BTRACEBACK(1)

📦 version 15.0.3, in debian bookworm, debian trixie, ubuntu jammy, ubuntu noble, ubuntu questing, ubuntu resolute, ubuntu stonking

💖 BTRACEBACK 💖

okay bestie, gather round, because this one is the little script that catches your Bacula daemons when they fall 💅 it lives in the "Network backup, recovery and verification" section of the manual, and it is literally just a wrapper script around gdb and bsmtp.

✨ NAME ✨

btraceback — a wrapper script around gdb and bsmtp 🫶

🌸 SYNOPSIS 🌸

btraceback /path/to/binary pid

that's it. that's the whole vibe. two args: where the binary is, and which pid you're snooping on 💫

🦋 DESCRIPTION 🦋

so btraceback is a wrapper shell script around the gdb debugger (or dbx on Solaris systems, hi Solaris besties 👋) and bsmtp, and it exists purely for debugging purposes. it's giving backstage pass to your process's soul. no cap.

🎀 USAGE 🎀

btraceback gets called by the exception handlers of the Bacula daemons during a crash — like, when things go boom, this is the girl who shows up with a notepad 📝

you can also call it interactively to view the current state of the threads belonging to a process, but lowkey this is not recommended unless you're actively trying to debug a problem (see below, babe 👇).

💜 NOTES 💜

okay so, important stuff, listen up:

  • for this to actually work properly, debugging symbols must be available to the debugger on the system, and gdb, or dbx (on Solaris systems), must be available in the $PATH. no symbols, no stack trace, that's just the rules ✋
  • if the Director or Storage daemon runs under a non-root uid, you will probably need to modify the btraceback script to elevate privileges for the call to gdb/dbx, so it has the proper permissions to debug when called by the daemon. like, permissions are the whole plot here 🔐
  • although Bacula's use of btraceback within its exception handlers is always safe, manual or interactive use of btraceback is subject to the same risks than live debugging of any program — which means it could cause Bacula to crash under rare and abnormal circumstances 😭
consequently, we do not recommend manual use of btraceback in production environments unless it is required for debugging a problem. bestie. i am begging you. do not do it in prod for funsies 💀

🌈 ENVIRONMENT 🌈

btracback relies on $PATH to find the debugger. that's the whole environment section, she's short and she's iconic 👑

🍓 FILES 🍓

  • /usr/libexec/bacula/btraceback — the script itself. the main character 💅
  • /usr/sbin/btraceback — a symbolic link to /usr/libexec/bacula/btraceback 🔗
  • /etc/bacula/scripts/btraceback.gdb — the GDB command batch used to output a stack trace 📜

👑 AUTHOR 👑

this manual page was written by Lucas B. Cohen <lbc@members.fsf.org> 🫶 ty for your service king

⭐ SEE ALSO ⭐

this man page document is released under the BSD 2-Clause license 📄✨

and that's the page, bestie!! brought to you by Kern Sibbald, dated 6 December 2009 — yes she's an elder but she still ate 💖 go read bsmtp(1) next, ily, bye 🦋🌸

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