[Box Backup] Results of Testing 784 version on Win2K

[E.W. Peter Jalajas]

Hi all,

We installed Chris' 784 version on Windows 2K SP4 today.

In summary, it's working and backing up 100MB's of files from a mapped
drive (protected by SyncAllowScript), as we e-speak.

A few items to note below.

Thanks,
Pete

-----

We are backing up from a mapped drive.  Yeah!  We shared out that drive
with fairly secure permissions, including full access to the backup
user on the box backup client system.  (I think we need a naming
convention...)  (I wonder if we can lock it down further by sharing it
out to only those two users from only that one box backup client. )
Trying to backup from the hidden/admin c$ share did NOT work; we just
reshared out that same directory under a new name and with special
permissions.

Some errors that we saw before we shared out the mapped system
correctly:
Failed to open T:\ error 5.
Trying UNC:  Failed to open '\\voyager\c$': error 123 
Flailing:  Failed to open '\\voyager\c': error 123 
Exception 1/9, Check Permissions.  
---Don't know what error 5 or error 123 are.

SyncAllowScript.bat seems to work fine in this experimental special
case of testing for the presence of the mapped system (not for testing
for access to the backup store; see my other thread).  We should
probably not rely on ping to prove that the mapped system is ready, so
I tried a simple dir T: > junk, and that seemed to work, the meat of
which is: 

set RETRYSECS=14400
::ping -n 1 %MINE% | find "Received = 1" > junk
dir T: > junk
if %ERRORLEVEL% == 1 echo %RETRYSECS%
::ping -n 1 %MINE% | find "Received = 1" > junk
dir T: > junk
if %ERRORLEVEL% == 0 echo now

(Testing to an unmapped Z: drive caused box backup to correctly report
that it was waiting for 14400 seconds to retry.)

POSSIBLE BUG:  When stopping the service, we sometimes get "the
instruction at...referenced memory at... The memory could not be read."
 Could very well be bad memory on the computer, it has a history of
problems, but it could be that it gives that error when we stop the
service when it is trying to deal with, or recently dealt with, a file
it can't backup for whatever reason.  (Remember, we're backing up from
a mapped drive.)

After we got it working, when we saw the warnings and errors on various
odd files in the Event Viewer, sometimes box backup would continue on
backing up other files, but other times, it would essentially finish
the session and appear to wait for the next go-round.  To avoid these,
we simply excluded those problem files in ExcludeFile and ExcludeDir;
for some, we put the "file" under both ExcludeFile and ExcludeDir (like
a problematic .zip file, e.g.).  See BackupLocations section below. 

We are also using KeepAliveTime for the first time.  Not sure how to
evaluate it.  

FEATURE REQUEST:  We are also using NotifyAdmin.sh with cygwin.   It
works from the cmd window, but doesn't seem to be working when we saw
an "error 5" file: "Failed to open 'T:\NTDETECT.COM': error 5"  seems
to stop further scanning, and doesn't seem to send mail. 
NotifySysadmin.sh  needed [[ ]] instead of [ ] around if statements on
this box for some reason.

The working BackupLocations:

BackupLocations
{
	T
	{
		Path = T:
		#ExcludeFilesRegex = T:\\Program Files\\Box
Backup\\.*-FileEncKeys\.raw$
		ExcludeFile = T:\pagefile.sys
		ExcludeDir = T:\pagefile.sys
		ExcludeFile = T:\boot.ini
		ExcludeFile = T:\NTDETECT.COM
		ExcludeDir = T:\WUTemp
		ExcludeDir = T:\System Volume Information 
		ExcludeFile = T:\N1 server.zip 
		ExcludeDir = T:\N1 server.zip 
		ExcludeFile = T:\ntldr
		ExcludeDir = T:\license
            	ExcludeDir = T:\windows\Temp\
            	ExcludeDir = T:\Temp\
            	ExcludeDir = T:\windows\system32\LogFiles\
            	ExcludeDir = T:\Documents and Settings\Default
User.WINNT\Local Settings\Temporary Internet Files\
	}
}

Oops, I see my inconsistent use of trailing slashes in ExcludeDir. 
I'll check that next time we go in.  

BUG:  Directories show up with 1969 Dec 31, 19:00:00 dates under
bbackupquery list.

BUG: Last and least, event log shows this version as 777M. 



***PLEASE NOTE***:  I will be on vacation in Maine from Friday Aug 25 through Sunday Sep 3, 2006.

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E.W. Peter Jalajas
Tebuco, Inc. | Technical Business Consulting 
pjalajas@tebuco.com | http://tebuco.com/ 
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