Re: [Bacula-users] spool directory

[Rob G. <ro...@cr...>]

Alan,

It occurred to me that my LTO8 drive's device entry from my bacula-sd.conf
could be helpful. Here you go.


Device {
  Name = "drive0"
  MediaType = "LTO-8"
  ArchiveDevice = "/dev/tape/by-id/scsi-1097013295-nst"
  RemovableMedia = yes
  RandomAccess = no
  AutomaticMount = yes
  AlwaysOpen = no
  Autochanger = yes
  DriveIndex = 0
  SpoolDirectory = /mnt/spool
  MaximumSpoolSize = 75G
}

The other thing you might try is to 'sudo su bacula' then 'touch
/bacula/working/filename.ext'. See if the bacula user has permission to
write to the spool dir.

Regards,
Robert Gerber
402-237-8692
ro...@cr...


On Thu, May 29, 2025 at 8:57 PM Rob Gerber <ro...@cr...> wrote:

> Alan,
>
> > Spool Directory /bacula/working
>
> If you entered the Spool Directory directive as you specified it in your
> email, then it is probably malformed. I believe the proper format is:
> Spool Directory *=* /bacula/working
>
> You will need to restart bacula-sd after adding the new directive to
> bacula-sd.conf.
>
> You will also want to specify a maximum spool file size in the SD.
> Maximum Spool Size = size
>
> So you have a disk with available usable space of 231 GB, you will want to
> specify
> Maximum Spool Size = 231G
>
> My personal precaution is to specify a maximum about a gig less than my
> total available spool size, so I always leave a little extra space.
>
> Find your total available space with
> df -h | grep /dev/sda1
>
> Personally, I wouldn't name your spool directory 'working', to avoid
> conflating it with the actual bacula working directory. I would also
> personally avoid sharing a spool disk with anything else if you can help
> it. The whole point of the spool is to fill with data before despooling.
> Other processes don't like when all the available disk space is used up. If
> the spool runs out of space and something isn't handled politely, you want
> jobs to fail, not for *bacula* to fail.
>
> I very highly recommend you read more about spooling here (using an
> archive.org link since the bacula web server seems to be having trouble
> right now):
>
> https://web.archive.org/web/20221002134501/https://www.bacula.org/9.6.x-manuals/en/main/Data_Spooling.html
>
> You can run 'ps aux | grep bacula' to see what bacula processes are
> running. I would expect to see bacula-dir, bacula-sd, and bacula-fd on your
> primary bacula server.
>
> As Bill mentioned, you can launch the bacula-sd in the foreground and in
> debug mode to troubleshoot why it isn't starting.
> > # sudo -u bacula /opt/bacula/bin/bacula-sd -d100 -f     (adjust the path
> to where bacula-sd lives on Slackware)
>
> You can also launch the bacula dir and bacula sd in test mode, where the
> process starts, checks the validity of its config file, reports the first
> error found (if any), and exits. To do this, run:
> sudo bacula-dir -t -u bacula -g bacula   # Bacula-dir config file test
> sudo bacula-sd -t -u bacula -g bacula   # Bacula-sd config file test
>
> Once you've fixed the reported error, rerun the config file test for the
> relevant bacula component to find the next error. Fix that error, if any.
> Repeat until it exits 0, without any output.
>
> Please note that you very much DO NOT WANT to launch bacula processes as
> root (except for the FD). This is because bacula processes create state and
> pid files in the bacula working directory, and if it is ran as root these
> files will be owned by root and will have the wrong permissions the next
> time bacula launches as the bacula user (default bacula user is 'bacula',
> you may have done something different).
>
> Regards,
> Robert Gerber
> 402-237-8692
> ro...@cr...
>
>
> On Thu, May 29, 2025 at 4:48 PM Alan Polinsky <ala...@gm...>
> wrote:
>
>> Bill:
>>
>>
>> Thanks for getting back so quickly. In my original (non spool file
>> inclusion) i get:
>>
>> tcp    0    0 0.0.0.0:9103    0.0.0.0:*        LISTEN
>> 10177/bacula-sd
>>
>> Including the spool file directive I get nothing. In all conf files I
>> list the host name as slcakware.polinsky.home
>>
>>
>> In Slackware, software is stored at
>>
>> /var/bacula
>>
>> That directory is owned by root:root. All subsidiary directories,
>> plugins, scripts, and working are bacula:bacula. (As I mentioned all those
>> directories are on the second sdb disc. I have attached sda1 to /bacula.
>> that parent direcotry is owned by root:root. the /bacula/working directory
>> is owned by bacula:bacula.
>>
>> For right now I am sticking with the original configuration.
>>
>>
>> Alan
>> On 5/29/25 17:15, Bill Arlofski via Bacula-users wrote:
>>
>> On 5/29/25 3:02 PM, Alan Polinsky wrote:
>>
>> I've been running Bacula 9.6.7 for many years with an attached LTO3 tape
>> drive. The machine hosting Bacula is an old Dell Optiplex. Though I am
>> always in Slackware, there is a small 250 gig drive that had Windows 10
>> installed on it, even though It was never booted in that operating system.
>> With the prospective of Microsoft abandoning Windows 10, I decided to
>> reformat that disc as ext4 and attached it to /bacula. The directive in
>> /etc/fstab is  /dev/sda1        /bacula        ext4        defaults 0    0.
>>
>> I created a directory under that called working and changed ownership to
>> bacula:bacula. In the bacula-sd.conf file I added:
>>
>>      Spool Directory /bacula/working
>>
>>
>> I have changed no other directives in the two remaining conf files. I get
>> the following error
>>
>>
>> Fatal error: bsockcore.c:208 Un
>> able to connect to Storage daemon on slackware151.polinsky.home:9103.
>> ERR=Connection
>> refused
>>
>> The added disc is sda, Slackware is on sdb. What do I have to
>> additionally change to allow the spool file to use sda?
>>
>>
>> Thank you.
>>
>>
>> Alan
>>
>>
>> Hello Alan,
>>
>> This looks to me like the SD is not starting/running on
>> `slackware151.polinsky.home`
>>
>> On that system what does this show:
>>
>> # netstat -tlpn | grep 9103
>>
>> I suspect a missing permission, or wrong ownership further up the
>> /opt/bacula tree...
>>
>> You can test the SD in debug and foreground mode:
>>
>> # sudo -u bacula /opt/bacula/bin/bacula-sd -d100 -f     (adjust the path
>> to where bacula-sd lives on Slackware)
>>
>>
>> ...And should quickly see what the reason is.
>>
>>
>> Hope this helps,
>> Bill
>>
>>
>>
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