Before you start

General

There exist different ways to start working with Bacularis. They depend on if you are a new Bacula user or existing Bacula user that wants to use web interface to existing Bacula environment. Also important is to choose proper installation method adapted to your needs. Below you can find tips to these questions.

Do you have Bacula installed?

Yes, I have Bacula installed

So, you are existing Bacula user. In this case to use Bacularis you need to install one Bacularis instance, the best on a host with Bacula Director. This setting gives you access to many Bacularis functions and it enables to manage your Bacula environment. After installing the main web interface, if you want you can add more Bacularis instances on other hosts with Bacula components by installing them or deploying directly from the main Bacularis web interface.

No, I don’t have Bacula installed

You are a new Bacula user. Since version 4.0.0 Bacularis allows you to install Bacula from scratch. It is realized directly in the Bacularis install wizard available after installing Bacularis. On the current host Bacularis installs the complete Bacula environment with the Bacula Catalog database, Director, Storage Daemon, Client and Bconsole. All of them are automatically configured to work with Bacularis.

What installation method should I use?

Installing with DEB and RPM binary packages

This is the easiest way of installing Bacularis. If you use Linux distributions for which we provide Bacularis package repositories, we suggest to choose this installation method. Packages are easy manageable and they take responsibility for preparing Bacularis web interface to use out of the box. See chapters: Install using DEB packages and Install using RPM packages.

Installing with Composer

This is method specially useful everything there where binary packages cannot be used. It is a method that requires to do a little more effort than installing by binary packages, but the installations steps are not too difficult. It can be a good choice also for users that would like to adapt and customize Bacularis files to own needs (Bacularis files location, document root path, selected web server …etc.). See chapter: Install using Composer.

Installing with Docker

It is very easy method of using Bacularis, however please note that if you want to configure Bacula using the web interface, Bacularis requires direct access to Bacula configuration files. Because of that almost all the Bacularis container images are provided with Bacula components inside container too. If you would like to use Bacularis instance in container with Bacula components located outside the container, you need to prepare it yourself. Exception of that is the bacularis-web container image that provides a pure web interface without any API part and it can be connected to any Bacularis API instance available in the network. See chapter: Install using Docker.

Installing manually

This method is good to choose for operating systems for which we don’t provide binary packages (ex: other Linux distributions, FreeBSD, other BSD systems, others…). It is also useful for users who prefer to have full control on the installation process and configuration process. It is also the most customizable installation method and OS-independent. See chapter: Install manually.

Will Bacularis work with my Bacula version?

The general idea of Bacularis for supported Bacula versions is to help users stop thinking in a way: “Which Bacularis version should I use with which Bacula version?”. It is something that in Bacularis we would like to avoid. Bacularis works with all Bacula versions starting from 9 up till latest. So, if you have a relatively modern Bacula environment, you can always take the latest Bacularis and be sure that it will work.