dbcheck - Man Page

dbcheck [options] working-directory bacula-database user password [dbhost] [dbport]

This manual page documents briefly the dbcheck command.

dbcheck will not repair your database if it is broken. Please see your vendor's instructions for fixing broken database.

dbcheck is a simple program that will search for logical inconsistencies in the Bacula tables in your database, and optionally fix them. It is a database maintenance routine, in the sense that it can detect and remove unused rows, but it is not a database repair routine. To repair a database, see the tools furnished by the database vendor.  Normally dbcheck should never need to be run, but if Bacula has crashed or you have a lot of Clients, Pools, or Jobs that you have removed, it could be useful.

A summary of options is included below.

-?

Show version and usage of program.

-b

If specified, dbcheck will run in batch mode, and it will proceed to examine and fix (if -f is set) all programmed inconsistency checks. By default, dbcheck will enter interactive mode (see below).

-C catalog

catalog name in the director conf file.

-c config

If the -c option is given with the Director's conf file, there is no need to enter any of the command line arguments, in particular the working directory as dbcheck will read them from the file.

-B

print catalog configuration and exit.

-d nn

set debug level to nn.

-dt

print timestamp in debug output.

-f

If specified, dbcheck will repair (fix) the inconsistencies it finds. Otherwise, it will report only.

-v

Set verbose mode.

In interactive mode dbcheck will prompt with the following:

Hello, this is the database check/correct program. Please select the function you want to perform.
    1) Toggle modify database flag
    2) Toggle verbose flag
    3) Repair bad Filename records
    4) Repair bad Path records
    5) Eliminate duplicate Filename records
    6) Eliminate duplicate Path records
    7) Eliminate orphaned Jobmedia records
    8) Eliminate orphaned File records
    9) Eliminate orphaned Path records
   10) Eliminate orphaned Filename records
   11) Eliminate orphaned FileSet records
   12) Eliminate orphaned Client records
   13) Eliminate orphaned Job records
   14) Eliminate all Admin records
   15) Eliminate all Restore records
   16) All (3-15)
   17) Quit Select function number:

By entering 1 or 2, you can toggle the modify database flag (-f option) and the verbose flag (-v).  It can be helpful and reassuring to turn off the modify database flag, then select one or more of the consistency checks (items 3 through 9) to see what will be done, then toggle the modify flag on and re-run the check.

The inconsistencies examined are the following:

Duplicate filename records.  This can happen if you accidentally run two
  copies of Bacula at the same time, and they are both adding filenames
  simultaneously.  It is a rare occurrence, but will create an
  inconsistent database.  If this is the case, you will receive error
  messages during Jobs warning of duplicate database records.  If you are
  not getting these error messages, there is no reason to run this check.

Repair bad Filename records.  This checks and corrects filenames that have
  a trailing slash.  They should not.

Repair bad Path records.  This checks and corrects path names that do not
  have a trailing slash.  They should.

Duplicate path records.  This can happen if you accidentally run two copies
  of Bacula at the same time, and they are both adding filenames
  simultaneously.  It is a rare occurrence, but will create an
  inconsistent database.  See the item above for why this occurs and how
  you know it is happening.

Orphaned JobMedia records.  This happens when a Job record is deleted
  (perhaps by a user issued SQL statement), but the corresponding JobMedia
  record (one for each Volume used in the Job) was not deleted.  Normally,
  this should not happen, and even if it does, these records generally do
  not take much space in your database.  However, by running this check,
  you can eliminate any such orphans.

Orphaned File records.  This happens when a Job record is deleted (perhaps
  by a user issued SQL statement), but the corresponding File record (one
  for each Volume used in the Job) was not deleted.  Note, searching for
  these records can be very time consuming (i.e.  it may take hours) for a
  large database.  Normally this should not happen as Bacula takes care to
  prevent it.  Just the same, this check can remove any orphaned File
  records.  It is recommended that you run this once a year since orphaned
  File records can take a large amount of space in your database.  You
  might want to ensure that you have indexes on JobId, FilenameId, and
  PathId for the File table in your catalog before running this command.

Orphaned Path records.  This condition happens any time a directory is
  deleted from your system and all associated Job records have been
  purged.  During standard purging (or pruning) of Job records, Bacula
  does not check for orphaned Path records.  As a consequence, over a
  period of time, old unused Path records will tend to accumulate and use
  space in your database.  This check will eliminate them.  It is
  recommended that you run this check at least once a year.

Orphaned Filename records.  This condition happens any time a file is
  deleted from your system and all associated Job records have been
  purged.  This can happen quite frequently as there are quite a large
  number of files that are created and then deleted.  In addition, if you
  do a system update or delete an entire directory, there can be a very
  large number of Filename records that remain in the catalog but are no
  longer used.

  During standard purging (or pruning) of Job records, Bacula does not
  check for orphaned Filename records.  As a consequence, over a period of
  time, old unused Filename records will accumulate and use space in your
  database.  This check will eliminate them.  It is strongly recommended
  that you run this check at least once a year, and for large database
  (more than 200 Megabytes), it is probably better to run this once every
  6 months.

Orphaned Client records.  These records can remain in the database long
  after you have removed a client.

Orphaned Job records.  If no client is defined for a job or you do not run
  a job for a long time, you can accumulate old job records.  This option
  allow you to remove jobs that are not attached to any client (and thus
  useless).

All Admin records. This command will remove all Admin records,
  regardless of their age.

All Restore records. This command will remove all Restore records,
  regardless of their age.

By the way, I personally run dbcheck only where I have messed up my database due to a bug in developing Bacula code, so normally you should never need to run dbcheck inspite of the recommendations given above, which are given so that users don't waste their time running dbcheck too often.

bls(1), bextract(1).

This manual page was written by Jose Luis Tallon <jltallon@adv-solutions.net>.

This man page document is released under the BSD 2-Clause license.