bacula: cannot restore without a bootstrap file

After a long time I decided to install and work with bacula again. After installation, configuration and running some jobs, I tried to restore a backup from the night. The result was the following:

...
05-Nov 07:56 bacula-dir JobId 11: Fatal error: Cannot restore without a bootstrap file.
You probably ran a restore job directly. All restore jobs must be run using the restore command.
...

WORM media with mhvtl and bacula

WORM (write once read multiple) media is necessary if you need to make sure that special backups are kept forever (or as long as possible). How long a backup must kept alive depends on the data to backup, company needs, government regulations and so on. To play a little with WORM media you can use mhvtl (I used the web gui to create a new media). If you are lazy then you can spare this step, you can use any other media as WORM. The advantage of a real WORM media is that it won'toverwrite in other libraries, environments or even accidently. A cheap example with less capacity for a WORM media are writable CD's and DVD's - not rewritable!

Migration with bacula

Imagine you have the following situation: two database servers each with a large database. To backup each database you need 12 hours but you only have one tape drive. How to backup both databases to one tape drive without running the backup at daytime? As the topic says it: using bacula migration. When using migration you can start both backups at eg. 20:00, one backup writes directly to the single tape drive, the other backup to a disk storage. In this case both backups are accomplished between 20:00 and 08:00 the next day.

Using bacula with mhvtl

In a prior article I showed you how to setup a virtual tape library with mhvtl. I configured a MSL600 with 48 tapes. This device I want to use with bacula now. My current setup is the bacula director running on a Solaris 10 X86 machine, but the mhvtl is running on a Slackware X86 machine. To continue I have to install the bacula storage daemon on the Slackware machine first. To install the storage daemon you have to build the complete bacula software. Download a copy of the source and store them under /usr/src. Then extract the source package and change into the new directory: 

LDAP backup with bacula

To backup your LDAP with bacula is very easy. You only need to create a script that exports the DIT in a file. Then create a job that backups this file. To start go into the bacula configuration directory and define a new job:

Using a Sun StorEdge D240 as bacula storage

Yesterday I got a Sun StorEdge D240. Completely with cables, SCSI card etc. The D240 has two 36GB harddisks, a DDS4 tape drive and a DVD-ROM. Perfect to use it in my bacula server.
After installing the SCSI card and connecting the D240 I booted my Solaris 10 X86 machine and installed all devices (I'm using the Split Bus configuration). To install the necassery devices run the devfsadm command and use the iostat command to check the devices:

Add a new bacula client

To add a new client to bacula you have to let the director know the new client first. Go into the bacula configuration directory and add the client to the client resource: 

Creating a new bacula job

This time I want you to show how to create a new job within bacula to backup your files. In this article I will setup a job to backup /etc from my master server which is very easy. To do this go into the bacula configuration directory and edit the jobs resource file to add the new job: 

Using a stand alone tape with bacula

This time I want you to show how to use a stand alone tape drive with bacula. I have a couple of DDS-3 tape drives which all work with Solaris 10 X86 and bacula. Before you begin you need to know the device file for your tape drive. Under Solaris use iostat:

# iostat -En
...
rmt/0            Soft Errors: 0 Hard Errors: 0 Transport Errors: 0
Vendor: SONY     Product: SDT-9000         Revision: 0400 Serial No: 03/05/98
...

Basic bacula installation and configuration

With this article I want you to show how to install bacula from source and how to create a basic configuration. The topics in this artice will be the following:

Install bacula from source under Solaris 10 x86
Create the bacula database under Slackware Linux 13.1
Configure the bacula director
Configure the bacula storage daemon
Configure the bacula file daemon
First start
Configure the bacula console
Run a backup job
Run a restore job

mhvtl - Virtual Tape Library

A few days ago I discovered a pretty cool software for creating a virtual tape library. You can use the virtual tape library as a real library with the robot, drives, tapes etc. Best of all: the tapes are flat files within their own directory. That means that you can setup a HP MSL6000 tape library with 4 drives and 52 tapes and keeping the tape size at 50MB. With this article I want you to show the following:

Install mhvtl from source
Configure a virtual HP MSL6000 tape library
Perform a simple backup
mhvtl Web Gui

Reusing/relabeling media with bacula

A few weeks ago I reinstalled my backup server with bacula. I have a small machine (2x700MHz, 1GB, Solaris 10, Bacula 5.0.3) with 3 DDS-3 tape drives (and other stuff to play around). Now I want to reuse my old tapes which were already labeled. So I have to do some kind of relabeling. When I try to normally label the prior used tapes I get the following error: