Has anyone used Bacula Network backup system

I had a look at Bacula but never installed it, looked pretty mature but too full on for my basic needs.
Yeah I seem to remember backuppc not actually doing what sounded really amazing.

So I am using backupninja which is very flexible and easy to use. There is a book page here under How-To's and links to more info.

Are we just a blip in history, where the working class had too much access to information and freedom?

Yes, backuppc looks to be vapourware atm.

Bacula is what I want, but, I've just found out that my nice 12/24 DDS tape drive is cactus, so now I need to buy something else. The only DDS I have working are 4/8 drives

Backup ninja looks okay, especially since it makes CDs or more importantly DVDs. Since most of my files do not change that often and are replaceable, I really only need to sort the frequent changers into 4GB lumps. Thanks for the link.

Summary, in my experience with Bacula, it is a pile of shifting shite. Very unreliable

Warning, if you sign up to the bacula-users list, then you should be aware that you are inviting spam to that email address as the list is publically archieved at gmane.org. Unfortunately, I could not find anyway to post to gmane either.

Doco is bad. You basically have to read war and peace before you can begin to test drive and try stuff.
Specification are very problematic. You need to specify stuff in multiple places. Meta-data madness.

Instead of saying "back up this machine:\path at this time to this drive"; you define the dataset (6+ fields), a backup cycle(another six lines), a tape pool(which requires a media definiton, retention definition), drive (12 lines) and they all need to interreferrence.

Yes, I've used quite a few heavy backup system before, but Bacula is needlessly complex in its configuration files.

SCSI; it is just an impression, but scsi handling/access seems to be rather bad. Sometime it works (fast data trasfer, tape handling, etc), but most times it is patchy and you are left wondering wtf the program is doing atm. I strongly suspect that Bacula ignores 30+ years of scsi on unix and in the MSwin mode, completely rewrote (badly) the scsi handling code. Note, what bacula is doing (multi-session tapes) is old hat and has been around for at least ten years and the mechanism is rather common (bacula read quite a few arkeia labels), so there is no reason for the tape drive problems.

I have five old DDS drives, three passed all the bacula test, a fourth half passed and one is now dead. Unfortunately, performance of the three drives that passed has been very error prone. These drives, don't have problems under normal scsi handling, nor under Arkeia/others, but under Bacula, the error messages just flood out.

ATM, I can not say that I am impressed with it.

Also depressing was a recent usenet post saying that someone who up upgraded to a later version (on Deb sarge), found their performance badly degraded. LOL, all the usual "blame the victim' comments came flooding out (your system, you've fiddle with it, you didn't set it up properly, etc,etc).

So, i am still looking for a good backup system.