Bacula-users

Re: [Bacula-users] Saving just the metadata and not the data

2011-07-13 12:50:55
Subject: Re: [Bacula-users] Saving just the metadata and not the data
From: "John Stoffel" <john AT stoffel DOT org>
To: Andre Ruiz <andre.ruiz AT gmail DOT com>
Date: Wed, 13 Jul 2011 12:48:41 -0400
Andre> There are some situations where knowing which files you had and
Andre> how they were organized is more important than the data on the
Andre> files themselves.

Sure, I can see this being important, but in this case, I'd probably
just write a custom perlfind script to capture the data and store it,
then have bacula save that script and metadata file.  Seems simpler,
and makes your life easier, since you're now not tweaking bacula to do
something it's not meant to do.

Also, part of the metadata you'd like to keep is where you got the
file(s) from if at all possible.  Which Bacula won't be able to do
unless you keep that info a master file somewhere and have bacula do
the backup of that file.

Andre> I'll give you an example: you collected a great amount of files
Andre> mirrored from different places on the internet, like say media
Andre> files, or linux packages repositories, or ISOs downloaded from
Andre> different places, and organized them carefully in a specific
Andre> hierarchy to satisfy a project you are developing which will
Andre> use this data. Also the permissions and ACLs on the dirs are of
Andre> more importance than the data. If you ever loose that data, you
Andre> could re-download all of them again, you would just want to
Andre> have the file tree and all the metadata saved to save you time
Andre> when re-arranging it all (if space on the tapes were a big deal
Andre> or the collection is really huge, you don't need to backup the
Andre> data).

If you think you need to handle ACLs, that's going to make this a
harder problem, and you'll need to look into the access() function and
maybe read up on how other backup programs handle ACLs cleanly.  It's
not a simple thing to get right, and will almost certainly require
root privs (on Unix like systems) to even run properly.


Andre> Is there a "good" way to do this with bacula? I can see some client
Andre> run script that would generate a list on the client filesystem
Andre> (dumping metadata -- acls, permissions, etc.) and backup it together
Andre> with other data, but that would be a re-implementation of what bacula
Andre> does best and I would like very much to have this handled by bacula
Andre> itself, to have the file list available in the bacula database as if
Andre> they were legitimate files, just happening to being empty of data on
Andre> the tapes. I could even want to restore them (giving me files of 0
Andre> bytes back on the disk).

Andre> The ideal world would be to have a different keyword for that in the 
FileSet:

Andre> FileSet {
Andre>   Name = Complete
Andre>   Include {
Andre>     Options {
Andre>       Signature = MD5
Andre>     }
Andre>     File = "/"
Andre>     File = "/boot"
Andre>     JustMetadata = "/data"
Andre>   }
Andre> }

Andre> I guess that's not possible, is there an equivalent way in funcionatily?

Andre> Thanks!

Andre> Andre

Andre> -- 
Andre> Andre Ruiz  <andre.ruiz AT gmail DOT com>
Andre> Curitiba, PR, Brasil

Andre> 
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AppSumo Presents a FREE Video for the SourceForge Community by Eric 
Ries, the creator of the Lean Startup Methodology on "Lean Startup 
Secrets Revealed." This video shows you how to validate your ideas, 
optimize your ideas and identify your business strategy.
http://p.sf.net/sfu/appsumosfdev2dev
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