Re: [Bacula-users] disk-changer Autochanger

Hello Dan,

Thanks for your email. Please see below ...

On 01/07/2017 05:56 PM, Dan Langille wrote:

Kern,

Happy New Year sir.

Happy New Year to you and the Bacula users too.

BTW, I always get a chuckle out of recognizing names in software. I knew you worked on apcupsd, but still enjoyed updating the BATTDATE using apctest earlier this week.

Yes, it was my first "real" open source project. Just before 2000 I was project manager of Apcupsd. However, I wanted a bigger more challenging project. I was fortunate enough to have Adam who was interested in it, so he took over the management of the project :-)

I received email from someone wanting to create a post of vChanger for FreeBSD. They have patches and are proceeding there. I mentioned I was using disk-based auto-changer. He mentioned it's not for production and, when queried, showed me a few references:

From here:

http://blog.bacula.org/whitepapers/CommunityDiskBackup.pdf

2.3 starts with "For testing purposes"...

From here:

http://www.bacula.org/7.4.x-manuals/en/main/Released_Version_3_0_3_3_0_.html#SECTION007224500000000000000

"This feature is only implemented on Linux machines and should not be used for production."

And from here:

https://sourceforge.net/projects/vchanger/files/vchangerHowto.html/download

Chap 3.2 outlines the advantages of vchanger over plain Bacula.

Also, from:

https://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/usb-disks.html

I had troubles with the setup from 17.4.2 (from nodes not removing from /media, to kernel dumps).

I got the concept from someone else, and have been using in *my* production for some time now.

Is this status based upon 'we don't want to support it' or dodgy elements I should be aware of.

Well, the status is sort of "we don't want to support it". The major points are:

1. In my view the Bacula Virtual Autochange works as well or better than the disk-changer.

2. vChanger does the same thing, is well maintained, and has many additional feature.

3. Why maintain disk-changer.

4. In an upcoming version of Bacula that will have Cloud support, disk-changer (and also vChanger) will not work with Cloud volumes, because those volumes are directories rather than files (actually, they are directories that contain a set of "parts" that make up the Cloud Volume. In the Cloud, Bacula parts are more often called "objects". Consequently, to make disk-changer continue to work across even Cloud volumes will require some modifications. The current Virtual Autochangers just work out of the box.

Either way, I'm ok with either leaving it as is, or moving to vChanger, now that a port is coming.

That is the good part of open source, everyone gets to do it his/her way.

Based on your answer, I'm happy to repeat this query over the mailing lists to get it out there.

I've copied the bacula-user's list so that they will benefit from our emails ...

Best regards,
Kern

--
Dan Langille - BSDCan / PGCon
dan AT langille DOT org

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