Bacula uses flat text files for configuration. From time to time, people, usually new to the project, ask: why isn’t the configuration in the database?
Bacula uses the database to store information about what files were backed up, from what client, and when. This information is useful when you need to know how if […]

Bacula is a backup system with three different retention periods:

Volume
Job
File

I set all three to the same value.
It is important to note that these values affect only the Catalog. It determines how long a given record is held in the database. For example, if you set File Retention to be 45 days, it means […]

Both BSDCan and PGCon use Pentabarf for accepting and reviewing proposals for talks. An issue raised in 2009 highlighted the ability to see the speaker name when review the list of submissions. It is a bit of very useful information.
This year, I’ve found out that we can see that vital data. Provided […]

NOTE: this problem may not be a problem. After rebooting the system while having the tape library powered up, the problem went away. This may or may not be coincident.
Note to self: mtx-changer needs more customization than I thought.
Today showed great progress in completing the integration of my tape library into my Bacula […]

I use Bacula. To be clear, I wrote part of Bacula (the PostgreSQL part). Today I need to find out what jobs are on each of three tapes. Why? I just happened to cancel a 1.5TB job a few hours before it was to finish. By this time it had […]

I was at OSCON 2007 this week. I was there to present my Nobody Ever Regretted Making a Backup talk:
In the past few years, Bacula has been gaining ground on more established solutions, both open source and proprietary. This talk will introduce you to Bacula, show you the main components, give you an outline […]

I’ve been playing with OpenVPN since mid December. I like it. I like it better than IPsec. Why? Because OpenVPN can give me direct access to all my systems wherever I am. I can cvsup from my cvsup server at home from a hotel in Toledo (if I’m ever there). […]

More and more people are learning about Bacula. Here is a little survey I did at LISA06.

Today, as I was writing up an invoice, I accidentally saved it over another.
No worries!  Bacula to the rescue.  I managed to get the original files back from tape.
One hint: include your pathnames in ”quotes” so they are correctly parsed.  Like this:

$ dir
———- 0 root wheel […]

I’m in the midst of the first days of BSDCan, so why I am writing about Bacula? Because I found this description of what someone new to Bacula thinks about it. FWIW, they are changing from Amanda to Bacula.
cheers