Bacularis Installation Support for Debian 13 Trixie

michaeldolzani

Good morning,

I am contacting you because while trying to install Bacula through the Bacularis interface (the first step after installing Bacularis and going to localhost:9097), I noticed that in the list of available operating systems, the choice stops at Debian 12.

I wanted to ask if and when you plan to add support for automatic Bacula installation on Debian 13 "Trixie" as well.

Thank you,
Best regards.

gani

Hello @michaeldolzani

Thanks for your question.

Yes, Bacularis supports installation with Debian 13 Trixie since version 5.5.0.

Are you sure that you use Bacularis >= 5.5.0? To see this item in the OS list, there is needed to use Bacularis 5.5.0 or greater.

Best regards,
Marcin Haba (gani)

michaeldolzani

Thanks for your reply.

I checked and fixed the installation as you suggested.

However, I am now encountering a new issue during the Bacula install at the “Install Catalog” step. The process fails with several PostgreSQL errors, for example:

psql:<stdin>:63: ERROR: syntax error at or near "24215" LINE 1: do 24215 ... psql:<stdin>:71: ERROR: syntax error at or near "if" LINE 1: if not found then ... psql:<stdin>:75: ERROR: current transaction is aborted, commands ignored until end of transaction block

It seems related to SQL syntax or transaction handling during catalog initialization. Could you advise on how to resolve this?

Thanks

gani

Hello @michaeldolzani

OK. This is interesting.

Could you tell me if in the past on the host, where you tried to install Bacula via Bacularis, worked Bacula or PostgreSQL?

On Debian the Bacula Catalog is initialized by the Bacula Director package. In your case this didn't happen and I don't know why.

As a result this caused that you encountered error with double dollars:

https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=1114916

but you shouldn't encounter it in installation on Debian via Bacularis.

I did re-test on my side with fresh Trixie and here it looks fine.

Could I ask you also about providing output from these two commands executed on the root account on the host where Bacularis tried to install Bacula:

su postgres -c "psql -lqt | awk '{print \$1}' | grep -qw 'bacula'"; echo $?

dpkg -l bacula*

Providing the full output from the installation process (Raw output tab in the Install Bacula window in Bacularis wizard) might be very useful as well.

Thanks in advance.

Best regards,
Marcin Haba (gani)

michaeldolzani

Hi,

The server is new and Bacula or Bacularis have never been installed on it before.
You can find the full installation log attached.

I also ran the two commands you mentioned — here’s the output:
su postgres -c "psql -lqt | awk '{print \$1}' | grep -qw 'bacula'"; echo $? 0

dpkg -l bacula* Desired=Unknown/Install/Remove/Purge/Hold | Status=Not/Inst/Conf-files/Unpacked/halF-conf/Half-inst/trig-aWait/Trig-pend |/ Err?=(none)/Reinst-required (Status,Err: uppercase=bad) ||/ Name Version Architecture Description +++-========================-============-============-===================================================================== ii bacula-common 15.0.3-3 amd64 network backup service - common support files un bacula-common-mysql <none> <none> (no description available) ii bacula-common-pgsql 15.0.3-3 amd64 network backup service - PostgreSQL common files un bacula-common-sqlite3 <none> <none> (no description available) ii bacula-director 15.0.3-3 amd64 network backup service - Director daemon un bacula-director-database <none> <none> (no description available) un bacula-director-mysql <none> <none> (no description available) ii bacula-director-pgsql 15.0.3-3 all network backup service - PostgreSQL storage for Director un bacula-director-sqlite3 <none> <none> (no description available) un bacula-doc <none> <none> (no description available) ii bacularis 5.7.0~trixie all The Bacularis WebGUI enables administration and managing Bacula jobs. un bacularis-apache <none> <none> (no description available) un bacularis-lighttpd <none> <none> (no description available) ii bacularis-nginx 5.7.0~trixie all This package provides the Nginx configuration for Bacularis.

Thanks

gani

Hi @michaeldolzani

Many thanks for providing all details. This gives more light on this issue.

I think the problem starts here:

Could not execute systemctl: at /usr/bin/deb-systemd-invoke line 148

All the rest with errors in the database initialization seems to be the result of this first error. This comes from init-system-helpers package from this bug:

https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=1076530

This bug in the Debian tracker is not solved yet.

The only problem that I have is to reproduce it in my Trixie environment.

As a workaround, to be able install Bacula, first I would propose to try install it in console by apt command, but before there is needed small clean up. I would propose to do:

Clean up:

apt remove --purge bacula-* postgresql-*

On questions about removing db you can answer yes.

After that if you want you can also try to run installation from Bacularis one more time to see if this was random error or not. If this is not random, then even installation with apt may fail either.

Please let us know how it went.

Good luck.

Best regards,
Marcin Haba (gani)

michaeldolzani

Hi,

thank you for your detailed instructions. I have tried both proposed solutions: installing Bacula via apt in the console and also using the Bacularis UI. Unfortunately, in both cases I still get the same error.

It seems the problem persists regardless of the installation method.

Please advise on the next steps or possible workarounds.

Thanks.

gani

Hi @michaeldolzani,

OK, thanks for sharing your feedback.

As I am not able to reproduce on my side this problem, that you experiece, this can be difficult to prepare any sure steps to fix the original problem.

But I would propose to try the following:

1) Please remove existing Bacula packages and PostgreSQL packages:

apt remove --purge bacula-* postgresql-*

On questions about removing/clearing database, please answer yes.

2) Try to install Bacula Director

apt install bacula-director

If you will be asked about questions for installing Bacula Database. Usually default values are the best onces.

In question about password, please set a database password.

3) If the installation process fails, try to start Bacula Director

systemctl start bacula-director

4) Check if connection from Bconsole works:

bconsole

5) Once the Director is working, you can install bconsole and FD and/or SD if needed:

apt install bacula-fd bacula-sd bacula-console

6) Add this connection to /etc/postgresql/17/main/pg_hba.conf PostgreSQL configuration:

host    bacula    bacula    127.0.0.1/32    scram-sha-256

7) Restart PostgreSQL

systemctl restart postgresql

8) Go to Bacularis wizard and do installation with this option selected in the first wizard step:

Yes. I already have Bacula component(s) installed on this host. I would like to use Bacularis with them.

====

Please let us know if these steps worked. Good luck!

Best regards,
Marcin Haba (gani)