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Bacula ® Problem Resolution Guide

The Leading Open Source Backup Solution

Kern Sibbald

February 6, 2023
This manual documents Bacula version 9.6.7 (10 December 2020)


Copyright 2000-2018, Kern Sibbald
Bacula ® is a registered trademark of Kern Sibbald.


This Bacula documentation by Kern Sibbald with contributions from many others,
a complete list can be found in the License chapter.

Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

• Contents
• Bacula Frequently Asked Questions
  • What is Bacula?
  • Does Bacula support Windows?
  • What language is Bacula written in?
  • On what machines does Bacula run?
  • Is Bacula Stable?
  • I'm Getting Authorization Errors. What is Going On?
  • Bacula Runs Fine but Cannot Access a Client on a Different Machine. Why?
  • My Catalog is Full of Test Runs, How Can I Start Over?
  • I Run a Restore Job and Bacula Hangs. What do I do?
  • I Cannot Get My Windows Client to Start Automatically?
  • My Windows Client Immediately Dies When I Start It
  • My backups are not working on my Windows Client. What should I do?
  • All my Jobs are scheduled for the same time. Will this cause problems?
  • Can Bacula Backup My System To Files instead of Tape?
  • Can I use a dummy device to test the backup?
  • Can Bacula Backup and Restore Files Bigger than 2 Gigabytes?
  • I want to stop a job.
  • Why have You Trademarked the Name Bacula?
  • Why is the Online Document for Version 1.39 but the Released Version is 1.38?
  • Does Bacula really save and restore all files?
  • I want an Incremental but Bacula runs it as a Full backup. Why?
  • Do you really handle unlimited path lengths?
  • What Is the Really Unique Feature of Bacula?
  • How can I force one job to run after another?
  • I Am Not Getting Email Notification, What Can I Do?
  • My retention periods don't work
  • Why aren't my files compressed?
  • Incremental backups are not working
  • I am waiting forever for a backup of an offsite machine
  • SSH hangs forever after starting Bacula
  • I'm confused by retention periods
  • MaxVolumeSize is ignored
  • I get a Connection refused when connecting to my Client
  • Long running jobs die with Pipe Error
  • How do I tell the Job which Volume to use?
  • Password generation
  
  
• Tips and Suggestions
  • Upgrading Bacula Versions
  • Getting Notified of Job Completion
  • Getting Email Notification to Work
  • Getting Notified that Bacula is Running
  • Maintaining a Valid Bootstrap File
  • Rejected Volumes After a Crash
  • Security Considerations
  • Creating Holiday Schedules
  • Automatic Labeling Using Your Autochanger
  • Backing Up Portables Using DHCP
  • Going on Vacation
  • Exclude Files on Windows Regardless of Case
  • Executing Scripts on a Remote Machine
  • Recycling All Your Volumes
  • Backing up ACLs on ext3 or XFS filesystems
  • Total Automation of Bacula Tape Handling
  • Running Concurrent Jobs
  
  
• Testing Your Tape Drive With Bacula
  • Get Your Tape Drive Working
    • Problems When no Tape in Drive
    • Specifying the Configuration File
    • Specifying a Device Name For a Tape
    • Specifying a Device Name For a File
  • btape
    • Using btape to Verify your Tape Drive
    • Testing tape drive speed
    • Linux SCSI Tricks
  • Tips for Resolving Problems
    • Bacula Saves But Cannot Restore Files
    • Bacula Cannot Open the Device
    • Incorrect File Number
    • Incorrect Number of Blocks or Positioning Errors
    • Ensuring that the Tape Modes Are Properly Set – Linux Only
    • Tape Hardware Compression and Blocking Size
    • Tape Modes on FreeBSD
    • Finding your Tape Drives and Autochangers on FreeBSD
    • Using the OnStream driver on Linux Systems
  • Hardware Compression on EXB-8900
    • Using btape to Simulate Filling a Tape
  • Recovering Files Written With Fixed Block Sizes
  • Tape Blocking Modes
  • Details of Tape Modes
  • Tape Performance Problems
  • Autochanger Errors
  • Syslog Errors
  
  
• Dealing with Firewalls
  • Technical Details
  • A Concrete Example
    • The Bacula Configuration Files for the Above
    • How Does It Work?
    • Important Note
    • Firewall Problems
  
  
• What To Do When Bacula Crashes (Kaboom)
  • Traceback
  • Testing The Traceback
  • Getting A Traceback On Other Systems
  • Manually Running Bacula Under The Debugger
  • Getting Debug Output from Bacula
  
  
• Bacula Copyright, Trademark, and Licenses
  • CC-BY-SA
  • GPL
  • LGPL
  • Public Domain
  • Trademark
  • Fiduciary License Agreement
  • Disclaimer
  • Authors
  • Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International
  
  
• Index
• About this document ...