[Box Backup] Attributes not backed up correctly, also request to add ACL support

[Achim]

Hello Chris:

On Tue, 11 Aug 2009 00:08:49 +0100 (BST), Chris Wilson <chris@qwirx.com>
wrote:
>> It appears that Read-Only works, but Hidden and System [attributes] 
>> do not get backed up/restored correctly.
> 
> You are correct about that. Box Backup was designed to support Unix 
> attributes, not Windows, and they are quite different.
> 
> So how important are these attributes? If we ignored them entirely and 
> didn't report compare errors if they differed, would that be
satisfactory? 
> (given that you got your data back anyway).

I think the "Archive" attribute is definitely irrelevant: never understood
its use anyway (-:

Hidden and System are more important: they are probably set for a reason,
for instance to
1/ Reduce user confusion (after restore without hidden, many more files
might show up!)
2/ Protect the system from the user (hidden and system files by default do
not show up in explorer.exe and are therefore somewhat "saver" from being
deleted by the user)

Some example of real hidden system files:

A   H      C:\Documents and Settings\ajl\NTUSER.DAT
A   H      C:\Documents and Settings\ajl\ntuser.dat.LOG
   SH      C:\Documents and Settings\ajl\ntuser.ini

>From your answer "ignore[..] them entirely" I understand that this is not
an easy fix, and perhaps not possible at all?

>> In addition, as I wrote in my e-mail "ACL support" from 11/04/2009 at 
>> 18:33, I wonder if it would be possible to add support for additional 
>> information on top of the POSIX ACL (which I haven't tested either, 
>> BTW).
> 
> I have started work on Windows ACL support but it is not checked in, it 
> causes backwards incompatibility for different client versions, and has 
> several bugs that I have not had time to fix. At least one Windows user
of 
> Box Backup threatened to stop using it if I implemented full restore of 
> Windows ACLs.

So that user threatens to stop using Box Backup if it gets more accurate at
backing up and restoring meta data? Interesting case, would be nice to know
the rationale behind that position.

There is always the possibility of "Add a switch, functionality is disabled
by default": if somebody wants to use it, they have to make sure that
backend and frontend are compatible, and then enable the ACL feature
themselves. In 3 years, when everybody is on a more recent (i.e. already
ACL-compliant) platform, you can throw the default switch to on.

I would be very happy to see ACL support for Windows under Box Backup.
Posix ACLs work perfectly, acorrding to my tests with the Backup Bouncer
test suite for OS X [1].

Best regards, Achim

[1] <http://www.n8gray.org/code/backup-bouncer/>