The Bacula Console Restore CommandGeneralBelow, we will discuss restoring files with the Console Restore command, which is the recommended way of doing it. However, there is a standalone program named bextract, which also permits restoring files. For more information on this program, please see the Bacula Utility Programs chapter of this manual. There is also a program named bscan documented in the same Bacula Utility Programs chapter that permits restoring a catalog database from tapes.In general, to restore a file or a set of files, you must run a restore job. That is a job with Type = Restore. As a consequence, you should have a predefined restore job in your bacula-dir.conf (Director's config) file. The exact parameters (Client, FileSet, ...) that you define are not important as you can either modify them manually before running the job or if you use the restore command, explained below, they will be automatically set for you. Since Bacula is a network backup program, you must be aware that when you restore files, it is up to you to ensure that you or Bacula have selected the correct Client and the correct location for restoring those files. Bacula will quite willingly backup client A, and restore it by sending the files to a different directory on client B. Normally, you will want to avoid this, but assuming the operating systems are not too different in their file structures, this should work perfectly well, if so desired. The Restore CommandThe restore command in the Console program allows you to first select one or more Jobs (JobIds) to be restored using various methods, explained below. Once the JobIds are selected, the File records for those Jobs are placed in an internal Bacula directory tree, and the restore enters a file selection mode that allows you to interactively walk up and down the file tree selecting individual files to be restored. This mode is somewhat similar to the standard Unix restore program's interactive file selection mode.Within the Console program, after entering the restore command, you are presented with the following selection prompt:
First you select one or more JobIds that contain files
to be restored. You will be presented several methods
of specifying the JobIds. Then you will be allowed to
select which files from those JobIds are to be restored.
To select the JobIds, you have the following choices:
1: List last 20 Jobs run
2: List Jobs where a given File is saved
3: Enter list of JobIds to select
4: Enter SQL list command
5: Select the most recent backup for a client
6: Select backup for a client before a specified time
7: Cancel
Select item: (1-7):
As an example, suppose that we select item 5 (restore to most recent state). It will then ask for the desired Client, which on my system, will print the all the Clients found in the database as follows:
Defined clients:
1: Rufus
2: Matou
3: Polymatou
4: Minimatou
5: Minou
6: MatouVerify
7: PmatouVerify
8: RufusVerify
9: Watchdog
Select Client (File daemon) resource (1-9):
If you have only one Client, it will be automatically selected, but
in this case, I enter Rufus to select the Client. Then
Bacula needs to know what FileSet is to be restored, so it
prompts with:
The defined FileSet resources are:
1: Full Set 2003-05-30 11:49:47
2: Kerns Files 2003-06-27 21:30:51
Select FileSet resource (1-2):
I choose item 1, which is my full backup. Note, the information
that follows your FileSet names is the date and time at which
the FileSet was created. Each time you
edit the FileSet definition, a new FileSet will be created
(with the same name but a different date and MD5 so that
Bacula can distinguish it).
As a consequence, it is possible to have
two "Full Set" entries above, but each one will have a different
date. The date is shown to make the output a bit more user friendly.
If having several FileSets with the same name is confusing, you might
simply rename your FileSet each time you change it.
At this point, Bacula has all the information it needs to find the most recent set of backups. It will then query the database, which may take a bit of time, and it will come up with something like the following. Note, some of the columns are truncated here for presentation:
+-------+------+----------+------------------+-------------+---------+----------+------------+
| JobId | Levl | JobFiles | StartTime | VolumeName | StrtFil | VolSesId | VolSesTime |
+-------+------+----------+------------------+-------------+---------+----------+------------+
| 1,792 | F | 128,374 | 2002-08-03 01:58 | DLT-19Jul02 | 67 | 18 | 1028042998 |
| 1,792 | F | 128,374 | 2002-08-03 01:58 | DLT-04Aug02 | 0 | 18 | 1028042998 |
| 1,797 | I | 254 | 2002-08-04 13:53 | DLT-04Aug02 | 5 | 23 | 1028042998 |
| 1,798 | I | 15 | 2002-08-05 01:05 | DLT-04Aug02 | 6 | 24 | 1028042998 |
+-------+------+----------+------------------+-------------+---------+----------+------------+
You have selected the following JobId: 1792,1792,1797
Building directory tree for JobId 1792 ...
Building directory tree for JobId 1797 ...
Building directory tree for JobId 1798 ...
cwd is: /
$
Depending on the number of JobFiles for each JobId, the
Building directory tree ..." can take a bit of time.
In our example, Bacula found four Jobs that comprise the most recent backup of the specified Client and FileSet. Two of the Jobs have the same JobId because it that Job wrote on two different Volumes. The third Job was an incremental backup to the previous Full backup, and it only saved 254 Files compared to 128,374 for the Full backup. The fourth Job was also an incremental backup that saved 15 files. Next Bacula entered those Jobs into the directory tree, and as a default marks all files to be restored, tells you how many files are in the tree then tells you that the current working directory (cwd) is /. Finally, Bacula prompts with the dollar sign ($) to indicate that you may enter commands to move around the directory tree and to select files. Instead of choosing item 5 on the first menu (Select the most recent backup for a client), if we had chosen item 3 (Enter list of JobIds to select) and we had entered the JobIds 1792,1797,1798 we would have arrived at the same point. One point to note if you are manually entering JobIds is that you must enter them in the order they were run (generally in increasing JobId order). If you enter them out of order and the same file was saved in two or more of the Jobs, you may end up with an old version of that file (i.e. not the most recent). While in file selection mode, you can enter help or a question mark (?) to produce a summary of the available commands:
Command Description
======= ===========
mark mark file for restoration
unmark unmark file for restoration
cd change current directory
pwd print current working directory
ls list current directory
dir list current directory
count count marked files
find find files
done leave file selection mode
exit exit = done
help print help
? print help
As a default Bacula has selected all the files in the directory
tree. If you want to do a full restore, simply enter done, and
Bacula will write the bootstrap records to a file and
request your approval to start a restore job.
If instead, you wish to start with an empty slate (i.e. no jobs marked for restoration), simply enter unmark *. Otherwise, you can simply start looking at the tree and unmark particular files or directories if you do not want them restored. It is easy to make a mistake in specifying a file to mark or unmark, and Bacula's error handling is not perfect, so please check your work by using the ls or dir commands to see what files are actually selected. Any selected file has its name preceded by an asterisk. To check what is marked or not marked, enter the count command, which displays:
128401 total files. 128401 marked for restoration.
Each of the above commands will be described in more detail in the
next section. We continue with the above example, having accepted to
restore all files as Bacula set by default. On entering the
done command, Bacula prints:
Bootstrap records written to /home/kern/bacula/working/restore.bsr
The restore job will require the following Volumes:
DLT-19Jul02
DLT-04Aug02
128401 files selected to restore.
Run Restore job
JobName: kernsrestore
Bootstrap: /home/kern/bacula/working/restore.bsr
Where: /tmp/bacula-restores
Replace: always
FileSet: Kerns Files
Client: Rufus
Storage: SDT-10000
JobId: *None*
OK to run? (yes/mod/no):
Please examine each of the items very carefully to make sure
that they are correct. In particular, look at Where,
which tells you where in the directory structure the files
will be restored, and Client, which tells you which
client will receive the files. These items will not always
be completed with the correct values depending on which of
the restore options you chose.
The above assumes that you have defined a Restore Job resource in your Director's configuration file. Normally, you will only need one Restore Job resource definition because by its nature, restoring is a manual operation, and using the Console interface, you will be able to modify the Restore Job to do what you want. An example Restore Job resource definition is given below. Returning to the example, you should verify that the Client name is correct before running the Job. However, you may want to modify some of the parameters of the restore job. For example, in addition to checking the Client it is wise to check that the Storage device chosen by Bacula is indeed correct. Although the FileSet is shown, it will be ignored in restore. The restore will choose the files to be restored either by reading the Bootstrap file, or if not is specified, it will restore all files associated with the specified backup JobId (i.e. the JobId of the Job that originally backed up the files). Finally before running the job, please note that the default location for restoring files is not their original locations, rather the directory /tmp/bacula-restores. You can change this default by modifying your bacula-dir.conf file, or you can modify it using the mod option. If you want to restore the files to their original location, you must have Where set to nothing or to the root, i.e. /. If you now enter yes, Bacula will run the restore Job. The Storage daemon will first request Volume DLT-19Jul02 and after the appropriate files have been restored from that volume, it will request Volume DLT-04Aug02. Command Line ArgumentsIf all the above sounds complicated, you will probably agree that it really isn't after trying it a few times. It is possible to do everything that was shown above, with the exception of selecting the FileSet, by using command line arguments with a single command by entering:restore client=Rufus current all yesThe client=Rufus specification will automatically select Rufus as the client, the current tells Bacula that you want to restore the system to the most current state possible, and the yes suppresses the final yes/mod/no prompt and simply runs the restore. The full list of possible command line arguments are:
Restoring on WindowsIf you are restoring on WinNT/2K/XP systems, Bacula will restore the files with the original ownerships and permissions as would be expected. This is also true if you are restoring those files to an alternate directory (using the Where option in restore). However, if the alternate directory does not already exist, the Bacula File daemon (Client) will create it, and since the File daemon runs under the SYSTEM account, the directory will be created with SYSTEM ownership and permissions. In this case, you may have problems accessing the newly restored files.To avoid this problem, you can create the alternate directory before doing the restore. Bacula will not change the ownership and permissions of the directory if it is already created as long as it is not one of the directories being restored (i.e. written to tape). Restoring Files Can Be SlowRestoring files is generally much slower than backing it up for several reasons. The first is that during a backup the tape is normally already positioned and Bacula need only write. On the other hand, because restoring files is done so rarely, Bacula keeps only the he start file and block on the tape for the whole job rather than on a file by file basis which would use quite a lot of space in the catalog.The consequence is that Bacula will forward space to the correct file mark on the tape for the Job, then sequentially read each record for that Job until it gets to the correct one(s) for the file or files you want to restore. Once the desired files are restored, Bacula will stop reading the tape. Finally, instead of just reading a file for backup, during the restore, Bacula must create the file, and the operating system must allocate disk space for the file as Bacula is restoring it. For all the above reasons the restoration process is generally much slower than backing up. Example Restore Job Resource
Job {
Name = "RestoreFiles"
Type = Restore
Client = Any-client
FileSet = "Any-FileSet"
Storage = Any-storage
Where = /tmp/bacula-restores
Messages = Standard
Pool = Default
}
If Where is not specified, the default location for restoring
files will be their original locations.
File Selection CommandsAfter you have selected the Jobs to be restored and Bacula has created the in-memory directory tree, you will enter file selection mode as indicated by the dollar sign ($) prompt. While in this mode, you may use the commands listed above. The basic idea is to move up and down the in memory directory structure with the cd command much as you normally do on the system. Once you are in a directory, you may select the files that you want restored. As a default all files are marked for restoration. If you wish to start with no files, simply enter: unmark *. Then proceed to select the files you wish to restore by marking them with the mark command. The available commands are:
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