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Hi,

I'm rather new to bacula: i've worked with it for 6 months now. But
now, there is happening something which I do not understand: Automatic
Volume Recycling. I've got a client with a job retention of 6 months
with autoprune on. It writes to a pool (File storage) with a volume
retention of 1 year, max 1 job per volume, and a max number of volumes
set to 365. Autoprune and recycle are on. After every backup, the
volume is thus marked as 'used'. From the docs, I though this meant
that the volumes are kept for a period of 1 year before being pruned
and reused. However, now 6 months have passed and jobs are being
pruned. What I now see in the logs is: "There are no more Jobs
associated with Volume "X". Marking it purged.". And it then recycles
the volume for the backup job. This is not what I want. I've checked
in bat and the volumes that are being recycled all have an expire date
that is 6 months in the future. Can anyone tell me what I'm missing
here?

Thanks,

Ward

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On Tue, Apr 3, 2012 at 9:01 AM, Ward Poelmans <wpoely86 < at > gmail.com> wrote:
Hi,

I'm rather new to bacula: i've worked with it for 6 months now. But
now, there is happening something which I do not understand: Automatic
Volume Recycling. I've got a client with a job retention of 6 months
with autoprune on. It writes to a pool (File storage) with a volume
retention of 1 year, max 1 job per volume, and a max number of volumes
set to 365. Autoprune and recycle are on. After every backup, the
volume is thus marked as 'used'. From the docs, I though this meant
that the volumes are kept for a period of 1 year before being pruned
and reused. However, now 6 months have passed and jobs are being
pruned.

You are seeing the 6 month job retention here. In your case this will
not work for exactly the reason you observe.

What I now see in the logs is: "There are no more Jobs
associated with Volume "X". Marking it purged.". And it then recycles
the volume for the backup job. This is not what I want. I've checked
in bat and the volumes that are being recycled all have an expire date
that is 6 months in the future. Can anyone tell me what I'm missing
here?


I would extend the job retention to 1 year.

John

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On Tue, Apr 3, 2012 at 15:17, John Drescher <drescherjm < at > gmail.com> wrote:
On Tue, Apr 3, 2012 at 9:01 AM, Ward Poelmans <wpoely86 < at > gmail.com> wrote:

volume is thus marked as 'used'. From the docs, I though this meant
that the volumes are kept for a period of 1 year before being pruned
and reused. However, now 6 months have passed and jobs are being
pruned.

You are seeing the 6 month job retention here. In your case this will
not work for exactly the reason you observe.

Well, from the docs: "The Volume Retention record defines the length
of time that Bacula will guarantee that the Volume is not reused
counting from the time the last job stored on the Volume terminated."
It also doesn't make sense to recycle as soon as the job no longer
exists in the database. I limit the job retention period to keep the
database small but I can keep the volumes a lot longer without
problem.

Ward

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Well, from the docs: "The Volume Retention record defines the length
of time that Bacula will guarantee that the Volume is not reused
counting from the time the last job stored on the Volume terminated."

That is correct.

It also doesn't make sense to recycle as soon as the job no longer
exists in the database.

Normally you have more than 1 job on a volume and jobs may have
different retention periods.

I limit the job retention period to keep the
database small but I can keep the volumes a lot longer without
problem.

Extend the job retention but cut the file retention. The job record
does not store that much information where the files will be the bulk
of the database size.

John

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On Tue, 3 Apr 2012 09:39:48 -0400, John Drescher said:

Well, from the docs: "The Volume Retention record defines the length
of time that Bacula will guarantee that the Volume is not reused
counting from the time the last job stored on the Volume terminated."

That is correct.

Yes, it has been like this for a long time, but always seemed like a bug to me
(at least a bug in docs -- the word "guarantee" is too strong).

__Martin

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On Tue, Apr 3, 2012 at 16:14, Martin Simmons <martin < at > lispworks.com> wrote:
On Tue, 3 Apr 2012 09:39:48 -0400, John Drescher said:

Well, from the docs: "The Volume Retention record defines the length
of time that Bacula will guarantee that the Volume is not reused
counting from the time the last job stored on the Volume terminated."

That is correct.

Yes, it has been like this for a long time, but always seemed like a bug to me
(at least a bug in docs -- the word "guarantee" is too strong).

So, is there any way to make sure it does not recycle volumes until
the retention period is over other then increase the job retention
period?

Ward

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On Tue, 3 Apr 2012 17:23:10 +0200, Ward Poelmans said:

On Tue, Apr 3, 2012 at 16:14, Martin Simmons <martin < at > lispworks.com> wrote:
On Tue, 3 Apr 2012 09:39:48 -0400, John Drescher said:

Well, from the docs: "The Volume Retention record defines the length
of time that Bacula will guarantee that the Volume is not reused
counting from the time the last job stored on the Volume terminated."

That is correct.

Yes, it has been like this for a long time, but always seemed like a bug to me
(at least a bug in docs -- the word "guarantee" is too strong).

So, is there any way to make sure it does not recycle volumes until
the retention period is over other then increase the job retention
period?

I don't know of any direct way to do that while still pruning jobs.

John Drescher is right though -- the job records are usually tiny compared to
the file records.

__Martin

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