[lug] Bacula

[Nate Duehr]

Mike Stanczyk wrote:

>On Wed, 14 Sep 2005, Dan Ferris wrote:
>
>  
>
>>Does anyone have any experience with Bacula?
>>I'm thinking about dumping AMANDA (which I hate) and trying out Bacula.
>>Any advice or experiences would be welcomed.
>>
>>Dan
>>    
>>
>
>My Experience:  *Bleck*-ula
>
>I wanted to try it out too.  Got the tar.gz file, unpacked it, start
>./configure.  It couldn't find my mysql.  *sigh*
>  
>
Avoid this by using packages... which you did...

>Got the RPM files.  Couldn't install the RPM's unless the mysql root
>password was empty.  Huh?  Ok, I set the password to blank since the
>test machine was Internet connected.
>  
>
Now you've hit a packaging bug - a critical one at that.

The Debian packages don't have this problem, so it's not really a 
reflection on Bacula more as it's a reflection on the RPM builder 
him/herself.  They didn't do a very good job if their pre-installation 
script can't figure out that mysql is password protected and ask you to 
type a password to complete the installation!  (Who runs non-password 
protected databases?!)

You also may want to avoid a distro that allows such blech to be 
released, but that's a flamefest for another day -- or better, to be 
avoided altogether.  Hopefully there's a huge massive BUG opened against 
THAT goofy package.

>Turns out that all the different GUI's are for monitoring, the only
>way I saw to setup and manage the actual backup was with the command
>line interface.
>  
>
This is almost a comical comment on a Unix/Linux mailing list... maybe 
even a little scary.  GUI?  What's that?  (GRIN)

>That's fine for me but the people who I was investigating Backula for
>would be totally hosed.
>  
>
Or you'd have to write a GUI front-end for them.  Ick.  Not my cup of tea.

Would they have been able to run simple shell scripts you set up as 
"shortcut icons" for them?  I think there may have been a way to "dumb 
down" this for the end-user (since it sounds like that's what they need) 
with very little brainpower or time expended.

But, it worries me that anyone in charge of backing up ANY computer 
system would only know how to "point click and drool".  If this is just 
a home machine, I understand.  If it's a business... sigh... that's just 
sad.  I don't know the situation though -- but that just sounds 
worrisome from a support standpoint.  A little training and a cheat 
sheet and they should be able to run CLI commands... if they can't and 
it's a business, perhaps they should use a filing cabinet and pen and 
paper instead of computers -- seriously.

However, it does sound like there's an opportunity for someone who needs 
it really bad to donate some time to building a better GUI front-end to 
Bacula, though. 

It'll happen, eventually...

(Speaking of Free software, anyone else see the estimate that someone 
did recently where if you had to pay for the Free software in Debian 
Linux i386 to be created by pros it would cost approximately US $8 
billion dollars?  Impressive.  And still growing!  No, that particular 
comment isn't a Debian-rah-rah, it was just the distro the researcher 
chose to do the analysis on... most other distros would be similar... I 
think the link to the analysis was in Debian Weekly News last week?  
Hmm.. can't remember now.)

>Your Milage May Vary
>  
>
Heh... it did.  (GRIN)

Nate