How does Bacula decide if Full Backup is Available?

Question

When bacula runs scheduled jobs, if no incremental backup is available it runs a Full backup.

1. Is this also true for differential (I imagine it is, but haven't seen that yet)
2. What does it base this decision off of? For instance the job and file retention periods might still exist but the volume that holds the full backup might have been recycled...

Answer 1

It checks the bacula database for a record saying that a full backup is available. Recycled backups would be declared in the database. If you particularly need, I can look in my database and remind myself which tables.