On 03/09/2010 12:28 PM, John Drescher wrote:
> On Tue, Mar 9, 2010 at 2:17 PM, C M Reinehr <cmr AT amsent DOT com> wrote:
>> On Tue 09 March 2010 12:19:40 pm John Drescher wrote:
>>> >        I've always been a little unclear about the benefits of the .bsr
>>> > files myself but mine is a small business so I can't speak for those with
>>> > much larger, enterprise systems. They're small and are no trouble to back
>>> > up, so I keep them against the possibility that I might really need them
>>> > one day.
>>>
>>> They are most useful for restoring a corrupt catalog.
>>>
>>> John
>> Thanks! I knew there had to be a good reason and that I just hadn't yet
>> discovered it. :-)
>>
> 
> Also useful in disaster recovery when you do not have the database up
> and running.

Maybe I should have explained more...

Each of my backup jobs goes to a separate file named 
JobName-JobId-Level.  These are copied to DVD.  Only 
"user" files are backed up -- system files will be 
restored by re-installing the OS and apps.  I do a full
backup every two months with daily incrementals in between.

My bare-metal recovery plan is:
1. Install a Linux machine from distribution media.
2. Install Bacula (a copy of the source and conf files
 is on the backup DVDs).
3. Configure Postgresql, create bacula db.
4. Identify the volume with the latest catalog backup (which
 is easy to do given my volume naming scheme), extract the
 catalog db backup (with bextract) and restore to the db.
5. I now should be able to do a full restore of the user
 files, yes?

So why do I need the bsr files?  The only thing I will be
restoring without a catalog is the catalog itself and it
is in a single volume file.

This plan is admittedly time consuming but I can afford a 
couple days downtime (and I have found that I reinstall 
Linux (Fedora) pretty frequently anyway due to new
versions, and same with Windows which suffers from bit-
rot).

The main problem I have with it is the requirement for
a Linux machine in order to restore any of the Windows 
clients -- I would be much happier with Bacula if I could
restore a Windows client with only a Windows machine 
available. 

Does this seem like a workable plan?  (I have not tested 
it yet but will as soon as I can free up a spare disk and
some time.)

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