Before asking for help, it could be useful to check against the email archive as often solution to your problem has been discussed or a patch has been released. Please see: http://news.gmane.org/search.php?match=bacula.

For support, send an email to bacula-users at lists.sourceforge.net, and if you are specific enough, some kind Bacula user will help you. The previous address was modified to prevent easy use by spammers. To use it, you must replace the at with an @ symbol. Due to the increasing volumes of spam on the list, you must be subscribed to it to be able to send and email to it. The link to your left entitled Email Lists provides links to where you can subscribe to each of the Bacula email lists. The users constantly monitor this list and will generally provide support. Please see Information Needed below for what to include in your support request. If you don't supply the necessary information, it will take longer to respond to your request, and users may be afraid to try to respond, if your request is too complicated or not well formulated.

I (Kern) get a number of "off-list" emails sent directly to me. Unfortunately, I am no longer able to provide direct user support. However, I do read all the email sent and occasionally provide a tip or two. If you do send email to me, please always copy the appropriate list, if you do not copy the list, I may not answer you, or I will answer by copying the list. If you really have something confidential, please clearly indicate it.

If you send a bug report or minor enhancement request because of a problem to the bacula-devel list, and you do not provide the information requested below, particularly the Bacula version, it is very frustrating for us, because it is quite often the case that your problem is version dependent, and likely already fixed. In such case, we will note the problem, but you will be unlikely to get a response, especially if we are busy, because it forces us to first ask you what version you are using (or other information), then deal with your response, thus doubling the time for us. If we do ask you for information, please include all the previous correspondence in each email, otherwise you force us to search the archives to find what you previously wrote. In short, if you want a response, please see "Information Needed" below.

If you are looking for live-support you might check out our irc-channel in the Freenode net, called #bacula.

Information Needed

• Your operating system
• The version of Bacula you are using
• A clear and concise description of the problem
• If you say "it crashes", "it doesn't work" or something similar, you should include some output from Bacula that shows this.
• If we respond to your email, and you answer, possibly supplying more information, please be sure to include the full text of previous emails so that we have all the information in one place.

• The kind of tape drive you have
• Have you run the btape "test" command?

• The database you are using: MySQL, PostgreSQL, SQLite, SQLite3
• The version of the database you are using

In addition, we will sometimes need a copy of your Bacula configuration files (especially bacula-dir.conf). If you think it is a configuration problem, please don't hesitate to send them if necessary.