On Thu, 2013-12-19 at 11:02 -0500, Dan Langille wrote: > There was a lot in the above and I couldn't parse it all > just now.
Sorry about that; I suppose it would help if I just explicitly stated what I really want. I have a main backup pool where all the backup jobs write. This pool is manually copied to the archive pool using Copy jobs. What I want is for volumes in the main pool to be recycled relatively quickly (because space is limited), while the files are retained much longer in the archive pool. I'd like restore attempts to automatically figure out when the files are still available in the backup pool and use it when possible, but get them from the archive pool if necessary. That's what I'm working toward. > Instead, I'll point you to something I wrote a few years ago. > If you have questions after that, please ask again. > > http://dan.langille.org/2010/02/08/bacula-retention-periods/ OK, good. It's good that we're having this discussion. If I understand any of this at all (which I may not), there are a couple of things in there that seem not to match my experience so far. For instance, in that document it says "you can’t restore a given file after the File retention passed". But that's not really true. You can't restore it in the "usual" way, by marking files, presumably because the list of available files for marking is created using those File records that aren't there any more. But you *can* restore those files by using a regular expression; I've had to do this because I have lost a lot of my File records by initially setting File Retention too low. I'm not sure how it actually does this, but there must be some information written to the backup volume itself that can be used to determine what files are there. It's much slower than a database access, but I have restored directory trees and individual files this way. The document also says "Volumes are eligible for recycling once ALL retention periods have passed." But that doesn't seem to be true either; I have apparently seen Bacula recycle some volumes even though the Job retention period has not passed. Which means, presumably, that there are Job records in the database that point to backup files that aren't there any more, since the Volume has been recycled. > Perhaps the Recycling Algorithm will help: > > http://www.bacula.org/en/dev-manual/main/main/Automatic_Volume_Recycling.html That does help, and I've looked at this before, but it's not always clear (to me) exactly how it works, even after reading that. I notice that the paragraph on Automatic Pruning says that you can't restore files once the File records are gone, but I know that's not true because I have done it. I suspect the documentation may be a few versions old and I can't necessarily trust everything it says. It also states that when volume recycling happens, "all Jobs that are older than the VolumeRetention period will be pruned", presumably regardless of what I set for Job Retention, which leads to some of my confusion about what these retention periods really mean. It's even more confusing (to me) when you throw in Copy jobs, so that the same files may be on multiple Volumes in different pools. --Greg ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Rapidly troubleshoot problems before they affect your business. Most IT organizations don't have a clear picture of how application performance affects their revenue. With AppDynamics, you get 100% visibility into your Java,.NET, & PHP application. Start your 15-day FREE TRIAL of AppDynamics Pro! http://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/clk?id=84349831&iu=/4140/ostg.clktrk _______________________________________________ Bacula-users mailing list Bacula-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/bacula-users
