Stefan,
You have done this correctly. Please keep in mind that the newly specified
retention periods will only apply to jobs ran after you reloaded the
director with the new retention periods. The previously specified retention
periods will continue to be in effect for past jobs.
The only things I would add are:
1. You can specify VolumeRetention, FileRetention, and JobRetention in the
Pool{} resource. Retentions specified in the pool resource override
retention periods specified in the client, for jobs written to that pool. I
personally prefer to specify retention in the pool because the pool is the
final authority on which retention period is used. However, I do not have a
need for varying file/job retentions within the same pool.
2. *What is your setting for VolumeRetention?* Any
condition where VolumeRetention < JobRetention can lead to unexpected
results. This is because bacula will prune an expired volume regardless of
whether the volume contains any unexpired jobs. Once the volume containing
an unexpired job is pruned, the jobs and any file records will also be
pruned. For this reason, VolumeRetention is the ultimate deciding factor
for data retention in bacula.
3. If a job's file records are pruned, the job record will remain (this is
exactly your situation). If a job record is pruned, the associated file
records will be pruned (the file records are useless without an associated
job record). If a volume is pruned, all associated job and file records
will be pruned (job and file records are useless without an associated
volume record). If all job records on an unexpired volume are pruned, the
volume will be pruned (there is no need to retain a previously used volume
record, for which there are no longer any job records).
4. Bacula has hardcoded default retention periods for File, Job, and Volume
retention. If you do not specify one of these retention periods, bacula
will use the hardcoded values. For this reason, I always recommend
affirmatively asserting the desired retention period, so you can be certain
of which retention period will apply.
5. In the conf file, it is possible to specify retention time periods in
Days, Months, Years. When the bacula config parser runs (at the request of
bacularis/baculum), any such human-readable time periods are converted to
seconds.
Regards,
Robert Gerber
402-237-8692
[email protected]
On Mon, Feb 9, 2026 at 4:12 AM Stefan G. Weichinger via Bacula-users <
[email protected]> wrote:
> Am 23.06.25 um 18:47 schrieb Bill Arlofski via Bacula-users:
>
> > You current choice is to just restore the entire job, and then do the
> > inspection of the files/directories once the restore is complete.
> >
> > I know this is probably not the answer you wanted to hear. :-|
> >
> > If your environment is not very large (think million/billions of files),
> > then typically we recommend to set the File and Job retention periods to
> > be the same so that if the Job is in the catalog, then you know that you
> > will be able to select specific files from
> > that job.
>
> I hit this again today and have to restore a full job etc.
>
> I'd like to adjust that and so I ask it here with the full example:
>
> I have
>
> Client {
> Name = "samba-fd"
> Address = "samba"
> FdPort = 9102
> Password = "_xxsomepass"
> Catalog = "MyCatalog"
> FileRetention = 5184000
> JobRetention = 15552000
> AutoPrune = yes
> }
>
> (this means JobR= 180 days, FileR = 60 days, according to bacularis-GUI)
>
> And you suggest to change it to:
>
> FileRetention = 15552000
> JobRetention = 15552000
>
> ?
>
> Did that right now, just would like to hear it's done right :-)
>
> I'll have to monitor the db-size then more closely.
>
> thanks
>
>
>
>
>
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