Bacula Message tweaks

Bacula tweaks: stopping those “boy who cried wolf” emails

Bacula is an open source backup program that “…comes by night and sucks the vital essence from your computers”

To be totally open about it, Bacula was hard to configure and use.  It’s just overkill for what I’m doing here. It separates the file-writing piece from the directing piece and the storage piece.   It was hard for me to learn how to use the console app because of the terminology.

Anyway, it’s installed, and it does run each night, as evidenced by its daily emails telling me it ran. Hey, Scott, I ran your backups. Your backups, I ran them. I get three of these emails daily, and I don’t want them unless it’s failing.
Here’s how to configure it so it only notifies you if something’s wrong. (if you’re anything like me, you’d be more likely to pay attention to its emails when it does have something important to say).

1. Open the /usr/local/etc/bacula-dir.conf file in your favorite text editor. I use vim.

2. Navigate down, down down into the depths of the file, and find the “Messages” section. Note that the word “Messages” is listed in several places, and you’ll probably have to skip several of them to get to the right spot. In my file, it’s close to the bottom, around line 378.

On a default configuration, it looks something like this:

Messages {

Name = Daemon

mailcommand = “/usr/local/sbin/bsmtp -h localhost -f \”\(Bacula\) %r\” -s \”Bacula daemon message\” %r”

mail = root@localhost = all, !skipped

console = all, !skipped, !saved

append = “/var/db/bacula/log” = all, !skipped

}

3. The line you want to change is that “mail =” line. Not the mailcommand line, or any of the other dozens of lines that say mail, just the mail line.

4. Change that line to read “mail on error.”

5. I think there are two such lines in my file, so be sure and check yours also to ensure you’ve got them all. You’ll know by nighttime, or whenever your job runs whether we were successful.

Also check out:

The Bacula Messages Resource