Hello Michael, I have installed Bacula many times onto various hardware via building the Bacula community software and have been mostly successful. I am not sure how far you have got in the process or what steps you have so far followed so I will describe my process which will hopefully help.
Firstly there are two Bacula manuals that describe the process. The miscellaneous guide, which covers building the software and has a step by step guide, and the main reference manual that covers configuring the respective database, in your case, and mine, Postgresql. Assuming all is running, but you are not connecting to the database, check that postgresql is configured to use ip addresses as I believe the standard postgresql install assumes unix sockets and psql will by default also use unix sockets. I suspect Bacula uses ip addresses as you can have the database server running on a different machine to the Bacula software. For this locate your postgresql.conf file (often in /etc/postgresql/17/main), locate the line listen_addresses = ‘ ’, and check there is no # at the front. The comments in the file should explain. Then restart postgresql. You may also need to configure the pg_hba.conf file, to ensure the user can connect via ip address, as again the default is Unix sockets. When using bacula I would also normally start it with bacula start, and check the log messages. After each change of the configuration files I check each one with the -t option. Then restart with bacula restart. David Waller [email protected] > On 5 Nov 2025, at 21:23, Michael Caruso <[email protected]> wrote: > > Greetings all. I'm trying to get Bacula community running at home to provide > backup services in my home lab and keep running into roadblocks, most of > which are my fault. I'm not an expert in Linux or c, my background is in web > development, but I'm learning. I'm on my fourth attempt, starting with a > clean install of the OS (Debian 13 (trixie), install development tools, > install PostgreSQL, and then build and install Bacula from source as there > are no packages available yet for Debian 13. The documentation I've found > has provided bits of insight but all of it seems outdated, some don't even > indicate PostgreSQL is a viable db solution. > > My current dilemma seems to be that, when the Director starts, it can't > connect to the database. I've been running the Director in debug mode like > this: > > michaelc@bacula:~$ sudo /usr/sbin/bacula-dir -dt -f -c > /etc/bacula/bacula-dir.conf > > and get this: > > 04-Nov-2025 16:13:21 bacula-dir: dird.c:1540-0 Could not open Catalog > "MyCatalog", database "bacula". > 04-Nov-2025 16:13:21 bacula-dir: dird.c:1546-0 postgresql.c:435 Unable to > connect to PostgreSQL server. Database=bacula User=bacula > Possible causes: SQL server not running; password incorrect; max_connections > exceeded. > 04-Nov 16:13 bacula-dir ERROR TERMINATION > Please correct configuration file: /etc/bacula/bacula-dir.conf > > I have a user in the OS, bacula, and the same in the database. When working > as the bacula user, I can manually connect to the database using psql like > this (the server name is bacula): > > bacula@bacula:~$ psql -U bacula -d bacula > > I can see the database and all the tables and run queries. However, if I > start the director as the bacula user, I get a different error: > > bacula@bacula:~$ /usr/sbin/bacula-dir -dt -f -c /etc/bacula/bacula-dir.conf > 05-Nov-2025 14:48:37 bacula-dir: smartall.c:418-0 Orphaned buffer: bacula-dir > 1048 bytes at 7fd0a400b338 from lib/berrno.h:92 > > Which implies a different problem. At this point I'm in over my head. I > understand the Orphaned buffer error but have no idea where to go from here. > > There's a lot I don't know about how services run in linux, but I'm hjoping > someone can point me in the right direction. > > TIA, > -- > Michael Caruso > _______________________________________________ > Bacula-users mailing list > [email protected] > https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/bacula-users
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