Bacula(8)

💖 Bacula(8) — The Network Backup Solution 💖

okay bestie, listen up, this is Bacula(8) from the System Manager's Manual and it's literally the glow-up your backup game has been waiting for. sit down, grab a strawberry drink 🍓, and let's get into it.

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✨ NAME ✨

Bacula — The Network Backup Solution 🫶

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🎀 SYNOPSIS 🎀

bacula-dir - Director
bacula-fd - File daemon or Client
bacula-sd - Storage daemon
bconsole - Console to control Bacula

that's the whole squad right there. four besties, one mission. 💅

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🦋 DESCRIPTION 🦋

Bacula is a set of computer programs that lets you (or the sysadmin, whoever's holding the aux cord) manage backup, recovery, and verification of computer data across a network of computers of different kinds. technically speaking? it's a network Client/Server based backup program. and the way it's relatively easy to use and efficient while also serving many advanced storage management features that make it easy to find and recover lost or damaged files?? it's giving main character energy fr fr. and because its design is modular, Bacula is scalable from small single computer systems all the way up to systems consisting of hundreds of computers located over a large network. no cap. 👑

Bacula Director service consists of the program that supervises all the backup, restore, verify and archive operations. the system administrator uses the Bacula Director to schedule backups and to recover files. want the full lore? see the Director Services Daemon Design Document in the Bacula Developer's Guild. the Director runs as a daemon or a service (i.e. in the background). yes, it's that kind of lowkey-but-actually-everywhere. ✨

Bacula Console services is the program that allows the administrator or user to communicate with the Bacula Director (see above). rn, the Bacula Console comes in two versions. the first and simplest one is running the Console program in a shell window (i.e. TTY interface) — most system administrators will find this completely adequate, and honestly? valid. the second version is a Qt 4.2 GUI interface named bat that has more features than the bconsole program. pick your fighter. 🎀

Bacula File services (or Client program) is the software program installed on the machine to be backed up. it's specific to the operating system it runs on, and it's responsible for providing the file attributes and data when requested by the Director. the File services are also responsible for the file system dependent part of restoring the file attributes and data during a recovery operation. more details live in the File Services Daemon Design Document in the Bacula Developer's Guide. this program runs as a daemon on the machine to be backed up, and in some of the documentation the File daemon is referred to as the Client (for example in Bacula's configuration file). and plot twist — in addition to Unix/Linux File daemons, there's a Windows File daemon (normally distributed in binary format) that runs on all currently known Windows versions (2K, 2003, XP, and Vista). periodt. 🪟

Bacula Storage services consist of the software programs that perform the storage and recovery of the file attributes and data to the physical backup media or volumes. in other words, the Storage daemon is responsible for reading and writing your tapes (or other storage media, e.g. files). more deets? see the Storage Services Daemon Design Document in the Bacula Developer's Guide. the Storage services runs as a daemon on the machine that has the backup device (usually a tape drive). 📼

Catalog services are comprised of the software programs responsible for maintaining the file indexes and volume databases for all files backed up. the Catalog services permit the System Administrator or user to quickly locate and restore any desired file. and honestly? this is what sets Bacula apart from simple backup programs like tar and bru, because the catalog maintains a record of all Volumes used, all Jobs run, and all Files saved, permitting efficient restoration and Volume management. the glow-up is real. ✨ Bacula currently supports three different databases — MySQL, PostgreSQL, and SQLite3 — one of which must be chosen when building Bacula. choose wisely bestie, that's a build-time commitment. 💀

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💅 OPTIONS 💅

okay so this part is literally a redirect:

• See the HTML/PDF documentation at: <http://www.bacula.org> for details of the command line options.

iykyk — the flags live over there. go look, we'll wait. 🫶

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🌸 CONFIGURATION 🌸

each daemon has its own configuration file which must be tailored for each particular installation. no copy-paste-and-pray, bestie. 🙈 please see the HTML/PDF documentation for the details.

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🌈 SEE ALSO 🌈

the HTML manual installed on your system (typically found in /usr/share/doc/bacula-<version>) or the online manual at: <http://www.bacula.org>

🎀 note that <version> is a placeholder — swap in your actual version, don't type it literally like a menace.

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💀 BUGS 💀

See <http://bugs.bacula.org>

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👑 AUTHOR 👑

Kern Sibbald

✨ Current maintainer ✨

Kern Sibbald

🫶 Contributors 🫶

An enormous list of past and former persons who have devoted their time and energy to this project — thanks. See the AUTHORS file in the main Bacula source directory.

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💜 COPYRIGHT 💜

This man page document is released under the BSD 2-Clause license.

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and that's the whole page, bestie!! 🦋 this one comes to you from The Network Backup Solution itself, Bacula(8) — the iconic footer line that's been holding it down at the bottom of the page this whole time. mwah. 💖✨🎀