Re: [Bacula-users] incremental backups too large

Hi And thanks for all the replies so far.

I'm running Bacula 5.0.3 on OpenSuSE 11.3. Self compiled with the following configure options:

--enable-smartalloc --sbindir=/usr/local/bacula/bin --sysconfdir=/usr/local/bacula/bin -with-mysql -with-openssl -enable-bat -sysconfdir=/etc/bacula -enable-tray-monitor

Here are my job and fileset deffinitions:

###################################################################

JobDefs {
        Name = "XPclients"
        Type = Backup
        Level = Incremental
        FileSet = "XP Set"
        Schedule = "WeeklyCycle"
        Storage = File
        Messages = Standard
        Pool = File
        Priority = 10
        Reschedule On Error = yes
        Reschedule Interval = 1 hours
        Reschedule Times = 10

        Write Bootstrap = "/home/bacula/bacula/working/%c.bsr"
}

FileSet {
        Name = "XP Set"
        Include {
        Options {
        signature = MD5
        compression = GZIP
        }

        File = "C:/documents and settings"
}

########################################################################################

I understand that something is adding data and logically the backup should grow. What I don't understand is why the entire file has to be backed up if only a few bytes of data has changed. It is mainly outlook.pst files and MSSQL databse files that cuase these large backups. Some of these files are several GB.

My understanding of an incremental backup is that only changed data is backed up. It seems that at the moment my Bacula is doing differential backups, ie backing up the entire file if the timestamp has changed, even though I have configured it for incremental.

regds

Lawrence

> I think what Lawrence meant was that say full backup takes 33GB, as
> the one below.
>
> | 1,089 | tic FS | 2011-01-08 02:05:03 | B | F |
> 464,798 | 33,390,404,320 | T |
>
> Now, if you do Incremental backup, it's going to be reported by
> bconsole as even bigger, eg.:
>
> | 1,097 | tic FS | 2011-01-09 02:05:03 | B | I |
> 6,573 | 39,758,701,241 | T |
> | 1,105 | tic FS | 2011-01-10 02:05:08 | B | I |
> 4,585 | 39,502,153,253 | T |
> | 1,113 | tic FS | 2011-01-11 02:05:02 | B | I |
> 4,585 | 39,808,375,917 | T |
> | 1,122 | tic FS | 2011-01-12 02:05:02 | B | I |
> 4,441 | 39,939,208,908 | T |
> | 1,130 | tic FS | 2011-01-13 02:05:03 | B | I |
> 7,584 | 40,036,714,059 | T |
>
> This is something that I don't have an answer for and I guess it's
> somewhere within the documentation and I have missed it. Logically to
> me would be to show only how much Incremental backup took space, not
> the total of the last full + incremental.
>
> Kind regards.
>
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First there's something adding data everyday, so that's why there's more and more data.

You didn't tell us what kind of Incremental you do, so fileset definition could help us.
(also basic information like OS bacula version, how it was installed (package, self compilation)

If you have 5.0.3 I would recommend to use Accurate option.

Each time, we see that sort of question here, an anti-virus scan touching file time was the culprit. ( or same kind of silly
script )

Check the documentation, to see how you can infuence Accurate or Incrememtal to be more or less sensible to that time change.

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Bruno Friedmann (irc:tigerfoot)
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