How to install Bareos (Fork of Bacula) Backup application in debian 7.0

Bareos is a set of computer programs that permits the system administrator to manage backup, recovery, and verification of computer data across a network of computers of different kinds. Bareos can also run entirely upon a single computer and can backup to various types of media, including tape and disk.

In technical terms, it is a network Client/Server based backup program. Bareos is relatively easy to use and efficient, while offering many advanced storage management features that make it easy to find and recover lost or damaged files. Due to its modular design, Bareos is scalable from small single computer systems to systems consisting of hundreds of computers located over a large network.

Who Needs Bareos?

If you are currently using a program such as tar, dump, or bru to backup your computer data, and you would like a network solution, more flexibility, or catalog services, Bareos will most likely provide the additional features you want. However, if you are new to Unix systems or do not have offsetting experience with a sophisticated backup package, the Bareos project does not recommend using Bareos as it is much more difficult to setup and use than tar or dump.

If you want Bareos to behave like the above mentioned simple programs and write over any tape that you put in the drive, then you will find working with Bareos difficult. Bareos is designed to protect your data following the rules you specify, and this means reusing a tape only as the last resort. It is possible to ”force” Bareos to write over any tape in the drive, but it is easier and more efficient to use a simpler program for that kind of operation.

If you would like a backup program that can write to multiple volumes (i.e. is not limited by your tape drive capacity), Bareos can most likely fill your needs.

If you are currently using a sophisticated commercial package such as Legato Networker, ARCserveIT, Arkeia, IBM Tivoli Storage Manager or PerfectBackup+, you may be interested in Bareos, which provides many of the same features and is free software available under the GNU AGPLv3 software license.

Bareos Components or Services

Bareos is made up of the following five major components or services: Director, Console, File, Storage, and Monitor services.

Bareos Director

The Bareos Director service is the program that supervises all the backup, restore, verify and archive operations. The system administrator uses the Bareos Director to schedule backups and to recover files. The Director runs as a daemon (or service) in the background.

Bareos Console

The Bareos Console service is the program that allows the administrator or user to communicate with the Bareos Director Currently, the Bareos Console is available in two versions: a text-based console and a QT-based GUI interface. The first and simplest is to run the Console program in a shell window (i.e. TTY interface). Most system administrators will find this completely adequate. The second version is a GUI interface that is far from complete, but quite functional as it has most the capabilities of the shell Console. For more details see the Bareos Console Design Document.

Bareos File

The Bareos File service (also known as the Client program) is the software program that is installed on the machine to be backed up. It is specific to the operating system on which it runs and is responsible for providing the file attributes and data when requested by the Director. The File services are also responsible for the file system dependent part of restoring the file attributes and data during a recovery operation. For more details see the File Services Daemon Design Document in the Bareos Developer’s Guide. This program runs as a daemon on the machine to be backed up. In addition to Unix/Linux File daemons, there are File daemons for Windows and MacOS.

Bareos Storage

The Bareos Storage services consist of the software programs that perform the storage and recovery of the file attributes and data to the physical backup media or volumes. In other words, the Storage daemon is responsible for reading and writing your tapes (or other storage media, e.g. files). The Storage services runs as a daemon on the machine that has the backup device (such as a tape drive).

Catalog

The Catalog services are comprised of the software programs responsible for maintaining the file indexes and volume databases for all files backed up. The Catalog services permit the system administrator or user to quickly locate and restore any desired file. The Catalog services sets Bareos apart from simple backup programs like tar and bru, because the catalog maintains a record of all Volumes used, all Jobs run, and all Files saved, permitting efficient restoration and Volume management. Bareos currently supports three different databases, MySQL, PostgreSQL, and SQLite, one of which must be chosen when building Bareos.

The three SQL databases currently supported (MySQL, PostgreSQL or SQLite) provide quite a number of features, including rapid indexing, arbitrary queries, and security. Although the Bareos project plans to support other major SQL databases, the current Bareos implementation interfaces only to MySQL, PostgreSQL and SQLite. For the technical and porting details see the Catalog Services Design Document in the developer’s documented.

The packages for MySQL and PostgreSQL are available for several operating systems.

Bareos Tray Monitor

A Bareos Tray Monitor service is the program that allows the user to watch current status of Bareos Directors, Bareos File Daemons and Bareos Storage Daemons. Currently, a QT version is available, which works with Linux and Windows.

To perform a successful save or restore, the following four daemons must be configured and running: the Director daemon, the File daemon, the Storage daemon, and the Catalog service (MySQL, PostgreSQL or SQLite).

Preparing your environment

Make sure you have postgresql or mysql database is installed before going to next step.This article assumes you have installed postgresql server.

Install Bareos in debian 7.0

Open the terminal and run the following commands

#URL=http://download.bareos.org/bareos/release/latest/Debian_7.0/printf “deb $URL /\n” > /etc/apt/sources.list.d/bareos.list

#wget -q $URL/Release.key -O- | apt-key add –

#apt-get update

#apt-get install bareos bareos-database-postgresql

Prepare database

We assume that you have already your database installed and basically running.

Currently the database backend Postgres and MySQL are recommended. The Sqlite database backend is only intended for testing purposes.

The easiest way to set up a database is using an system account that have passwordless local access to the database. Often this is the user root for MySQL and the user postgres for PostgreSQL.

If your are using PostgreSql and your PostgreSql admin is is postgres (default), use following commands:

#su postgres -c /usr/lib/bareos/scripts/create_bareos_database
#su postgres -c /usr/lib/bareos/scripts/make_bareos_tables
#su postgres -c /usr/lib/bareos/scripts/grant_bareos_privileges

Start the daemons

#service bareos-dir start
#service bareos-sd start
#service bareos-fd start

You will eventually have to allow access to the ports 9101-9103, used by Bareos.

Now you should be able to access the director using the bconsole.

For configuration details read the Bareos documentation

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