Re: [Bacula-users] Compare backup with actual data on client

[Bill A. <wa...@pr...>]

On 2/14/25 12:14 PM, Sebastian Suchanek wrote:
> Hi list!
> 
> Since last night I have remote system (with a bacula file-daemon on it),
> that I can't access physically for the next couple of days and which is
> somewhat "half-crashed". I'm suspecting a filesystem issue. It throws
> various errors and I can't access it via SSH anymore, but most of the
> services on it seem to be still running - including the bacula-fd.
> I'd prefer not to run a full backup (yet) for various reasons. Instead,
> I would like to do a comparison between the last backup(s) and the
> actual filesystem. Preferably including not only filesystem metadata
> like file size and file dates, but also comparing contents of each file,
> for files might also be "internally" corrupted.
> Is there any way to do such a comparison and get a list of files where
> the backuped data differs from the current filesystem? (So that I can
> manually check which files are *not* supposed to have changed since the
> last backup and restore them, while leaving files that have been changed
> on purpose untouched.) And, if yes, how can I do that?
> 
> 
> Thanks in advance,
> 
> Sebastian
> 
> PS: And yes, I will replace the storage hardware of the system in
>        question as soon as possible.

Hello Sebasitan,

Sounds like you are looking for Bacula's `Verify` job with level `DiskToCatalog`.

 From the main manual:
----8<----
This level causes Bacula to read the files as they currently are on disk, and
to compare the current file attributes with the attributes saved in the catalog from
the last backup for the job specified on the VerifyJob directive. This level differs
from the . VolumeToCatalog level described above by the fact that it doesn’t compare
against a previous Verify job but against a previous backup. When you run this
level, you must supply the verify options on your Include statements. Those options
determine what attribute fields are compared.

This command can be very useful if you have disk problems because it will compare
the current state of your disk against the last successful backup, which may be several
jobs.
----8<----


Hope this helps,
Bill

-- 
Bill Arlofski
wa...@pr...