After lots of troubleshooting I finally found the problem.

permissions

simply the bacula user didn't have read access to the autoloader.

for reference on FreeBSD

for my setup I needed to 
modify /etc/devfs.conf 

own pass5 root:bacula
perm pass5 0660
own ch1 root:bacula
perm ch1 0660
own nsa1.0 root:bacula
perm nsa1.0 0660

though I could probably exclude ch1.

then restarted the devfs 

worked like a charm now.

cheers
Tomse

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