Re: [Bacula-users] confused about differentials

Hello,

2015-05-10 17:38 GMT+02:00 Ian Young <ian AT iay.org DOT uk>:

I've been using Bacula for quite a few years, and it has helped me dig myself out of the occasional problem. Today I'm recovering from a more serious problem and I find that some of the files I'm trying to restore don't get restored.

Amongst other things, I'm confused by the following from "list job=" output:

| 9,902 | srv-c701-backup | 2015-04-28 23:05:05 | B | I | 81,565 | 2,930,078,065 | T |
| 9,911 | srv-c701-backup | 2015-04-29 23:05:04 | B | I | 191 | 2,098,677 | T |
| 9,920 | srv-c701-backup | 2015-04-30 23:05:03 | B | I | 156 | 2,185,564 | T |
| 9,929 | srv-c701-backup | 2015-05-01 23:05:04 | B | I | 91,030 | 3,450,906,888 | T |
| 9,938 | srv-c701-backup | 2015-05-02 23:05:03 | B | D | 112 | 2,184,302 | T

What I am trying to understand is: if the incrementals are backing up things that have changed since the previous incremental,

Incremental is backing up everything from a previous backup of any level (F,D,I).

why does the subsequent differential not appear to include any of them, given that it's supposed to be backing up everything changed since the last full dump (in my case, on 2015-04-19) ?

Well, it should. A differential backup level is backing up everything which was modified (or deleted when using accurate backup mode) since last full backup level.

The director is running on a CentOS 6 system and claims to be Bacula 5.0.0. The client is CentOS 7 and Bacula 5.2.x, but looking at the jobs for other systems they also seem to have inconsistencies like this.

It is unsupported configuration. Your any client (Bacula FD) version shouldn't be a newest version then Director/Storage.

This could be a core problem in your case.

Restoring the most recent full dump, the most recent differential and all subsequent incrementals definitely leaves a lot of files off the table. I've had a bit more success by restoring from all the jobs available in order, but unfortunately some of the earlier incrementals have been recycled so the data unique to them appears to be lost.

If you want to restore a recent backup of the client then you should use a p.5 of the restore command: 5: Select the most recent backup for a client. Then Bacula will compound a set of required jobs for you.

I'd really appreciate any pointers as to what is going on here. I'm a bit mystified, because this flies in the face of my previous understanding of the whole idea of a differential backup.

First - UPGRADE YOUR BACULA DIRECTOR/STORAGE! it is more then 5 years old!!! :)

best regards

Radosław Korzeniewski
radoslaw AT korzeniewski DOT net

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