-----Original Message-----
From: Beren Gamble [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Sent: Wednesday, December 21, 2005 08:34 AM
To: bacula-users@lists.sourceforge.net; [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Re: [Bacula-users] Puring/Pruning doesn't seem to be
happening.
Ok, maybe i'm not picking up a concept here in the
documentation.... I've now got my Volume Use Duration at 23h,
which works beautifully, marking the volume as Used.
However, I just tried to run a backup job. All of my volumes
in the pool were set as Used. (If VolUsen didn't mark them
used, I did, just for uniformities' sake) But bacula then
found a volume which had no jobs associated with it and
decided to recycle that one instead of the volume that was in
the drive (it definitely is past the 12 day retention period).
Bacula is an absolute dream with my autochanger because tapes
are only either marked as Full or, Purged or Recycle and I
never remove a half used tape. But on the single tape
systems, I still haven't figured out how to make bacula cope
with rotating half filled volumes.. or volumes where all
backups failed and no data was written.
Kern Sibbald <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> 17/12/2005 10:56:45 >>>
I think the basic problem that you have had, and it seems
like you don't quite
understand though you have found a solution, is that
recycling for Bacula requires applying two concepts: 1. the
time Bacula can write on a Volume, 2.
the time Bacula keeps that Volume before reusing it.
Most people come with the pre-conceived idea that there is
one "Recycle" time,
when in fact Bacula is significantly more sophisticated than that.
I've reviewed the chapter you refer to below, and if one
reads the full
chapter, all the information *is* there (at least IMO). I have added
additional text that stresses the above two concept points a
bit more as well as refer the user to the "Basic Volume
Management" chapter that gives a
detailed practical example of why you want to do. The
Recycle chapter is complete in itself assuming you want to
fill all your Volumes. If not, you
must also read the Basic Volume Management chapter as well.
Concerning your comment:
"Can someone please update the documentation here
http://www.bacula.org/rel-manual/Automatic_Volume_Recycling.html
with this information, that should hopefully forestall
this question
coming up so much."
I appreciate you pointing out where you got confused.
However, this is a free
software project, and I understand recycling, so I don't
easily see why some
people don't get the concepts or I would have already changed
the doc. As a
consequence it is much more helpful if you would submit a
suggested change to
the documentation that clarifies it for you.
I suggest you look at the documentation in:
http://www.bacula.org/dev-manual/Automatic_Volume_Recycling.html
It is usually much more up to date.
On Saturday 17 December 2005 07:00, Harondel J. Sibble wrote:
On 16 Dec 2005 at 1:25, Arno Lehmann wrote:
....so....how does one force it to do it?!
Apart from the configuration directives like "prune
oldest volume" (or
something) my advice is usually "you don't".
Philisophical disagreement, If I as the admin decide that,
that is an
appropriate thing to do, I should be able to do it in some
manner. Reminds
me of the unix philosophy, build a bunch of single purpose
tools that you
can chain together to do anything you want .....
Anyhow, on the how to do it, here's what I got from an
unrelated list where
I was ranting about the same problem the OP has as I had it
for months
also.
What you need is this
Volume Use Duration =
added to your pool definition where the duration is equal
to or less than
your Volume Retention setting, in my case the relevant lines are
Volume Retention = 6d
Volume Use Duration = 6d
With this setup, Bacula FINALLY works like I expect and how
pretty much any
other backup software I've used on Windows or Unix works. It will
overwrite the tape in the drive, assuming 6 days has
passed, it marks the
tape as used and then recycles it, however it only does that at the
beginning of the next job, so the recycling happens at the
start of the
current job. Can someone please update the documentation here
http://www.bacula.org/rel-manual/Automatic_Volume_Recycling.html
with this information, that should hopefully forestall this
question coming
up so much.
From the messages on tonights job
16-Dec 21:30 fileserver-dir: Start Backup JobId 70,
Job=Company-Fileserver_Full_Back 16-Dec 21:30
fileserver-dir: Recycled
current volume "Friday3"
16-Dec 21:30 fileserver-sd: Recycled volume "Friday3" on
device "DDS-4"
(/dev/ns
This is the first week since the beginning of the year
where I've not had
to manually purge the tapes each day.
Think: if the tape goes full after 3 jobs, and I have 4
each night, my
last job will not be done.
Or, in other words, you need enough space available.
Yes, that makes perfect sense.
No, this is,in my opinion, the best way to handle backups: Avoid
overwriting valid data whenever possible.
If I setup a rotation, I should be able as the
administrator to decide what
is the appropriate retention time
Well, your assumption is not coherent with Bacula, then.
Bacula treats a
retention like "keep the data for at least this time.
Only after this
time has passed consider recycling that volume." Thus,
you should assume
that your data will not be overwriten until 12 days have
passed after the
last job on a given volume is finished.
In my experience, it still doesn't work, even 5 weeks later
when I have a 6
day retention period, I still have to manually purge the tape.
Hmm. Isn't that how Bacula works? If a volume is in the
right pool,
and it is flagged as recyclable, and automatic pruning
for the jobs
and volumes is on, AND the retention period has passed, the volume
will be considered when Bacula looks for a recyclable volume.
The key thing for the OP to remember is that bacula will
not recycle the
current volume if any other appendable volumes exist, seems
odd to me, but
that is how it is. However, from a practical pov, using the
volume use
duration statement seems to get around that just fine.
If you want to limit the time Bacula uses a volume, you
can do so by
setting the proper volume use time or number of jobs.
Yes, that needs to be added to the docs.
If I set up a pool to have backups available for a
certain time, and
I've not got enough volumes, Bacula tells me so. Either I
re-think my
backup strategy and modify the setup, or I buy more tapes.
Even with that setup, it still doesn't recycle properly.
I've seen this in
several instances where I've followed the chapter on
automatic volume
recycling in the manual, until I was shown the info at the
beginning of
this email, I was looking at dumping Bacula, which is a
GREAT piece of
software, but for this one problem.
Considering the frequency that this problem is asked about,
I'd say there
is definately a conceptual issue at hand.
--
Best regards,
Kern
(">
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