clefos/bacula-db repository overview

⁠Bacula on Docker

This work is derived in its entirety on the work of Jasper Lievisse Adriaanse of The Red Cool Beans company⁠ who is the original author and provides support and development for these containers. I have adapted the build process and some content for the s390x environment.

⁠Introduction

This is a working technology preview of running Bacula (Open Source) 7.4.0 in multiple Docker⁠ containers.

To make it easier to get started a docker-compose.yml is provided and it's assumed that docker-compose is used to start the containers. For actual deployment the docker binary ought to be used directly (e.g. by starting the containers as a service).

⁠Images

The images are available on the Docker Hub⁠ as:

• clefos/bacula-db-data⁠
• clefos/bacula-db⁠
• clefos/bacula-dir⁠
• clefos/bacula-sd⁠
• clefos/bacula-fd⁠

⁠Requirements

The following components are required for this setup:

• Docker >= 1.9.0
• Docker Compose >= 1.5.0

Instructions on how to install these on for example ClefOS, can be found here⁠ and here⁠. Please note that the Docker version shipped with ClefOS 7 is too old and cannot be used.

⁠Networking

This setup uses the networking features of Docker, therefore docker-compose needs to be invoked with the --x-networking flag. The remainder of this document assumes that a shell alias has been setup to shrink repeated shell commands:

alias docker-compose='docker-compose --x-networking'

The local network that will be created is named after the directory the docker-compose.yml file is located in. E.g. if the full path is /home/bat/docker/bacula then the network will be named bacula and this can be verified (after docker-compose up) with docker network ls.

⁠Starting the setup

Then fetch the images:

docker-compose pull

When this has succesfully completed you can start the containers:

docker-compose up

This will spawn five containers, which can be verified with docker ps:

• bacula-db-data: data volume container; will not actually run but provide a persistent storage
• bacula-db: PostgreSQL container, using storage provided by bacula-db-data
• bacula-dir: Bacula Director container
• bacula-sd: Bacula Storage Daemon container
• bacula-fd: Bacula File Daemon (client) container

docker-compose will run in the foreground and multiplex the container's output to the controlling terminal. To run all containers in the background:

docker-compose start

To stop all containers one can simple hit ^C if they run in the foreground, or when running the background:

docker-compose stop

⁠Configuration

⁠Bacula

Configuration files are stored in $PWD/configs/{dir,sd}/ relative to the directory this README file is located. The dir/sd directories are mounted read-only into the container to /opt/bacula/etc/

In order to apply new configuration the associated container has to be restarted. For example:

docker-compose restart bacula-dir

⁠Docker

There are several options which can be modified in docker-compose.yml. Changing their values does require either a docker-compose restart $CONTAINER, or a full restart of the setup if that's prefered (docker-compose ). The most common options:

• BACULA_DEBUG: defaults to 50
• mem_limit: limit the available memory the container is allowed to use. Size is memory + swap, in bytes.

⁠bconsole

bconsole can be invoked from outside of the container:

docker exec -ti bacula-dir bconsole

⁠Bacula client

A Bacula client container is started which runs the client daemon. The following environment variables are used to configure it's bacula-fd.conf:

• FD_NAME
• FD_PASSWORD
• DIR_NAME
• MON_NAME
• MON_FD_PASSWORD

Of which only FD_PASSWORD must be set, the others have default values.

⁠Support

These images are provided free of charge by Sine Nomine Associates. Various security measures have not been implemented or added in these images.

⁠Caveats

• upgrades between Bacula versions is not yet accounted for
• e-mail notifications are not enabled in the default configuration shipped with this demonstration setup. If e-mail is desired it can be enabled and pointed to an existing mailhost.
• Mounting a local bacula-fd.conf into the bacula-fd container is not supported yet. Due to the limited configuration possible in this file it is advised to set the documented environment variables for now.