Hi Kern,
There are several attractive and useful features in 1.40 - native Win32 dir/sd,
improved Win32 client, and job migration come to mind - that would be
beneficial to many users. Data encryption, in my opinion, is not as critical as
the other new features. I agree that writing encrypted data to tape is
interesting, but if it is not yet stable enough for production release, the
ideal thing to do would be to give it more time to mature. Considering that a
flaw in such a feature would probably render the data in a tape impossible to
restore, then it sure deserves more bug fixing, testing and documentation. If a
particular feature does not have solid rationale nor overwhelming demand to be
considered a "must-have", then it should not be allowed to push back the 1.4
release.
On the other hand, only you and the development team can realistically assess
how many man-hours of coding, reviewing and testing are still necessary to
consider data encryption ready to go live. If it really can't be ironed out for
another 7 to 10 months, consider releasing 1.40 sans data encryption and then
focus on putting out the fires that a major release always brings. When things
get calmer, you and the developers can take a fresh new look and tackle the
problem again, with more focus and objectiveness.
I am in no way stating that data encryption is not important, nor want to
direct the development towards my own needs as a system administrator. This
reflects my frank and down-to-earth assessment of the issue at hand. In other
words, this was my $0.02. Best regards,
Georger
----- Mensagem original ----
De: Kern Sibbald <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Para: bacula-users <bacula-users@lists.sourceforge.net>
Cc: bacula-devel <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Enviadas: Domingo, 3 de Dezembro de 2006 12:26:38
Assunto: [Bacula-users] Bacula status
Hello,
As most of you know Bacula release version 1.40 is nearing -- it was
originally scheduled for mid-November but delayed due to my vacation and
several bugs.
I'm still targeting it before the end of the year, but it looks like one major
new feature will not be enabled, and that is data encryption. The code just
is not stable (it doesn't pass a simple regression test), and it affects the
Volume data format, and it has known bugs (digest problems), which means that
if any fixes involve changing the data format (as one does that I found this
morning), it will create incompatible Bacula Volumes. This have never
happened before in the 7 years of Bacula's existence.
The bottom line is that unless I have a definitive solution (i.e. a bug fix
rather than a rewrite) to the remaining encryption problems by next Friday, 8
December, it will most probably not be a Bacula feature until much later (mid
to late 2007).
One alternative solution is to postpone the release of version 1.40 until late
March 2007. Since in all other respects 1.40 is ready to go it would be a
shame to postpone the release any longer. Obviously as with all new releases
there is the possibility of a few bugs particularly in the new features, but
there should be no show stoppers such as Volume format incompatibility that
are present in the encryption code.
As always, your comments are welcome.
Best regards,
Kern
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