dbcheck

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.

The dbcheck program can be found in the /opt/bacula/bin directory.

It is called:

Usage: dbcheck [-c config ] [-B] [-C catalog name] [-d debug_level]
  <working-directory> <bacula-database> <user> <password> [<dbhost>] [<dbport>]
       -b              batch mode
       -C              catalog name in the director conf file
       -c              Director conf filename
       -B              print catalog configuration and exit
       -d <nn>         set debug level to <nn>
       -dt             print timestamp in debug output
       -f              fix inconsistencies
       -v              verbose
       -?              print this message

If the -B option is specified, dbcheck will print out catalog information in a simple text based format. This is useful to backup it in a secure way.

$ dbcheck -B
catalog=MyCatalog
db_type=SQLite
db_name=regress
db_driver=
db_user=regress
db_password=
db_address=
db_port=0
db_socket=

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.

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

If the -b option is specified, dbcheck will run in batch mode, and it will proceed to examine and fix (if -f is set) all programmed inconsistency checks. If the -b option is not specified, dbcheck will enter interactive mode and 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.

If you are using MySQL, dbcheck will ask you if you want to create temporary indexes to speed up orphaned Path and Filename elimination.

Mostly for PostgreSQL users, we provide a pure SQL script dbcheck replacement in examples/database/dbcheck.sql that works with global queries instead of many small queries like dbcheck. Execution instructions are at the top of the script and you will need to type COMMIT at the end to validate modifications.

If you are using bweb or brestore, don’t eliminate orphaned Path, else you will have to rebuild brestore_pathvisibility and brestore_pathhierarchy indexes.

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 in spite of the recommendations given above, which are given so that users don’t waste their time running dbcheck too often.

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