Software update: Bacula 1.38.1

Bacula is a collection of applications aimed at performing backups, restores and verifications of data over the network on various file systems. It is set up with a client/server structure that makes it relatively easy to use from a stand-alone computer to an extensive server park. If you want to know more about Bacula, we refer you to this page. The developers have released version 1.38.1 with the following raft of changes:

Release Notes for Bacula 1.38.1

Bacula code: Total files = 420 Total lines = 138,440 (*.h *.c *.in)
20,440 additional lines of code since version 1.36.3

Changes since 1.38.0:

• Corrected ACL for Solaris (David Duchscher and Attila Fulop).
• Add bacula_mail_summary.sh to examples directory. It makes a single email summary of any number of jobs. Submitted by Andrew J. Millar.
• Unmount command now unloads autochanger.
• Fix hang in FD (Martin Simmons)
• Fix Win98 stat() problem in FD (Thorsten Engel)
• Fix update slots which did not clear missing tapes.
• Fix autostart install for FreeBSD (user reported)
• Fix several problems with PostgreSQL scripts (Eric Bollinger)
• Critical: allow restore of the first file of non-portable Win32 backup.
• Important: with multiple concurrent jobs the autochanger could get confused because of a missing mutex.
• Fix accessing last slot in label and update slots.
• Modify configure.in to add execute option to sqlite3 catalog scripts.
• Create update_xxx_table_8_to_9 scripts for updatedb
• Move the -lcrypt for PostgreSQL after the PostgreSQL libs in autoconf/bacula-macros/db.m4 as suggested by user. Fix bug #457.
• Remove @STATIC_CONS@ from tray-monitor Makefile as suggested by user. Fix bug #456.
• AMD64 users see compiler bug warning below!!!!!!!!!

Major Changes in 1.38:

• Fixed out of order Volumes in restore.
• Improved algorithm for reserving drives in multiple drive autochangers. Autochange users MUST use the new Autochanger resource in the Storage daemon.
• There is a new database format that is not compatible with previous databases. You must upgrade if converting from 1.36.x. No changes from version 1.37.30.
• The Director, Storage daemon, and File daemons are Deamons are not compatible with prior versions. All FDs must be upgraded at the same time.
• Support for ANSI/IBM labels.
• Faster database inserts due to combining the MD5/SHA1 into the attributes record, eliminating one INSERT/file backed up.
• Python Event support has been added. See below for configuration and details. The implementation is somewhat minimal, so the functionality is not complete. The Python interface has not been extensively tested, so please consider it BETA.
• DVD writing support, using parts, and some new directives in the Device resource of the Storage configuration file thanks to Nicolas Boichat. Please note that this code is still BETA and should be carefully tested before using in production.
• Seven new options keywords in a FileSet resource: ignorecase, fstype, hfsplussupport, wilddir, wildfile, regexdir, and regexfile thanks to Pruben Guldberg). See below for details.
• Restore of all files for a Job or set of jobs even if the file records have been removed from the catalog.
• Restore of a directory (non-recursive, ie only one level).
• Support for TLS (ssl) between all the daemon connections thanks to Landon Fuller.
• Any Volume in the Pool named Scratch may be reassigned to any other Pool when a new Volume is needed.
• You may clone a Job and thus write (almost) the same data to multiple Volumes simultaneously (see below). Actually, any Job may start any other Job with this mechanism, so it also be used to group jobs.
• Unicode filename support for Win32 (thanks to Thorsten Engel)
• Volume Shadow Copy support for Win32 thus the capability to backup exclusively opened files (thanks to Thorsten Engel). A VSS enabled Win32 FD is available. You must explicitly turn on VSS with “Enable VSS = yes” in your FileSet resource.
• New manual format with an index (thanks to Karl Cunningham).
• New Web site format (thanks to Michael Scherer).
• SQLite3 support.
• Web-bacula, previously a separate project by Juan Luis Frances, is now included in the Bacula GUI release. This is a management level tool for reporting the state of Bacula jobs.
• The code is now Internationalized so that it can be localized in native languages. Thanks to Nicolas Boichat.

New Directives:

• New Job directive “Prefer Mounted Volumes = yes|no” causes the SD to select either an Autochanger or a drive with a valid Volume already mounted in preference. If none is available, it will select the first available drive.
• New Run directive in Job resource or DIR. It permits cloning of jobs. To clone a copy of the current job, use
  Run = “job-name level=%l since=\”%s\””
  Note, job-name is normally the same name as the job that is running but there is no restriction on what you put. If you want to start the job by hand and use job overrides such as storage=xxx, realize that the job will be started with the default storage values ​​not the overrides. The level=%l guarantees that the chosen level of the job is the same, and the since=… ensures that the job uses *exactly* the same time/date for incremental and differential jobs. The since=… is ignored when level=Full. A cloned job will not start additional clones, so it is not possible to recurse.
• New Options keywords in a FileSet directive (backported to 1.36.3):
  • WildDir xxx
    Will do a wild card match against directories (files will not be matched).
  • WildFile xxx
    Will do a wild card match against files (directories will not be matched).
  • RegexDir xxx
    Will do a regular expression match against directories (files will not be matched).
  • RegexFile xxx
    Will do a regular expression match against files( directories will not be matched).
  • IgnoreCase = yes | no
    Will ignore case in wild card and regular expression matches. This is handy for Windows where filename case is not significant.
  • FsType = string
    where string is a filesystem type: ext2, jfs, ntfs, proc, reiserfs, xfs, usbdevfs, sysfs, smbfs, iso9660. For ext3 systems, use ext2. You may have multiple fstype directives and thus permit multiple filesystem types. If the type specified on the fstype directive does not match the filesystem for a particular directive, that directory will not be backed up. This directive can be used to prevent backing up non-local filesystems.
  • HFS Plus Support = yes | no
    If set, Mac OS X resource forks will be saved and restored.
• Tag Type = ANSI | IBM | Bacula
  Implemented in Director Pool resource and in SD Device resource. If it is specified in the SD Device resource, it will take precedence over the value passed from the Director to the SD.
• Check Tags = yes | no
  Implemented in the SD Device resource. If you intend to read ANSI or IBM labels, this *must* be set. Even if the volume is not ANSI labeled, you can set this to yes, and Bacula will check the label type.
• Script Directory = name. Define the directory from which Bacula scripts will be called for events. In fact, Bacula appends this name to the standard Python list of search directories, so the script could also be in any of the Python system directories.
• In FileSet, you can exclude backing up of hardlinks (if you have a lot, it can be very expensive), by using:
  HardLinks = no
  in the Options section. Patch supplied by David R Bosso. Thanks.
• MaximumPartSize = bytes (SD, Device resource)
  Define the maximum part size.
• Requires Mount = Yes/No (SD, Device resource)
  Defines if the device requires to be mounted to be read, and if it must be written in a special way. If it set, the following directives must be defined in the same Device resource:
  • Mount Point = directory
    Directory where the device must be mounted.
  • Mount Command = name string
    Command that must be executed to mount the device. Before the command is executed, %a is replaced with the Archive Device, and %m with the Mount Point.
  • Unmount Command = name string
    Command that must be executed to unmount the device. Before the command is executed, %a is replaced with the Archive Device, and %m with the Mount Point.
  • Write Part Command = name string
    Command that must be executed to write a part to the device. Before the command is executed, %a is replaced with the Archive Device, %m with the Mount Point, %n with the current part number (0-based), and %v with the current part filename.
  • Free Space Command = name string
    Command that must be executed to check how much free space is left on the device. Before the command is executed, %a is replaced with the Archive Device, %m with the Mount Point, %n with the current part number (0-based), and %v with the current part filename.
• Write Part After Job = Yes/No (DIR, Job Resource, and Schedule Resource) If this directive is set to yes (default no), a new part file will be created after the job is finished.
• A pile of new Directives to support TLS. Please see the TLS chapter of the manual.

New Commands:

• “python restart” restarts the Python interpreter. Rather brutal, make sure no Python scripts are running. This permits you to change a Python script and get Bacula to use the new script.

New configure options:

• –with-libintl-prefix for defining alternate locations for the NLS internationalization libraries. Not normally required.
• –datadir for defining where the language files will be installed required only if you do not want the default /usr/share.

Items to note!!!

• If you use an Autochanger, you MUST update your SD conf file to use the new Autochanger resource. Otherwise, certain commands such as “update slots” may not work.
• You must add –with-python=[DIR] to the configure command line if you want Python support. Python 2.2, 2.3 and 2.4 should be automatically detected if in the standard place.
• When linking with –with-python, there are a few warnings that can be ignored.
• You must either create a new catalog database or upgrade your old database. After installation, run from your scripts directory:BR>./upgrade_bacula_tables
  You can also find this script in the /src/cats directory.
• The Director, Storage daemon, and File daemons are Deamons are not compatible with prior versions. All FDs must be upgraded at the same time.
• You must add –with-openssl to the configure command line if you want TLS communications encryption support.
• Disk seeking during restores does not yet work correctly in all cases, so it is turned off.
• Note, with gcc (GCC) 4.0.1 20050727 (Red Hat 4.0.1-5) on an AMD64 CPU running 64 bit CentOS4, there is a compiler bug that generates bad code that causes Bacula to segment fault. Typically you will see this in the Storage daemon first. The solution is to compile Bacula ensuring that no optimization is turned on (normally it is -O2). This same compiler bug has been reported and confirmed with gcc (GCC) 4.0.2 20050901 (prerelease) (SUSE Linux) running on an AMD64 CPU. This for the moment, I would recommend that all users of GCC 4.0.1 or greater turn off all optimization when compiling.

Other Items:

• Security fixes for temp files created in mtx-changer, during ./configure, and during making of Rescue disk.
• A new script, dvd-handler, in the scripts directory, which is designed to be used as parameters to Write Part Command and Free Space Command. They need the dvd+rw-tools to be installed ( AND, the growisofs program must be patched using the /patches/dvd+rw-tools-5.21.4.10.8.bacula.patch You must have Python installed to run the scripts.
• Part files support: File volumes can now be split into multiple files, called “parts”.
• For the details of the Python scripting support, please see the new Python Scripting chapter in the manual.

[break]