Hi Jan,

Am 20.01.2026 um 18:14 schrieb Jan Sielemann via Bacula-users:
Due to bad internet-connection I need to first store full backups in Pool-Full, which points to a local sd.

Meanwhile making incremental backups to Pool-Incremental on the remote sd, I copy the files manually to remote-server.

Since they arrived, I do a checksum-comparison and the update the media table like so

UPDATE media SET storageid=16 WHERE volumename='Volume-Full-0166';

Besides the hint that rsync might be a useful tool to simplify the actual volume transfer, I can state that your approach to make the volumes remotely available would work, as far as I'm aware.

There is one caveat.

There always is, isn't it? :-)

You need to ensure you have storage devices with matching media types on both SDs, which in itself would be something to only do with great care.

In your particular case, this would work because you actually expect to move volumes, and you explicitly mark the moved volumes to appear to "belong" to the correct storage device.

However, Bacula itself does not have the concept of a volume belonging to a particular device. Once you have a situation where all the "normal" storage devices are in use and you start a restore which would need one of the moved volumes, Bacula will notice that it's "normal" storage device is currently not available, and any other devices using the same media type will be eligible. End result: You'll either have to copy back your volumes, or abort the restore, wait, and retry.

In your particular situation, I would set up the local and the remote storages with distinct media types, and then make sure to update not only the storageid field, but also update the media type.

Identical media types with different storage daemons is something you should only do if the devices are expected to share volumes; as Bacula does not do strict locking of volumes between SDs, you would then still have a "preferred" storage device (and SD), but could count on the other one being available if needed. Personally, I'd usually set up things so that the secondary, emergency side is configured with read-only devices, and copying / syncinc of volumes is monitored, so that at least I know when I can end up with inconsistencies and resulting restore errors when using the secondary site.

Well, and we also have storage groups, where you can actually set up Bacula in a way that you don't have to manage storage ids manually (which are supposed to be a behind-the-scenes piece of metadata for good reasons as far as I understand) but that might actually cause more trouble for your particular setup :-)

Also note that fixing volume metadata when changing media types or moving volumes can easily become a nightmare once you start creating inconsistencies due to configuration changes and partial updates... thus, in your case, if you find your process to work predictably, don't touch it -- but be aware that Bacula will eventually fall back to selecting devices by looking at Media Type settings.


Cheers,

Arno

to the same pool but with a remote storage (where they are physically present).

It's clear, that the backup only is valid when all the Full-Backup-Files arrived at the remote location.

Comments welcome!

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Arno Lehmann

IT-Service Lehmann
Sandstr. 6, 49080 Osnabrück



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