On Thursday 29 November 2007 04:36, John Stoffel wrote: > Kern, > > I'd like to propose a change to how tapes are managed in Bacula with > the addition of a new column to the Media table of a 'Barcode' column > with a type of tinyblob. This is what is used for the VolumeName > column at least, and they are similar. > > The idea is that if I do an 'update slots' and Bacula goes through and > checks all my volumes in a jukebox and discovers that it doesn't know > what barcode XYZ123 is, loads the volume, and sees it has a VolumeName > of "BackupVol-003", it would then associate that Barcode with the > proper MediaId and VolumeName. > > There would ideally also be an option which says to use the Bacode on > the physical media as the VolumeName by default.
Well, the first part of what you are suggesting above is really a request for a change (new feature request). As far as I can tell, you are suggesting to allow a Volume to be referenced by either its volume name or by the barcode value that Bacula finds for that Volume and that the two may not be the same. I think this request would require a good deal of thought simply because the current way that Bacula works is to require the volume name and the barcode to be the same. If they are different, and if Bacula attempts to update it automatically, I think there could be some serious problems -- i.e. Bacula could get mixed up. Perhaps if no Barcode field exists, Bacula could accept the first one it found, but thereafter, if the barcode changed, it would have to reject the tape. In any case, this is really a feature request that needs to be handled as such (see the web page for more ...). I think it could be very confusing to have two different volume names so I am not too much in favor of this idea. One solution for you would be to do a Volume migration of all the data on the tape in question to a second tape that is correctly labeled with its barcode value. Then simply either delete the first Volume and recreate it with the correct label, or simply relabel the first tape with the barcode and use it for new data. > > Also, how hard would it be to have Bacula offer the option to Relabel > a piece of media so I can change the VolumeName to match a Barcode, > but without changing anything else on the actual media or being forced > to do a full relabel which wipes the tape? Bacula can relabel a Volume only if all the current job records are purged from that Volume, the volume is recycled, and in relabeling the volume, all prior data will be lost forever. As I mentioned above, you can accomplish this by doing a Volume migration. On a tape, it is physically impossible to change the Volume label without destroying some data on the volume as Martin indicated. On a disk volume this would be possible, but Bacula's philosophy is to attempt to treat disk volumes and tape volumes the same to the extent it is possible (and in any case your request is for tapes ...). Best regards, Kern > > Thanks, > John > > ------------------------------------------------------------------------- > SF.Net email is sponsored by: The Future of Linux Business White Paper > from Novell. From the desktop to the data center, Linux is going > mainstream. Let it simplify your IT future. > http://altfarm.mediaplex.com/ad/ck/8857-50307-18918-4 > _______________________________________________ > Bacula-devel mailing list > [email protected] > https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/bacula-devel ------------------------------------------------------------------------- SF.Net email is sponsored by: The Future of Linux Business White Paper from Novell. From the desktop to the data center, Linux is going mainstream. Let it simplify your IT future. http://altfarm.mediaplex.com/ad/ck/8857-50307-18918-4 _______________________________________________ Bacula-devel mailing list [email protected] https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/bacula-devel
