Getting started

This walkthrough runs your first backup and restore. It assumes you’ve completed Installation and the services are running.

Open the console

/opt/backup/bin/backup-console

You’ll get the * prompt. Type help any time, or status director to check things are healthy.

What a fresh install already protects

Out of the box the Director protects itself — a working backup scheme with no configuration:

Two jobs (both run the local File Daemon, zstd-compressed):

Job	Priority	What it backs up
`Director-Confs`	10	`/etc`, `/opt/backup`, and the web console state (`/opt/backup/backupweb`). Volumes and the dedup chunk store are excluded so backups never fold into themselves.
`Director-Catalog`	11	Every local PostgreSQL database (the NGBackup catalog included), via the `postgresql` plugin.

A retention ladder of three disk pools on the Disc1 storage, auto-pruned, volumes auto-labelled <Pool>-NNNN:

Pool	Keeps	Used by
`Daily-Disc`	14 days	the weekday Differentials
`Weekly-Disc`	1 month	the weekly Fulls
`Monthly-Disc`	3 months	the monthly Full

One schedule (StandardCycle), all at 20:00:

Differential every Mon–Thu → Daily-Disc
Full on the 2nd–5th Friday → Weekly-Disc
Full on the 1st Friday of the month → Monthly-Disc

Edit any of it with config set / the web console, or add your own clients — this is a starting point, not a cage. See Pool, Schedule, and Job for the directives.

1. Run a backup

Run one of the default jobs interactively (or your own):

* run

Choose the backup job (e.g. Director-Confs), confirm, and the Director will dispatch it: the File Daemon reads the files and streams them to the Storage Daemon, which writes (and deduplicates) them to a volume. Watch progress with:

* status director
* messages

2. See what was backed up

* list jobs
* list files jobid=1

3. Restore

* restore

Pick (5) Select the most recent backup, choose the client, then browse the file tree:

cd /etc
mark passwd
done

Confirm the restore job. By default files are restored to /tmp/bacula-restores so you never overwrite originals by accident — change the destination in the restore dialog when you’re ready.

4. Verify

* messages

You should see Restore OK. That’s a full backup-and-restore cycle.

What’s next

Configure — define your own Clients, Contents, Schedules and Pools (the complete directive reference).
Restore — granular file restore, Instant Recovery, and cross-hypervisor V2V.
Plugins — protect databases, hypervisors and Microsoft 365.