My experiences differ vastly from yours. I have found Bacula to be extremely flexible, approachable and robust.
There is a fair bit of complexity in making sure everything works together properly but IMO it is neither disfunctional nor unnecessarily complex. What complexity does exist is necessary to provide the flexibility that is available in Bacula. On Wednesday 21 November 2007 8:07:58 am Shon Stephens wrote: > Bacula is incredibly complex to setup. Its taken 4 months and its > still not working correctly. There is no possible way one could spend 4 months on Bacula and not have it set up properly without some sort of "stumbling block" in that person's mind that prevents them from "getting it right." That "block" could be an assumption on their part or a lack of a base of knowledge about topics not covered in the Bacula documentation. Members of this list are generally helpful in getting people through gaps in their knowledge, gaps in the documentation and/or other stumbling blocks when people are using or trying to get started Bacula. I haven't checked the archives of this list, but I daresay that you probably haven't tapped into the awesome resource that this list represents in your Bacula-related efforts. To rant against Bacula when you haven't made an honest attempt to get it working by working with the readily available help of people of who have gotten it working reflects more a failure on your part than on Bacula itself. > Things that should be easy that Bacula makes overly complex: > > Labeling tapes I find this simple to the point that I don't need to refer to the documentation to type in the command. example: label storage=Quantum-SL3 slots=1-4,7 barcodes pool=Scratch (Labels tapes in my Quantum-SL's slots 1 through 4 and slot 7 using their barcode labels and puts them in the "Scratch" pool.) > Assigning tapes to pools At my site, this is automated. When I initially label them I assign them to the "Scratch" pool and when a new volume/tape is needed in another pool Bacula re-assigns one from the "Scratch" pool. When I need to do so manually, it's a single-line command or a menu-driven series of inputs to accomplish. example: update volname=MDX518L3 pool=MonkeySnot (Assigns volume "MDX518L3" to pool "MonkeySnot") > Reassigning tapes to pools Likewise, it as above for assigning tapes to pools. > Managing disk media Now this I haven't worked with, as I haven't done any backing up to disks. > Things Bacula can't seem to get right: > > Detecting a tape is in the drive and using it > Even though the correctly labeled tape is in the drive, and has the > right Volume label, and is marked "Append", and is from the correct > Pool.... I think you may be mixing two seperate issues: 1. When you change the tapes that are in a drive, bacula needs to be "told" to update itself, or to examine the tape(s) that are in a device again. It's a simple command of "update slots" will get you a menu-driven Q&A to complete the process. 2. If bacula is constantly asking you to mount a tape that isn't in the drive even though you believe that bacula should happily use the tape that IS in the drive... well. That is a hairy one. I wrote a script that disables any volumes that aren't in the autochanger in order to force Bacula to use/recycle tapes that were loaded vs. requesting "preferable" tapes that were not. I run that script as an admin job before any of my backups run each night. I'd be happy to share that with you if that's the problem you're having. > Bacula is still waiting for a mount request. Every external program > recognizes that the tape is in the drive and mounted. Not Bacula As mentioned by someone else, issue a "mount" to bacula in bconsole and you'll be prompted. > Catalog entries. I've not had a single backup job where the right > entries made it into the Catalog Hrm... Wierd. You apparently have a bad configuration thing going on somewhere or you aren't checking the catalog properly and coming to conclusion that because you can't FIND it in the catalog that it's not making it INTO the catalog. I think bacula errors out of jobs when it can't write to the database, though I am not sure. > Windows hosts. Good luck figuring out the esoteric path syntax because > its different in different chapters of the manual and also different > depending on which part of the config you are editing As mentioned by someone else, simply use / instead of \ in the pathnames. Works for me here. If you're trying to do complex stuff with includes and excludes, yeah, it get complicated. > Basically I can't see that its useable for anything more than backing > up a single system, and even then better be careful. Then I assure you, without any ill intent towards you, that you are somehow missing out on the immense capabilities of Bacula. > I'm going with Arkeia Network Backup. Might cost money, but at least > it will work as advertised which is more than can be said for Crapula If I ever tried the program you mention I might agree with you that Crapula is terrible software. Unfortunately that is OT for a +Bacula+ mailing list. If you want help with Bacula, great. I for one will try to help. If you do not and only wanted to vent your spleen, good luck with Arkeia and Toodles! See ya later! Adiose! Hasta luego! And stuff... -- -- Flak Magnet (Tim) www.flakmagnet.com ------------------------------------------------------------------------- This SF.net email is sponsored by: Microsoft Defy all challenges. Microsoft(R) Visual Studio 2005. http://clk.atdmt.com/MRT/go/vse0120000070mrt/direct/01/ _______________________________________________ Bacula-users mailing list Bacula-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/bacula-users
