Wouter Verhelst wrote:

> - Since things haven't really been running smoothly here, every time the
>   backup fails, the customer gets less happy with bacula. Are there any
>   other people here who run bacula to write fairly large volumes of data
>   to tape, and can they give me some pointers on things to avoid? That
>   way, I could hopefully avoid common pitfalls before I run into them.
>   Obviously if there is some documentation on this somewhere that I
>   missed, a simple pointer would be nice.

Consider updating your postgres, check you have enough memory.

I have _never_ had a bacula failure which was an actual bacula issue. 
They always come down to the following (more or less in order of frequency)

1: Config file errors (triple check the file after any changes)
2: Client machines switched off, or having high IO load.
3: Poor database configuration
4: Memory starvation (databases need memory and lots of it)
5: Exceeding limits in databases (MyISAM had a ~4billion entry limit per 
table by default)
6: Tape drive issues
7: Tape failure
8: Cleaners unplugging client machines to use the power outlet
9: Overzealous security guards switching off air conditioning in the 
server room "to save power"

70Gb isn't large for some bacula users. (Ours is ~50Gb), but you do need 
to have enough memory/ram to cope with such sizes.

Also: check and clean out your spooling areas. These can fill with cruft 
rapidly if there are lots of backup failures.

Why is autovacuum taking so long? Are you hitting swap heavily?

Regarding the robot, see the recent series of postings about unlocking 
drives.




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