New release 17.0.0 (BETA) of Bacula Community

Hello,

We are pleased to announce the first beta release of Bacula 17.0.0 on both the
Bacula website (www.bacula.org) and SourceForge.

This beta release includes hundreds of patches and thousands of new lines of code,
mainly backported from Bacula Enterprise, and no AI slope.

We have introduced many new security features to protect the File Daemon. I strongly
recommend implementing them whenever possible. For example, you can now restrict
RunScript execution to a specific set of directories (or forbid it entirely),
limit restore destinations, and restrict the locations from which files can be backed up.

The CRAM-MD5 handshake protocol has been replaced with SCRAM-SHA256 to remove the
weak MD5 protocol from Bacula. Keep in mind, however, that network communication
is also protected by TLS by default, so if you cannot install use GSASL it is not
a critical flaw.

It is now simpler to protect a single job from being pruned from the catalog with
the "update jobix=x prune" command.

Some default behaviors have changed since the previous version:
 - The DirectoryACL and UidAcl Console ACL directives can now be left unset, rather than being set to *all*
 - The Storage Daemon Device/SyncOnClose directive is now enabled by default

Other changes are described in the ReleaseNotes file.

The documentation is available online at https://docs.baculasystems.com

We have added a brand-new feedback button. The distinction between Community and
Enterprise versions is now indicated through dedicated tags, and the Developer Guide
for advanced users is now available online:
https://docs.baculasystems.com/BEAdvancedFeaturesUsage/DeveloperGuide/index.html#developerguide

We have also reorganized the Technical Reference chapter and introduced a new format
for presenting directives:
https://docs.baculasystems.com/BETechnicalReference/Director/DirectorResourceTypes/DirectorResource/index.html#technicalreferencedirdirectorresource

Binaries for Windows, Red Hat 7, 8, 9, and 10 (and compatible systems), Debian 11,
12, and 13, and Ubuntu 22, 24, and 26 LTS are available on Bacula.org. Any feedback
is welcome ! (Note that it's a "beta" release, but packages are in the "release" part).

The certificate used to sign package is still the same one, and we will work to support a stronger
one for the official stable release.

Thanks to all contributors, especially Bacula Systems, for their support!

Thank you for using Bacula.
Eric

https://www.bacula.org/source-download-center/
https://www.bacula.org/downloads/Bacula-17.0.0/ReleaseNotes