BackupPC

> Good evening,
>
> I'm trying to backup a windows server (2003/2008) machine.
> Thing is, everytime I have to do a backup I must stop some services
> before.
> I know that while using rsyncd backupPC has an option which is named
> 'DumpPreUserCmd' and which allows to run a script before doing the backup
> but I don't understand how to use it in order to solve my problem.
> If I understood right, the script that will be run is set on the backup
> machine not on the one you want to back up.
>
> How could I make the script run on my windows machine? Where d I have to
> save the script?

The scripts run on the backup server, so you'll need a way to remotely
execute Windows programs from the backup server.  The venerable winexe is
up to the task; the alternative to shutting down services is to use shadow
copies.  There's a solution for that here:

http://www.michaelstowe.com/backuppc/

It could stand to be better documented, but it's solid.  There's an
alternative solution using ssh on the wiki, IIRC.

Hello Michael,

first of all thank you for answering me.
I'm going to use winexe to test it out since the teacher wants us to stop the service.
Whil reading the read me file, I saw that winexe is using the samba protocole.
Since my windows server isn't in the same network, I'll to go throw the internet but I head that samba isn't secured.
Is using winexe still a good choice? Even if I have to go throw the internet?

Thank you

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Hello Michael,

first of all thank you for answering me.
I'm going to use winexe to test it out since the teacher wants us to stop the service.
Whil reading the read me file, I saw that winexe is using the samba protocole.
Since my windows server isn't in the same network, I'll to go throw the internet but I head that samba isn't secured.
Is using winexe still a good choice? Even if I have to go throw the internet?

Isn't it better to use cygwin on the windows machine with openssh and run the script directly from windows?

Thank you for your answers

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On 15/01/13 18:52, elrich wrote:
> Hello Michael,
>
> first of all thank you for answering me.
> I'm going to use winexe to test it out since the teacher wants us to stop the service.
> Whil reading the read me file, I saw that winexe is using the samba protocole.
> Since my windows server isn't in the same network, I'll to go throw the internet but I head that samba isn't secured.
> Is using winexe still a good choice? Even if I have to go throw the internet?
>
> Thank you

I do use winexe on remote servers, but only over a openvpn tunnel. This
means samba is only exposed to the VPN rather than the Internet in
general. For a "test" or "project" or even school assignment, you might
expose this to the internet, but don't be surprised if the machine is
compromised by the time you complete the assignment/etc.

PS, actually, if you install every patch as soon as released, and use
decent username/passwords, then you would probably be fine, but I think
(in this forum at least) almost all people would not consider that good
enough security for a real live server.

Regards,
Adam

-- 
Adam Goryachev
Website Managers
 http://www.websitemanagers.com.au

hello,
thank you for answering Adam.
So what would you recommend me to use?
Cygwin + open-ssh?
Then how could I get the script to work on my windows server?

thank you for your answers, I must say that I'm kinda lost ^^"

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On Tue, Jan 15, 2013 at 6:04 AM, elrich
<backuppc-forum@...> wrote:
> hello,
> thank you for answering Adam.
> So what would you recommend me to use?
> Cygwin + open-ssh?
> Then how could I get the script to work on my windows server?

Cygwin ssh will make the windows system more linux-like.  That is, in
addition to the encrypted connection, you can install a bash shell and
the usual unix-like tool set.  If you want to work in a mixed
windows/linux environment it has the advantage of letting you use ssh
connections/commands everywhere.

Openvpn just gives you a secure network connection tunneled through
the internet.  You get a different IP address that looks like a point
to point connection so you can keep the public network firewalled.
The advantage here is that you can use any other network tools over
the VPN too - like vnc or remote desktop in addition to winexe and
rsync.

Either approach will work - I'd pick whichever fits your usage better.

-- 
    Les Mikesell
       lesmikesell@...

elrich wrote at about 23:52:10 -0800 on Monday, January 14, 2013:
 > Hello Michael,
 > 
 > first of all thank you for answering me.
 > I'm going to use winexe to test it out since the teacher wants us to stop the service.
 > Whil reading the read me file, I saw that winexe is using the samba protocole.
 > Since my windows server isn't in the same network, I'll to go throw the internet but I head that samba isn't secured.
 > Is using winexe still a good choice? Even if I have to go throw the internet?

You might want to look at my version "shadowmountrsync" that uses ssh
to launch vss.exe (after bootstrapping via 'at' to escalate
privileges). It also allows you to pre-dum acls using either 'getfacl'
and/or 'subinacl'.

The only challenge is that I wrote it for WinXP and haven't updated it
for Vista/Windows 7/Windows 8. It likely requires updating since the
usage of vss.exe has changed...

elrich wrote at about 02:04:24 -0800 on Tuesday, January 15, 2013:
 > Hello Michael,
 > 
 > first of all thank you for answering me.
 > I'm going to use winexe to test it out since the teacher wants us to stop the service.
 > Whil reading the read me file, I saw that winexe is using the samba protocole.
 > Since my windows server isn't in the same network, I'll to go throw the internet but I head that samba isn't secured.
 > Is using winexe still a good choice? Even if I have to go throw the internet?
 > 
 > Isn't it better to use cygwin on the windows machine with openssh and run the script directly from windows?

The problem (likely) is that ssh logs in as the SYSTEM (or equivalent)
user that doesn't have permission to run vss.exe. I get around that by
using a recursion script to escalate privileges via 'at'. I imagine
perhaps that winexe allows for direct launching of vss.ex.

On 16/01/13 01:08, Les Mikesell wrote:
> On Tue, Jan 15, 2013 at 6:04 AM, elrich
> <backuppc-forum@...> wrote:
>> hello,
>> thank you for answering Adam.
>> So what would you recommend me to use?
>> Cygwin + open-ssh?
>> Then how could I get the script to work on my windows server?
> Cygwin ssh will make the windows system more linux-like.  That is, in
> addition to the encrypted connection, you can install a bash shell and
> the usual unix-like tool set.  If you want to work in a mixed
> windows/linux environment it has the advantage of letting you use ssh
> connections/commands everywhere.
>
> Openvpn just gives you a secure network connection tunneled through
> the internet.  You get a different IP address that looks like a point
> to point connection so you can keep the public network firewalled.
> The advantage here is that you can use any other network tools over
> the VPN too - like vnc or remote desktop in addition to winexe and
> rsync.
>
> Either approach will work - I'd pick whichever fits your usage better.
>
Yes, exactly.... You could use any mix of these things:
1) cygwin ssh + cygwin rsyncd
2) cygwin ssh + cygwin rsync
3) openvpn + cygwin rsyncd
4) openvpn + cygwin ssh + cygwin rsync
5) openvpn + winexe + cygwin rsyncd

probably more combinations also... Personally, I've used (and still use)
items 1, 2 and 5. I feel the best option right now is option 5, since it
allows to do shadow backups, it is secure (tunnel/vpn) and it also
enables compression over the wan (openvpn) as well as rsync bandwidth
optimisation.

I also configure local scripts which are scheduled on the windows
machine (usually cygwin bash scripts) to take the backup files produced
by various commercial software in use (multi-gigabyte files) and split
them (using cygwin split) into a large number of small files (depending
on the customer, between 20M and 100M files), then let backuppc backup
these small files. This allows for some small changes in a small number
of the files for backuppc to still do file level de-dupe on 90% of the
data (90% of the files contents do not change, the attrib files change
because the timestamp changes, but that doesn't matter).

Hope this helps....

Regards,
Adam

-- 
Adam Goryachev
Website Managers
 http://www.websitemanagers.com.au

"he problem (likely) is that ssh logs in as the SYSTEM (or equivalent)
user that doesn't have permission to run vss.exe. I get around that by
using a recursion script to escalate privileges via 'at'. I imagine
perhaps that winexe allows for direct launching of vss.ex. "

I created a windows user named backupPC who is in the administrator group and the ssh logs me as backupPC.

My teach wants us to use cygwin or some equivalent software, guess I'll have to use cygwin.

I'm kinda stuck right now.

I installed cygwin on my windows server. When using cygwin I'm atomatically logged in as backupPC (backupPC@...), which means that I'll appear as cyg_server which is a memeber of administrators.

On my backupserver I tried to open an ssh tunel by doing this :
-log in as bakuppc user 
- created rsa key in ~/.ssh/
- cat ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub | ssh backupPC@... "cd .ssh && cat - >> ~/.ssh/authorized_keys"
- I then do a ssh manually : ssh bakcupPC@...
- I do this once again and I don't have to put in my password which means that the tunnel works right?

Yet when I try to backup my windows server I always get two errors depending on my modifications : 
-> Got fatal error during xfer (Unable to read 4 bytes)
or :
-> Got fatal error during xfer (fileListReceive failed)

here's my configuration : 
XFerMethod : rsync
RsyncShareName : /sygdrive/c/xdx (<--just to do my tests)
RsyncClientPath : /usr/bin/rsync
RsyncClientCmd : $sshPath -q -x -l backupPC $host $rsyncPath $argList+
RsyncClientRestoreCmd : $sshPath -q -x -l backupPC $host $rsyncPath $argList+

NmbLookupCmd : $nmbLookupPath -A $host 

My error change if I modify backupPC by backuppc in RsincClientCmd (backupPC being a user on my windows server and backuppc being the one created automatically on my backup server)

I'm sorry for my poor english

Thank you once again for helping me!

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"he problem (likely) is that ssh logs in as the SYSTEM (or equivalent)
user that doesn't have permission to run vss.exe. I get around that by
using a recursion script to escalate privileges via 'at'. I imagine
perhaps that winexe allows for direct launching of vss.ex. "

I created a windows user named backupPC who is in the administrator group and the ssh logs me as backupPC.

My teach wants us to use cygwin or some equivalent software, guess I'll have to use cygwin.

I'm kinda stuck right now.

I installed cygwin on my windows server. When using cygwin I'm atomatically logged in as backupPC (backupPC@...), which means that I'll appear as cyg_server which is a memeber of administrators.

On my backupserver I tried to open an ssh tunel by doing this :
-log in as bakuppc user
- created rsa key in ~/.ssh/
- cat ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub | ssh backupPC@... "cd .ssh && cat - >> ~/.ssh/authorized_keys"
- I then do a ssh manually : ssh bakcupPC@...
- I do this once again and I don't have to put in my password which means that the tunnel works right?

to be sure I tried a ssh -l backupPC@... which sais I was the user cyg_serv i think (though I log in as backupPC i guess it is normal to be loged in as cyg_serv since it is th user dealing with the ssh bridge?)

Yet when I try to backup my windows server I always get two errors depending on my modifications :
-> Got fatal error during xfer (Unable to read 4 bytes)
or :
-> Got fatal error during xfer (fileListReceive failed)

here's my configuration :
XFerMethod : rsync
RsyncShareName : /sygdrive/c/xdx (<--just to do my tests)
RsyncClientPath : /usr/bin/rsync  (<= I must be wrong but I didn't find a rsync.exe on my windows, just a something/bash_completion.d/rsync)
RsyncClientCmd : $sshPath -q -x -l backupPC $host $rsyncPath $argList+
RsyncClientRestoreCmd : $sshPath -q -x -l backupPC $host $rsyncPath $argList+

NmbLookupCmd : $nmbLookupPath -A $host

My error change if I modify backupPC by backuppc in RsyncClientCmd (backupPC being a user on my windows server and backuppc being the one created automatically on my backup server)

I'm sorry for my poor english

Thank you once again for helping me!

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On Tue, Jan 15, 2013 at 10:38 AM, elrich
<backuppc-forum@...> wrote:
> "he problem (likely) is that ssh logs in as the SYSTEM (or equivalent)
> user that doesn't have permission to run vss.exe. I get around that by
> using a recursion script to escalate privileges via 'at'. I imagine
> perhaps that winexe allows for direct launching of vss.ex. "
>
> I created a windows user named backupPC who is in the administrator group and the ssh logs me as backupPC.
>
> My teach wants us to use cygwin or some equivalent software, guess I'll have to use cygwin.
>
> I'm kinda stuck right now.
>
> I installed cygwin on my windows server. When using cygwin I'm atomatically logged in as backupPC (backupPC@...), which means that I'll appear as cyg_server which is a memeber of administrators.
>
> On my backupserver I tried to open an ssh tunel by doing this :
> -log in as bakuppc user
> - created rsa key in ~/.ssh/
> - cat ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub | ssh backupPC@... "cd .ssh && cat - >> ~/.ssh/authorized_keys"
> - I then do a ssh manually : ssh bakcupPC@...
> - I do this once again and I don't have to put in my password which means that the tunnel works right?
>
> to be sure I tried a ssh -l backupPC@... which sais I was the user cyg_serv i think (though I log in as backupPC i guess it is normal to be loged in as cyg_serv since it is th user dealing with the ssh bridge?)

Windows has some strange authentication concepts and logging in with a
key is not exactly the same as using a password, but I don't know
enough about it to help.   In any case if you get read access to the
path you are backing up you shouldn't have a complete failure.   I
normally run the cygwin ssh-host-config and ssh-user-config scripts
after installing cygwin ssh  but I've forgotten what they do.

> Yet when I try to backup my windows server I always get two errors depending on my modifications :
> -> Got fatal error during xfer (Unable to read 4 bytes)
> or :
> -> Got fatal error during xfer (fileListReceive failed)
>
> here's my configuration :
> XFerMethod : rsync
> RsyncShareName : /sygdrive/c/xdx (<--just to do my tests)
> RsyncClientPath : /usr/bin/rsync  (<= I must be wrong but I didn't find a rsync.exe on my windows, just a something/bash_completion.d/rsync)
> RsyncClientCmd : $sshPath -q -x -l backupPC $host $rsyncPath $argList+
> RsyncClientRestoreCmd : $sshPath -q -x -l backupPC $host $rsyncPath $argList+
>
> NmbLookupCmd : $nmbLookupPath -A $host
>
> My error change if I modify backupPC by backuppc in RsyncClientCmd (backupPC being a user on my windows server and backuppc being the one created automatically on my backup server)
>
> I'm sorry for my poor english

You have some typos there - various spellings of backuppc and
/sygdrive should be /cygdrive.   Check those first, and that if you
log in over ssh you actually see  /usr/bin/rsync.exe installed as part
of cygwin.    It is also important that no messages are output when
ssh connects before rsync starts.

-- 
   Les Mikesell
     lesmikesell@...

On Tue, Jan 15, 2013 at 8:57 AM, Adam Goryachev
<mailinglists@...> wrote:

> > 5) openvpn + winexe + cygwin rsyncd
>
> probably more combinations also... Personally, I've used (and still use)
> items 1, 2 and 5. I feel the best option right now is option 5, since it
> allows to do shadow backups, it is secure (tunnel/vpn) and it also
> enables compression over the wan (openvpn) as well as rsync bandwidth
> optimisation.

Off-topic question: have you found any way to debug winexe problems?
I use it for some other automation running from CentOS5 and CentOS6
hosts and find that it sometimes fails with a 'failed to install
service' error on the windows target but often running the same
command from the other system will work.  The winexe programs might be
slightly different versions or have different compile options too but
I don't know where to start to debug it.   I'd like to run everything
from the CentOS6 box but it seems to fail more frequently.

-- 
   Les Mikesell
      lesmikesell@...

> Off-topic question: have you found any way to debug winexe problems?
> I use it for some other automation running from CentOS5 and CentOS6
> hosts and find that it sometimes fails with a 'failed to install
> service' error on the windows target but often running the same
> command from the other system will work.  The winexe programs might be
> slightly different versions or have different compile options too but
> I don't know where to start to debug it.   I'd like to run everything
> from the CentOS6 box but it seems to fail more frequently.

Well, winexe sits on samba, so that's often the place to start.  Generally
speaking, most problems can be tracked down using smbclient to connect to
C$ on the same system.  If that doesn't work, winexe isn't going to work.

Since you're experiencing inconsistent symptoms from the client, I'd make
use of winexe's --debuglevel= switch to ratchet up the debug level, and
connect to a shell interactively.  (It probably doesn't matter what you
connect to.)

On 16/01/13 04:07, Les Mikesell wrote:
> On Tue, Jan 15, 2013 at 8:57 AM, Adam Goryachev
> <mailinglists@...> wrote:
>
>>> 5) openvpn + winexe + cygwin rsyncd
>> probably more combinations also... Personally, I've used (and still use)
>> items 1, 2 and 5. I feel the best option right now is option 5, since it
>> allows to do shadow backups, it is secure (tunnel/vpn) and it also
>> enables compression over the wan (openvpn) as well as rsync bandwidth
>> optimisation.
> Off-topic question: have you found any way to debug winexe problems?
> I use it for some other automation running from CentOS5 and CentOS6
> hosts and find that it sometimes fails with a 'failed to install
> service' error on the windows target but often running the same
> command from the other system will work.  The winexe programs might be
> slightly different versions or have different compile options too but
> I don't know where to start to debug it.   I'd like to run everything
> from the CentOS6 box but it seems to fail more frequently.

No, the main problem I've had is with winexe timeout on one specific
destination machine, however, I'm pretty sure that is a networking issue
(ie, there seems to be a flaky DSL connection in the way). I've tried to
add a few things to detect the timeout and kill winexe (because it
doesn't seem to timeout by itself), but this doesn't always work.
Sometimes, backuppc ends up launching multiple copies (one attempt per
backup window), which I login and kill manually.

Regards,
Adam


-- 
Adam Goryachev
Website Managers
 http://www.websitemanagers.com.au

elrich wrote at about 08:38:40 -0800 on Tuesday, January 15, 2013:
 > "he problem (likely) is that ssh logs in as the SYSTEM (or equivalent)
 > user that doesn't have permission to run vss.exe. I get around that by
 > using a recursion script to escalate privileges via 'at'. I imagine
 > perhaps that winexe allows for direct launching of vss.ex. "
 > 
 > I created a windows user named backupPC who is in the administrator group and the ssh logs me as backupPC.
 > 
 > My teach wants us to use cygwin or some equivalent software, guess I'll have to use cygwin.
 > 
 > I'm kinda stuck right now.
 > 
 > I installed cygwin on my windows server. When using cygwin I'm atomatically logged in as backupPC (backupPC@...), which means that I'll appear as cyg_server which is a memeber of administrators.

Just because cyg_server is a member of administrators does not mean
that ssh login has that capability. You can try it yourself... try to
launch VSS from within a (remote) ssh shell login.

 > 
 > On my backupserver I tried to open an ssh tunel by doing this :
 > -log in as bakuppc user
 > - created rsa key in ~/.ssh/
 > - cat ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub | ssh backupPC@... "cd .ssh && cat - >> ~/.ssh/authorized_keys"
 > - I then do a ssh manually : ssh bakcupPC@...
 > - I do this once again and I don't have to put in my password which means that the tunnel works right?
 > 
 > to be sure I tried a ssh -l backupPC@... which sais I was the user cyg_serv i think (though I log in as backupPC i guess it is normal to be loged in as cyg_serv since it is th user dealing with the ssh bridge?)
 > 
 > Yet when I try to backup my windows server I always get two errors depending on my modifications :
 > -> Got fatal error during xfer (Unable to read 4 bytes)
 > or :
 > -> Got fatal error during xfer (fileListReceive failed)
 > 
 > here's my configuration :
 > XFerMethod : rsync
 > RsyncShareName : /sygdrive/c/xdx (<--just to do my tests)
 > RsyncClientPath : /usr/bin/rsync  (<= I must be wrong but I didn't find a rsync.exe on my windows, just a something/bash_completion.d/rsync)
 > RsyncClientCmd : $sshPath -q -x -l backupPC $host $rsyncPath $argList+
 > RsyncClientRestoreCmd : $sshPath -q -x -l backupPC $host $rsyncPath $argList+
 > 
 > NmbLookupCmd : $nmbLookupPath -A $host
 > 
 > My error change if I modify backupPC by backuppc in RsyncClientCmd (backupPC being a user on my windows server and backuppc being the one created automatically on my backup server)
 > 
 > I'm sorry for my poor english
 > 
 > Thank you once again for helping me!
 > 
 > +----------------------------------------------------------------------
 > |This was sent by elrich.edward@... via Backup Central.
 > |Forward SPAM to abuse@....
 > +----------------------------------------------------------------------
 > 
 > 
 > 
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 > Wiki:    http://backuppc.wiki.sourceforge.net
 > Project: http://backuppc.sourceforge.net/

On Tue, Jan 15, 2013 at 8:13 PM,  <backuppc@...> wrote:
>   >
>  > I installed cygwin on my windows server. When using cygwin I'm atomatically logged in as backupPC (backupPC@...), which means that I'll appear as cyg_server which is a memeber of administrators.
>
> Just because cyg_server is a member of administrators does not mean
> that ssh login has that capability. You can try it yourself... try to
> launch VSS from within a (remote) ssh shell login.

And note that at least some versions of windows may treat ssh login
with a password differently than with a key in terms of having access
to things like vss.

-- 
  Les Mikesell
     lesmikesell@...

> No, the main problem I've had is with winexe timeout on one specific
> destination machine, however, I'm pretty sure that is a networking issue
> (ie, there seems to be a flaky DSL connection in the way). I've tried to
> add a few things to detect the timeout and kill winexe (because it
> doesn't seem to timeout by itself), but this doesn't always work.
> Sometimes, backuppc ends up launching multiple copies (one attempt per
> backup window), which I login and kill manually.
>
> Regards,
> Adam

To alleviate that sort of problem, I use this snippet (from my preusercmd
script):

--

$WINEXE --interactive=0 -U $UNAME -W $WRKGRP --password=$PWD //$BOX 'cmd
/c c:\backuppc\pre-exec.cmd' <&- &
pid=$!
# Wait 5 minutes
echo "sleep 300; kill $pid > /dev/null 2>&1" | at now
wait $pid &> /dev/null
if [ $? -ne 143 ]; then
   exit 100
fi

--

Note that I close stdin -- beats me why, but if I don't do this, winexe
has a tendency to run away occasionally.