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 that there are no records in the database for any files backed up in any jobs more than 45 days ago.
The result of this means you can’t restore a given file after the File retention passed. If the Job retention has not passed, you can still restore the whole job.
Volumes are eligible for recycling once ALL retention periods have passed.
Symptoms of File Retention < Job Retention look like this (given that you are trying to restore after File Retention has passed, but before Job Retention has passed):
Hi there. Using 2.4.4 under Debian with PostgreSQL backend and file volumes. I want to restore all files from a client, but not all files are found, however the last full backup has not been purged from the database, and saved 224000 files for 50 GB, and only 18000 files can be marked with the console in restore mode. What could be wrong ?
The problem is there are no file Retention records for the FULL backup, only for the differential and incremental backups.
Be aware.
