature is also not to difficult to implement taking in account older bug
+ reports about this feature and the selection of the Job to be verified.
+
+ Notes: For the verify Job, the user could select the Job to be verified
+ from a List of the latest Jobs of a client. It would also be possible to
+ verify a certain volume. All of these would naturaly apply only for
+ Jobs whose file information are still in the catalog.
+
+
+Item 8: 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 9: Allow FD to initiate a backup
+Origin: Frank Volf (frank at deze dot org)
+Date: 17 November 2005
+Status:
+
+What: Provide some means, possibly by a restricted console that
+ allows a FD to initiate a backup, and that uses the connection
+ established by the FD to the Director for the backup so that
+ a Director that is firewalled can do the backup.
+Why: Makes backup of laptops much easier.
+
+
+Item 10: 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 11: Implement Storage daemon compression
+ Date: 18 December 2006
+ Origin: Vadim A. Umanski , e-mail umanski@ext.ru
+ Status:
+ What: The ability to compress backup data on the SD receiving data
+ instead of doing that on client sending data.
+ Why: The need is practical. I've got some machines that can send
+ data to the network 4 or 5 times faster than compressing
+ them (I've measured that). They're using fast enough SCSI/FC
+ disk subsystems but rather slow CPUs (ex. UltraSPARC II).
+ And the backup server has got a quite fast CPUs (ex. Dual P4
+ Xeons) and quite a low load. When you have 20, 50 or 100 GB
+ of raw data - running a job 4 to 5 times faster - that
+ really matters. On the other hand, the data can be
+ compressed 50% or better - so losing twice more space for
+ disk backup is not good at all. And the network is all mine
+ (I have a dedicated management/provisioning network) and I
+ can get as high bandwidth as I need - 100Mbps, 1000Mbps...
+ That's why the server-side compression feature is needed!
+ Notes:
+
+
+Item 12: Reduction of communications bandwidth for a backup
+ Date: 14 October 2008
+ Origin: Robin O'Leary (Equiinet)
+ Status:
+
+ What: Using rdiff techniques, Bacula could significantly reduce
+ the network data transfer volume to do a backup.
+
+ Why: Faster backup across the Internet
+
+ Notes: This requires retaining certain data on the client during a Full
+ backup that will speed up subsequent backups.
+
+
+Item 13: Ability to reconnect a disconnected comm line
+ Date: 26 April 2009
+ Origin: Kern/Eric
+ Status:
+
+ What: Often jobs fail because of a communications line drop. In that
+ case, Bacula should be able to reconnect to the other daemon and
+ resume the job.
+
+ Why: Avoids backuping data already saved.
+
+ Notes: *Very* complicated from a design point of view because of authenication.
+
+Item 14: 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 15: 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 16: Include all conf files in specified directory
+Date: 18 October 2008
+Origin: Database, Lda. Maputo, Mozambique
+Contact:Cameron Smith / cameron.ord@database.co.mz
+Status: New request
+
+What: A directive something like "IncludeConf = /etc/bacula/subconfs" Every
+ time Bacula Director restarts or reloads, it will walk the given
+ directory (non-recursively) and include the contents of any files
+ therein, as though they were appended to bacula-dir.conf
+
+Why: Permits simplified and safer configuration for larger installations with
+ many client PCs. Currently, through judicious use of JobDefs and
+ similar directives, it is possible to reduce the client-specific part of
+ a configuration to a minimum. The client-specific directives can be
+ prepared according to a standard template and dropped into a known
+ directory. However it is still necessary to add a line to the "master"
+ (bacula-dir.conf) referencing each new file. This exposes the master to
+ unnecessary risk of accidental mistakes and makes automation of adding
+ new client-confs, more difficult (it is easier to automate dropping a
+ file into a dir, than rewriting an existing file). Ken has previously
+ made a convincing argument for NOT including Bacula's core configuration
+ in an RDBMS, but I believe that the present request is a reasonable
+ extension to the current "flat-file-based" configuration philosophy.
+
+Notes: There is NO need for any special syntax to these files. They should
+ contain standard directives which are simply "inlined" to the parent
+ file as already happens when you explicitly reference an external file.
+
+Notes: (kes) this can already be done with scripting
+ From: John Jorgensen <jorgnsn@lcd.uregina.ca>
+ The bacula-dir.conf at our site contains these lines:
+
+ #
+ # Include subfiles associated with configuration of clients.
+ # They define the bulk of the Clients, Jobs, and FileSets.
+ #
+ @|"sh -c 'for f in /etc/bacula/clientdefs/*.conf ; do echo @${f} ; done'"
+
+ and when we get a new client, we just put its configuration into
+ a new file called something like:
+
+ /etc/bacula/clientdefs/clientname.conf
+
+
+Item 17: 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 18: Possibilty to schedule Jobs on last Friday of the month
+Origin: Carsten Menke <bootsy52 at gmx dot net>
+Date: 02 March 2008
+Status:
+
+ What: Currently if you want to run your monthly Backups on the last
+ Friday of each month this is only possible with workarounds (e.g
+ scripting) (As some months got 4 Fridays and some got 5 Fridays)
+ The same is true if you plan to run your yearly Backups on the
+ last Friday of the year. It would be nice to have the ability to
+ use the builtin scheduler for this.
+
+ Why: In many companies the last working day of the week is Friday (or
+ Saturday), so to get the most data of the month onto the monthly
+ tape, the employees are advised to insert the tape for the
+ monthly backups on the last friday of the month.
+
+ Notes: To give this a complete functionality it would be nice if the
+ "first" and "last" Keywords could be implemented in the
+ scheduler, so it is also possible to run monthy backups at the
+ first friday of the month and many things more. So if the syntax
+ would expand to this {first|last} {Month|Week|Day|Mo-Fri} of the
+ {Year|Month|Week} you would be able to run really flexible jobs.
+
+ To got a certain Job run on the last Friday of the Month for example one could
+ then write
+
+ Run = pool=Monthly last Fri of the Month at 23:50
+
+ ## Yearly Backup
+
+ Run = pool=Yearly last Fri of the Year at 23:50
+
+ ## Certain Jobs the last Week of a Month
+
+ Run = pool=LastWeek last Week of the Month at 23:50
+
+ ## Monthly Backup on the last day of the month
+
+ Run = pool=Monthly last Day of the Month at 23:50
+
+
+Item 19: Include timestamp of job launch in "stat clients" output
+ Origin: Mark Bergman <mark.bergman@uphs.upenn.edu>
+ Date: Tue Aug 22 17:13:39 EDT 2006
+ Status:
+
+ What: The "stat clients" command doesn't include any detail on when
+ the active backup jobs were launched.
+
+ Why: Including the timestamp would make it much easier to decide whether
+ a job is running properly.
+
+ Notes: It may be helpful to have the output from "stat clients" formatted
+ more like that from "stat dir" (and other commands), in a column
+ format. The per-client information that's currently shown (level,
+ client name, JobId, Volume, pool, device, Files, etc.) is good, but
+ somewhat hard to parse (both programmatically and visually),
+ particularly when there are many active clients.
+
+
+Item 20: Cause daemons to use a specific IP address to source communications
+ Origin: Bill Moran <wmoran@collaborativefusion.com>
+ Date: 18 Dec 2006
+ Status: Done
+ What: Cause Bacula daemons (dir, fd, sd) to always use the ip address
+ specified in the [DIR|DF|SD]Addr directive as the source IP
+ for initiating communication.
+ Why: On complex networks, as well as extremely secure networks, it's
+ not unusual to have multiple possible routes through the network.
+ Often, each of these routes is secured by different policies
+ (effectively, firewalls allow or deny different traffic depending
+ on the source address)
+ Unfortunately, it can sometimes be difficult or impossible to
+ represent this in a system routing table, as the result is
+ excessive subnetting that quickly exhausts available IP space.
+ The best available workaround is to provide multiple IPs to
+ a single machine that are all on the same subnet. In order
+ for this to work properly, applications must support the ability
+ to bind outgoing connections to a specified address, otherwise
+ the operating system will always choose the first IP that
+ matches the required route.
+ Notes: Many other programs support this. For example, the following
+ can be configured in BIND:
+ query-source address 10.0.0.1;
+ transfer-source 10.0.0.2;
+ Which means queries from this server will always come from
+ 10.0.0.1 and zone transfers will always originate from
+ 10.0.0.2.
+
+
+Item 21: Message mailing based on backup types
+ Origin: Evan Kaufman <evan.kaufman@gmail.com>
+ Date: January 6, 2006
+ Status:
+
+ What: In the "Messages" resource definitions, allowing messages
+ to be mailed based on the type (backup, restore, etc.) and level
+ (full, differential, etc) of job that created the originating
+ message(s).
+
+ Why: It would, for example, allow someone's boss to be emailed
+ automatically only when a Full Backup job runs, so he can
+ retrieve the tapes for offsite storage, even if the IT dept.
+ doesn't (or can't) explicitly notify him. At the same time, his
+ mailbox wouldnt be filled by notifications of Verifies, Restores,
+ or Incremental/Differential Backups (which would likely be kept
+ onsite).
+
+ Notes: One way this could be done is through additional message types, for example:
+
+ Messages {
+ # email the boss only on full system backups
+ Mail = boss@mycompany.com = full, !incremental, !differential, !restore,
!verify, !admin
# email us only when something breaks
MailOnError = itdept@mycompany.com = all
}
- Notes: Kern: This should be rather trivial to implement.
+ Notes: Kern: This should be rather trivial to implement.
+
+
+Item 22: Ability to import/export Bacula database entities
+ Date: 26 April 2009
+ Origin: Eric
+ Status:
+
+ What: Create a Bacula ASCII SQL database independent format that permits
+ importing and exporting database catalog Job entities.
-Item 14: Ability to reconnect a disconnected comm line
- Date: 26 April 2009
- Origin: Kern/Eric
- Status:
+ Why: For achival, database clustering, tranfer to other databases
+ of any SQL engine.
- What: Often jobs fail because of a communications line drop. In that
- case, Bacula should be able to reconnect to the other daemon and
- resume the job.
+ Notes: Job selection should be by Job, time, Volume, Client, Pool and possibly
+ other criteria.
- Why: Avoids backuping data already saved.
- Notes: *Very* complicated from a design point of view because of authenication.
+Item 23: "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
-Item 15: 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:
+ 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.
- What: The "stat clients" command doesn't include any detail on when
- the active backup jobs were launched.
+ 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/
- Why: Including the timestamp would make it much easier to decide whether
- a job is running properly.
+ In addition I'm not sure if this would be the same as respecting the
+ drive's "Maximum Concurrent Jobs" setting.
- Notes: It may be helpful to have the output from "stat clients" formatted
- more like that from "stat dir" (and other commands), in a column
- format. The per-client information that's currently shown (level,
- client name, JobId, Volume, pool, device, Files, etc.) is good, but
- somewhat hard to parse (both programmatically and visually),
- particularly when there are many active clients.
+ 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 24: 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 16: Add an override in Schedule for Pools based on backup types
+Item 25: Add an override in Schedule for Pools based on backup types
Date: 19 Jan 2005
Origin: Chad Slater <chad.slater@clickfox.com>
Status:
backups, then the Full job would use the proper Storage device, which
has more capacity (i.e. a 8TB tape library.
-Item 17: Automatic promotion of backup levels based on backup size
+
+Item 26: Automatic promotion of backup levels based on backup size
Date: 19 January 2006
Origin: Adam Thornton <athornton@sinenomine.net>
Status:
programs can do and we can't (at least, the one cool thing I know
of).
-Item 18: Allow inclusion/exclusion of files in a fileset by creation/mod times
+
+Item 27: Allow inclusion/exclusion of files in a fileset by creation/mod times
Origin: Evan Kaufman <evan.kaufman@gmail.com>
Date: January 11, 2006
Status:
or 'since'.
-
-Item 19: Archival (removal) of User Files to Tape
+Item 28: Archival (removal) of User Files to Tape
Date: Nov. 24/2005
Origin: Ray Pengelly [ray at biomed dot queensu dot ca
Status:
storage pool gets full) data is migrated to Tape.
-Item 20: Include all conf files in specified directory
-Date: 18 October 2008
-Origin: Database, Lda. Maputo, Mozambique
-Contact:Cameron Smith / cameron.ord@database.co.mz
-Status: New request
-
-What: A directive something like "IncludeConf = /etc/bacula/subconfs" Every
- time Bacula Director restarts or reloads, it will walk the given
- directory (non-recursively) and include the contents of any files
- therein, as though they were appended to bacula-dir.conf
-
-Why: Permits simplified and safer configuration for larger installations with
- many client PCs. Currently, through judicious use of JobDefs and
- similar directives, it is possible to reduce the client-specific part of
- a configuration to a minimum. The client-specific directives can be
- prepared according to a standard template and dropped into a known
- directory. However it is still necessary to add a line to the "master"
- (bacula-dir.conf) referencing each new file. This exposes the master to
- unnecessary risk of accidental mistakes and makes automation of adding
- new client-confs, more difficult (it is easier to automate dropping a
- file into a dir, than rewriting an existing file). Ken has previously
- made a convincing argument for NOT including Bacula's core configuration
- in an RDBMS, but I believe that the present request is a reasonable
- extension to the current "flat-file-based" configuration philosophy.
-
-Notes: There is NO need for any special syntax to these files. They should
- contain standard directives which are simply "inlined" to the parent
- file as already happens when you explicitly reference an external file.
-
-Notes: (kes) this can already be done with scripting
- From: John Jorgensen <jorgnsn@lcd.uregina.ca>
- The bacula-dir.conf at our site contains these lines:
-
- #
- # Include subfiles associated with configuration of clients.
- # They define the bulk of the Clients, Jobs, and FileSets.
- #
- @|"sh -c 'for f in /etc/bacula/clientdefs/*.conf ; do echo @${f} ; done'"
-
- and when we get a new client, we just put its configuration into
- a new file called something like:
-
- /etc/bacula/clientdefs/clientname.conf
-
-
-
-
-Item 21: 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 22: 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.
-
+Item 29: An option to operate on all pools with update vol parameters
+ Origin: Dmitriy Pinchukov <absh@bossdev.kiev.ua>
+ Date: 16 August 2006
+ Status: Patch made by Nigel Stepp
- 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.
+ What: When I do update -> Volume parameters -> All Volumes
+ from Pool, then I have to select pools one by one. I'd like
+ console to have an option like "0: All Pools" in the list of
+ defined pools.
- 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.
+ Why: I have many pools and therefore unhappy with manually
+ updating each of them using update -> Volume parameters -> All
+ Volumes from Pool -> pool #.
-Item 31: Backup and Restore of Windows Encrypted Files using Win raw encryption
- Origin: Michael Mohr, SAG Mohr.External@infineon.com
- Date: 22 February 2008
- Origin: Alex Ehrlich (Alex.Ehrlich-at-mail.ee)
- Date: 05 August 2008
+Item 30: Automatic disabling of devices
+ Date: 2005-11-11
+ Origin: Peter Eriksson <peter at ifm.liu dot se>
Status:
- What: Make it possible to backup and restore Encypted Files from and to
- Windows systems without the need to decrypt it by using the raw
- encryption functions API (see:
- http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa363783.aspx)
- that is provided for that reason by Microsoft.
- If a file ist encrypted could be examined by evaluating the
- FILE_ATTRIBUTE_ENCRYTED flag of the GetFileAttributes
- function.
- For each file backed up or restored by FD on Windows, check if
- the file is encrypted; if so then use OpenEncryptedFileRaw,
- ReadEncryptedFileRaw, WriteEncryptedFileRaw,
- CloseEncryptedFileRaw instead of BackupRead and BackupWrite
- API calls.
-
- Why: Without the usage of this interface the fd-daemon running
- under the system account can't read encypted Files because
- the key needed for the decrytion is missed by them. As a result
- actually encrypted files are not backed up
- by bacula and also no error is shown while missing these files.
-
- Notes: Using xxxEncryptedFileRaw API would allow to backup and
- restore EFS-encrypted files without decrypting their data.
- Note that such files cannot be restored "portably" (at least,
- easily) but they would be restoreable to a different (or
- reinstalled) Win32 machine; the restore would require setup
- of a EFS recovery agent in advance, of course, and this shall
- be clearly reflected in the documentation, but this is the
- normal Windows SysAdmin's business.
- When "portable" backup is requested the EFS-encrypted files
- shall be clearly reported as errors.
- See MSDN on the "Backup and Restore of Encrypted Files" topic:
- http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa363783.aspx
- Maybe the EFS support requires a new flag in the database for
- each file, too?
- Unfortunately, the implementation is not as straightforward as
- 1-to-1 replacement of BackupRead with ReadEncryptedFileRaw,
- requiring some FD code rewrite to work with
- encrypted-file-related callback functions.
+ What: After a configurable amount of fatal errors with a tape drive
+ Bacula should automatically disable further use of a certain
+ tape drive. There should also be "disable"/"enable" commands in
+ the "bconsole" tool.
-Item 24: Data encryption on storage daemon
- Origin: Tobias Barth <tobias.barth at web-arts.com>
- Date: 04 February 2009
- Status: new
+ Why: On a multi-drive jukebox there is a possibility of tape drives
+ going bad during large backups (needing a cleaning tape run,
+ tapes getting stuck). It would be advantageous if Bacula would
+ automatically disable further use of a problematic tape drive
+ after a configurable amount of errors has occurred.
- What: The storage demon should be able to do the data encryption that can currently be done by the file daemon.
+ An example: I have a multi-drive jukebox (6 drives, 380+ slots)
+ where tapes occasionally get stuck inside the drive. Bacula will
+ notice that the "mtx-changer" command will fail and then fail
+ any backup jobs trying to use that drive. However, it will still
+ keep on trying to run new jobs using that drive and fail -
+ forever, and thus failing lots and lots of jobs... Since we have
+ many drives Bacula could have just automatically disabled
+ further use of that drive and used one of the other ones
+ instead.
- 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 31: 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.
-Item 25: "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: This would help getting large restores through minimizing the
+ time spent waiting for operator to drop by and change tapes in the library.
- 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: [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.
- 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.
+Item 32: Ability to defer Batch Insert to a later time
+ Date: 26 April 2009
+ Origin: Eric
+ Status:
- Example:
+ What: Instead of doing a Job Batch Insert at the end of the Job
+ which might create resource contention with lots of Job,
+ defer the insert to a later time.
- 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]
+ Why: Permits to focus on getting the data on the Volume and
+ putting the metadata into the Catalog outside the backup
+ window.
+
+ Notes: Will use the proposed Bacula ASCII database import/export
+ format (i.e. dependent on the import/export entities project).
- The "Maximum Concurrent Jobs = 1" directive in the drive's section is ignored.
-Item 26: Add MaxVolumeSize/MaxVolumeBytes statement to Storage resource
+Item 33: Add MaxVolumeSize/MaxVolumeBytes statement to Storage resource
Origin: Bastian Friedrich <bastian.friedrich@collax.com>
Date: 2008-07-09
Status: -
available in Pool resources could be used in Storage resources too
quite well.
-Item 27: 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 28: Enable persistent naming/number of SQL queries
+Item 34: Enable persistent naming/number of SQL queries
Date: 24 Jan, 2007
Origin: Mark Bergman
Status:
Alternatively, queries could be called by keyword (tag), rather
than by number.
-Item 29: 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 30: 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 31: '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 32: Possibilty to schedule Jobs on last Friday of the month
-Origin: Carsten Menke <bootsy52 at gmx dot net>
-Date: 02 March 2008
-Status:
+Item 35: Port bat to Win32
+ Date: 26 April 2009
+ Origin: Kern/Eric
+ 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.
+ What: Make bat run on Win32/64.
- 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.
+ Why: To have GUI on Windows
- 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.
+ Notes:
- 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
+Item 36: 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
- ## Yearly Backup
+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.
- Run = pool=Yearly last Fri of the Year at 23:50
+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.
- ## Certain Jobs the last Week of a Month
+ 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.
- Run = pool=LastWeek last Week of the Month at 23:50
+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.
- ## Monthly Backup on the last day of the month
+ 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.
- Run = pool=Monthly last Day of the Month at 23:50
-Item 33: Add Minumum Spool Size directive
+Item 37: Add Minumum Spool Size directive
Date: 20 March 2008
Origin: Frank Sweetser <fs@wpi.edu>
gigabytes) it can easily produce multi-megabyte report emails!
-Item 34: Cause daemons to use a specific IP address to source communications
- Origin: Bill Moran <wmoran@collaborativefusion.com>
- Date: 18 Dec 2006
- Status: Done
- What: Cause Bacula daemons (dir, fd, sd) to always use the ip address
- specified in the [DIR|DF|SD]Addr directive as the source IP
- for initiating communication.
- Why: On complex networks, as well as extremely secure networks, it's
- not unusual to have multiple possible routes through the network.
- Often, each of these routes is secured by different policies
- (effectively, firewalls allow or deny different traffic depending
- on the source address)
- Unfortunately, it can sometimes be difficult or impossible to
- represent this in a system routing table, as the result is
- excessive subnetting that quickly exhausts available IP space.
- The best available workaround is to provide multiple IPs to
- a single machine that are all on the same subnet. In order
- for this to work properly, applications must support the ability
- to bind outgoing connections to a specified address, otherwise
- the operating system will always choose the first IP that
- matches the required route.
- Notes: Many other programs support this. For example, the following
- can be configured in BIND:
- query-source address 10.0.0.1;
- transfer-source 10.0.0.2;
- Which means queries from this server will always come from
- 10.0.0.1 and zone transfers will always originate from
- 10.0.0.2.
-
-
-
-Item 35: Add ability to Verify any specified Job.
-Date: 17 January 2008
-Origin: portrix.net Hamburg, Germany.
-Contact: Christian Sabelmann
-Status: 70% of the required Code is part of the Verify function since v. 2.x
-
- What:
- The ability to tell Bacula which Job should verify instead of
- automatically verify just the last one.
-
- Why:
- It is sad that such a powerfull feature like Verify Jobs
- (VolumeToCatalog) is restricted to be used only with the last backup Job
- of a client. Actual users who have to do daily Backups are forced to
- also do daily Verify Jobs in order to take advantage of this useful
- feature. This Daily Verify after Backup conduct is not always desired
- and Verify Jobs have to be sometimes scheduled. (Not necessarily
- scheduled in Bacula). With this feature Admins can verify Jobs once a
- Week or less per month, selecting the Jobs they want to verify. This
- feature is also not to difficult to implement taking in account older bug
- reports about this feature and the selection of the Job to be verified.
-
- Notes: For the verify Job, the user could select the Job to be verified
- from a List of the latest Jobs of a client. It would also be possible to
- verify a certain volume. All of these would naturaly apply only for
- Jobs whose file information are still in the catalog.
-
-Item 36: Automatic disabling of devices
- Date: 2005-11-11
- Origin: Peter Eriksson <peter at ifm.liu dot se>
- Status:
-
- What: After a configurable amount of fatal errors with a tape drive
- Bacula should automatically disable further use of a certain
- tape drive. There should also be "disable"/"enable" commands in
- the "bconsole" tool.
-
- Why: On a multi-drive jukebox there is a possibility of tape drives
- going bad during large backups (needing a cleaning tape run,
- tapes getting stuck). It would be advantageous if Bacula would
- automatically disable further use of a problematic tape drive
- after a configurable amount of errors has occurred.
-
- An example: I have a multi-drive jukebox (6 drives, 380+ slots)
- where tapes occasionally get stuck inside the drive. Bacula will
- notice that the "mtx-changer" command will fail and then fail
- any backup jobs trying to use that drive. However, it will still
- keep on trying to run new jobs using that drive and fail -
- forever, and thus failing lots and lots of jobs... Since we have
- many drives Bacula could have just automatically disabled
- further use of that drive and used one of the other ones
- instead.
-
-Item 37: An option to operate on all pools with update vol parameters
- Origin: Dmitriy Pinchukov <absh@bossdev.kiev.ua>
- Date: 16 August 2006
- Status: Patch made by Nigel Stepp
-
- What: When I do update -> Volume parameters -> All Volumes
- from Pool, then I have to select pools one by one. I'd like
- console to have an option like "0: All Pools" in the list of
- defined pools.
-
- Why: I have many pools and therefore unhappy with manually
- updating each of them using update -> Volume parameters -> All
- Volumes from Pool -> pool #.
-
-Item 38: Implement Storage daemon compression
- Date: 18 December 2006
- Origin: Vadim A. Umanski , e-mail umanski@ext.ru
- Status:
- What: The ability to compress backup data on the SD receiving data
- instead of doing that on client sending data.
- Why: The need is practical. I've got some machines that can send
- data to the network 4 or 5 times faster than compressing
- them (I've measured that). They're using fast enough SCSI/FC
- disk subsystems but rather slow CPUs (ex. UltraSPARC II).
- And the backup server has got a quite fast CPUs (ex. Dual P4
- Xeons) and quite a low load. When you have 20, 50 or 100 GB
- of raw data - running a job 4 to 5 times faster - that
- really matters. On the other hand, the data can be
- compressed 50% or better - so losing twice more space for
- disk backup is not good at all. And the network is all mine
- (I have a dedicated management/provisioning network) and I
- can get as high bandwidth as I need - 100Mbps, 1000Mbps...
- That's why the server-side compression feature is needed!
- Notes:
-
-Item 39: 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>
+Item 38: Backup and Restore of Windows Encrypted Files using Win raw encryption
+ Origin: Michael Mohr, SAG Mohr.External@infineon.com
+ Date: 22 February 2008
+ Origin: Alex Ehrlich (Alex.Ehrlich-at-mail.ee)
+ Date: 05 August 2008
Status:
- What: Make Bacula manage tape life cycle information, tape reuse
- times and drive cleaning cycles.
+ What: Make it possible to backup and restore Encypted Files from and to
+ Windows systems without the need to decrypt it by using the raw
+ encryption functions API (see:
+ http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa363783.aspx)
+ that is provided for that reason by Microsoft.
+ If a file ist encrypted could be examined by evaluating the
+ FILE_ATTRIBUTE_ENCRYTED flag of the GetFileAttributes
+ function.
+ For each file backed up or restored by FD on Windows, check if
+ the file is encrypted; if so then use OpenEncryptedFileRaw,
+ ReadEncryptedFileRaw, WriteEncryptedFileRaw,
+ CloseEncryptedFileRaw instead of BackupRead and BackupWrite
+ API calls.
- Why: 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...)
+ 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: 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.
+ 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.
- 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.
+Item 39: 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.
- 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.
+ 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.
- 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 40: Multiple threads in file daemon for the same job
- Date: 27 November 2005
- Origin: Ove Risberg (Ove.Risberg at octocode dot com)
- Status:
+Item 40: Convert Bacula existing tray monitor on Windows to a stand alone program
+ Date: 26 April 2009
+ Origin: Kern/Eric
+ Status:
- What: I want the file daemon to start multiple threads for a backup
- job so the fastest possible backup can be made.
+ What: Separate Win32 tray monitor to be a separate program.
- The file daemon could parse the FileSet information and start
- one thread for each File entry located on a separate
- filesystem.
+ Why: Vista does not allow SYSTEM services to interact with the
+ desktop, so the current tray monitor does not work on Vista
+ machines.
- 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: Requires communicating with the FD via the network (simulate
+ a console connection).
- 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.
========= End items voted on May 2009 ==================
projects / bacula / bacula / commitdiff