Re: [rdiff-backup-users] Winsdows 7/Vista ACLs not restored correctly?

[Leland Best]

Thanks yet again Dominic!

On Mon, 2012-10-01 at 12:59 +0100, Dominic Raferd wrote:
> Leland:
> 
> Plaudits for your detailed research. Here is a developer thread from the 
> time when the Windows ACL code was being developed for rdiff-backup: 
> http://www.backupcentral.com/phpBB2/two-way-mirrors-of-external-mailing-lists-3/rdiff-backup-23/patch-backing-up-windows-acls-90543/
>  
> (June 2008).

Thank you.  I've looked at this briefly but it seems that, mostly, the
patches mentioned as "attached" aren't actually there.  Maybe I need to
be registered to see/access them?  Regardless, I did figure out that
win_acl.py was probably the place to start looking.  Well, that and the
win32security module.

Also, I was able to build my own Win32 native executable using hints
from a thread I posted a link to previously.  Things must have changed
since those posts because it required some manual intervention to get it
to build.  I used the latest releases of the python librsync and
win32security modules and it _did_ build eventually.  Sadly (or not
depending how you look at it), it seems to behave identically to
the .exe from the Sanannah/nongnu web site.

> 
> Sadly rdiff-backup is no long under development, the last maintainer 
> seemed to lose interest after March 2009 and no one has picked up the 
> baton. I still find it very powerful and reliable for backing up data 
> from Windows machines to a Linux backup server - I'm not bothered about 
> permissions, though.

Yes, it _is_ reliable _and_ useful!  And it is sad that development has
ceased.  Of course the thought of picking up/forking the project on my
own has occurred to me but since I don't even know python, never mind
the nuances of doing backups from (potentially) many different types of
file-systems, this seems unlikely at the moment. :( :( :(

[Off topic ...]
The way I structure my backups, permissions info is pretty essential as
I try to preserve enough to do a full system restore if necessary
(modulo the fact that I don't have to worry about big active databases
on any of my systems).  On Linux I back up /home frequently (to keep
recent backups of all users "personal" data) but / and /boot (or
whatever is necessary for a system restore) much less regularly.
(BTW, / and /boot are backed up with --preserve-numerical-ids.)  Then,
if I have to, I can start from "bare metal", boot a Linux live CD with
rdiff-backup on it (or install it if needed), mkfs the hard disk
partitions, mount and restore /, chroot to the restored /, mount and
restore /boot and /home, install grub pointing to the restored /boot,
and bingo(!) I'm up and running again.

I'd _like_ to be able to do the same for Windows boxes but this seems
unlikely (at least not directly with rdiff-backup) because of all the
funky stuff like "reparse points" and "alternate streams" that NTFS
supports.  But I would at least like to be able to back up and
(obviously) restore C:\Users (roughly the equivalent of /home on Linux).
However, if I back it up without ACLs as you suggest then if I restore
all of C:\Users, it seems like the permissions will be all wrong and
I'll just get a big mess to sort out.  Yes?  No?

As a final off topic note, I've just "dicovered" "burp" (see
http://burp.grke.net/http://burp.grke.net/ ) which claims to back up
Windows to Linux, and to do reverse diff style incremental backups as
well as some other nifty features but I've not had a chance to
adequately test it yet.  I _can_ say it's _much_ harder to set up though
for whatever that's worth.
[... well, back on topic ...]

>  (Note that the rdiff-backup option --no-acls works 
> both for Posix and Windows systems.)
[...]

Ah, no, I didn't know that.  Thanks.  I'll try that but I _suspect_ that
unless I restructure my backups it won't work for me (see above off
topic stuff).

I suppose another approach that might be adequate for C:\Users would be
to look at adding support for the cygwin ACL API to rdiff-backup.  I
think cygwin layers the the Solaris ACL API on top of the Windows ACL
API (see for example http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cygwin ).  Obviously,
that would require running it under cygwin but for me that would not be
a Big Deal.

Well, it sounds like I'm kind of on my own here.  If I get anywhere I'll
post here (unless this is the wrong place for that?).  In the meantime
any and all help, hints, comments, suggestions, etc. are more than
welcome!

Cheers
Leland
-- 
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Leland C. Best      | Creationists make it sound as though a 'theory' is
address@hidden | something you dreamt up after being drunk all night.
                    | -- Isaac Asimov
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