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Two months after Bacula 17.0 Beta: what has happened since?

More than two months have passed since Bacula 17.0 Beta was released. Since then, users have been testing the new version, several bugs have been reported and addressed, and the first Linux distribution packages have appeared. Meanwhile, download counters show growing interest in the release. Here is a look at what has happened around Bacula 17.0 as the community awaits the stable version.

Oct 10, 2026 Bacula News Team Community

More than two months have passed since the release of Bacula 17.0 Beta. Throughout this time, the beta version has been available for users to install and test. In this article, we take a closer look at what has happened in the Bacula community since the beta release.

First of all, several issues related to problems encountered while testing the new version have been reported in the Bacula project's GitLab issue tracker. This shows that the beta release is fulfilling one of its primary purposes: allowing users to discover and report bugs that can be fixed before the stable version is released. The Bacula community plays an important role in this process. Let's take a closer look at these reports.

Bug reports

The first issue, #2779, was reported by a user named Alfonso and concerned an inconsistency in the JSON output returned by the bdirjson utility. Specifically, the JSON output for a Job resource did not include the RunScript directives defined in the JobDefs resource referenced by that Job.

The report did not specify the exact version used during testing. In response, Eric, one of the Bacula developers, announced that the bug would be fixed in the next Bacula 17.0 beta release and provided a patch for testing. The issue was subsequently closed.

The second issue, #2786, was reported by a user named Daan and concerned a problem loading the Cloud driver for devices configured in the Storage Daemon with the following directive:

Device Type = Cloud

Instead of loading the Cloud driver, the Storage Daemon reported an error indicating that the deduplication driver was missing. As a result, the Storage Daemon could not properly initialize the Cloud device, causing backup jobs using that device to fail.

In response, Bacula developer Eric committed a fix to Branch-17.0, the development branch for Bacula 17.0. The issue was subsequently closed.

The third issue, #2785, was reported by a user named Bill and concerned the update_sqlite3_tables script, which is used to update the Bacula Catalog database schema. The script failed because it attempted to use the NOW() function, which is not supported by SQLite.

Bacula developer Eric prepared and committed a patch to resolve the problem. He also pointed out that SQLite is no longer officially supported as a Bacula Catalog database backend. Nevertheless, a fix was provided in this case. He noted that if more serious issues arise, removing SQLite support from the Bacula codebase may be considered. This issue was also closed.

Another issue, #2782, also concerned SQLite Catalog updates. Reported by the same user, Bill, it involved a problem with the make install command used when installing Bacula from compiled source code. More specifically, the problem occurred while preparing the update_sqlite3_tables script, which produced an unexpected EOF error.

As in the previous report, Eric explained that SQLite is no longer officially supported but nevertheless prepared a fix for the problem. In the same discussion, Bill also reported the missing NOW() function mentioned earlier, which was subsequently tracked in a separate issue.

At the time of writing, issue #2782 remains open.

Community activity on Bacula mailing lists

Bacula 17.0 Beta has also been discussed on the Bacula-Users and Bacula-Devel mailing lists.

On the Bacula-Users mailing list, a community member asked about the availability of the deduplication plugin in Bacula 17.0 Beta after receiving an error indicating that the plugin was missing while configuring Cloud Storage. As explained in GitLab issue #2786 mentioned earlier, the underlying cause was the Storage Daemon attempting to load the wrong driver for a Cloud device.

Meanwhile, on the Bacula-Devel mailing list, Marcin, the developer of the Baculum web interface, announced that he had adapted Baculum to support Bacula 17.0.0. He also tested Bacula 17.0.0 in his environment. During these tests, the new version operated stably, and no significant problems were observed.

It is also worth mentioning that Bacularis 7.0.0, released yesterday and covered in our previous news article, also includes support for Bacula 17.0.

Bacula 17.0 begins appearing in the ecosystem

Bacula 17.0.0 has also made its way into the repositories of Mageia Cauldron, the development branch of the Mageia Linux distribution.

The packages were built on August 31, 2026, and include Bacula Director, Storage Daemon, File Daemon, and management consoles, among other components. They are available for several hardware architectures.

This is an example of Bacula 17.0.0 becoming available through Linux distribution repositories even before the stable release has been published.

Bacula 17.0 Beta in numbers

Let's take a look at the Bacula 17.0 download statistics. According to the download counters available on the official download pages, the following numbers had been recorded as of October 10, 2026:

  • 516 source downloads from the official Bacula.org website
  • 1,832 Windows installer downloads from the official Bacula.org website
  • 48 source downloads from SourceForge

These figures represent download counts rather than the number of individual users, as the same user may download a Bacula archive multiple times.

An interesting detail is the download counter for the Bacula GUI archive, which includes the Baculum interface. According to the official Bacula.org website, it has recorded as many as 13,515 downloads, significantly more than the other Bacula 17.0 files.

However, it is unclear whether this figure reflects actual user interest or has been influenced by other factors, such as automated file downloads.

What happens next?

More than two months after the Bacula 17.0 Beta release, development work on the new version continues. Community members are reporting issues discovered during testing, developers are preparing fixes, and Bacula 17.0 is beginning to appear in Linux distribution repositories while gaining support from other tools in the Bacula ecosystem.

Bacula 17.0 is still listed as a beta release on the project's official website. So far, no release date has been announced for the next beta, a release candidate, or the final stable version.

Bacula News will continue to follow the development of Bacula 17.0 and report on further significant developments.

Sources