On Thu, Aug 14, 2008 at 11:08:17AM -0400, Dan Langille wrote:
> John Yates wrote:
>
>> I should have mentioned some of my other concerns:  I also want to
>> arrange to automatically delete the disk files that contain expired
>> (is this the correct terminology?) backups.  I have set up volume
>> labeling to contain the job name and date, and it appears that when
>> bacula recycles a disk volume, it doesn't relabel it, so in order to
>> get the "correct" label, I need to delete old backup files rather than
>> recycle them.
>
> Why do you need to delete them?
>
> Seriously, it does not matter what the Volume is labelled.  It is merely  
> a label.  Consider not doing that and make your life easier.  :)

I find that, in general, having labels with meaningful information is
a good idea.  In particular, have a backup file labeled with its job
name and the date it was written seems useful; it must have seemed so
to whomever wrote the labeling code, else they wouldn't have bothered
to make it possible.

>> Therefore, I am writing a script to look for expired disk backup files
>> and delete them.  This makes expiring backups by count more
>> important.  Also, at least for me, I seems the more natural way to
>> think about how to decide when to expire a backup.
>
>
> Sounds like extra work and the introduction of possible problems related  
> to deletion of the wrong Volume.  Recycling, as intended, avoids this 
> issue.

I agree that is is extra work, and that it increases the chance of
deleting the wrong volume.  That's why I was hoping that bacula would
be able to do it.

If bacula would relabel a disk volume when it recycles it, that would
solve one of my concerns.  The only problem then, as I see it, is that
since bacule would be writing over an old backup, if there were an
error in writing the new backup, I would be left with one fewer backup
than I originally had.  If, on the other hand, bacula wrote the new
backup and then deleted the old one when the new one was sucessfully
compleded, there would always be the desired number of backups.

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