Subsections


Data Spooling

Bacula allows you to specify that you want the Storage daemon to initially write your data to disk and then subsequently to tape. This serves several important purposes.

Data spooling is exactly that "spooling". It is not a way to first write a "backup" to a disk file and then to a tape. When the backup has only been spooled to disk, it is not complete yet and cannot be restored until it is written to tape.

Bacula version 1.39.x and later supports writing a backup to disk then later Migrating or moving it to a tape (or any other medium). For details on this, please see the Migration chapter of this manual for more details.

The remainder of this chapter explains the various directives that you can use in the spooling process.

Data Spooling Directives

The following directives can be used to control data spooling.

!!! MAJOR WARNING !!!

Please be very careful to exclude the spool directory from any backup, otherwise, your job will write enormous amounts of data to the Volume, and most probably terminate in error. This is because in attempting to backup the spool file, the backup data will be written a second time to the spool file, and so on ad infinitum.

Another advice is to always specify the maximum spool size so that your disk doesn't completely fill up. In principle, data spooling will properly detect a full disk, and despool data allowing the job to continue. However, attribute spooling is not so kind to the user. If the disk on which attributes are being spooled fills, the job will be canceled. In addition, if your working directory is on the same partition as the spool directory, then Bacula jobs will fail possibly in bizarre ways when the spool fills.

Other Points

Kern Sibbald 2009-02-06