Bacula 1.32 User's Guide Chapter 19
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The Windows Version of Bacula

General

At the current time only the File daemon or Client program has been tested on Windows. As a consequence, when we speak of the Windows version of Bacula below, we are referring to the File daemon only.

The Windows version of the Bacula File daemon has been tested on Win98, WinMe, WinNT, and Win2000 systems. We have coded to support Win95, but no longer have a system for testing. The Windows version of Bacula has been built to run under the CYGWIN environment, which provides many of the features of Unix on Windows systems. It also permitted a rapid port with very few source code changes, which means that the Windows version is for the most part running code that has long proved stable on Unix systems. Even though the Win32 version of Bacula is a port that relies on many Unix features, it is just the same a true Windows program. When running, it is perfectly integrated with Windows and displays its icon in the system icon tray, and provides a system tray menu to obtain additional information on how Bacula is running (status and events dialog boxes). If so desired, it can also be stopped by using the system tray menu, though this should normally never be necessary.

Once installed Bacula normally runs as a system service. This means that it is immediately started by the operating system when the system is booted, and runs in the background even if there is no user logged into the system.

Installation

Normally, you will install the Windows version of Bacula from the binaries. This install is somewhat Unix like since you do some parts of the installation by hand. To install the binaries, you need WinZip.
  • Simply double click on the winbacula-1.xx.0.tar.gz icon. The actual name of the icon will vary from one release version to another.


  •  
  • When Zip says that it has one file and asks if it should unpack it into a temporary file, respond with Yes.


  •  
  • You will then be presented with a WinZip dialog that should look something like the following:

  • Ensure that you extract all files and that the extraction will go into c:\


  • If you have installed CYGWIN on your system (very few of you have), you should install Bacula into the c:\cygwin directory rather than c:\ as indicated above for a non-CYGWIN installation. You will also need to delete cygwin1.dll and cygz.dll from the Bacula bin directory. However, if you do not have Cygwin installed on drive c:, but elsewhere such as drive d:, you will need to edit all of the installation, uninstallation, start, stop, ... batch files. If the c:\cygwin\bin directory is not on the default PATH, various scripts much be modified to explicitly specify the location of the file daemon executable.

    Even though Bacula uses the cygwin1.dll and cygz.dll files, it needs no other part of CYGWIN installed.


If you wish to install the package elsewhere, please note that you will need to proceed with a manual installation, which is not particularly easy as you must rebuild the source and change the configuration file as well.

This installation assumes that you do not have and never had CYGWIN installed on your computer. If you do, you will need to take care to observe the minor differences to the standard installation that we will note in this text. If you have CYGWIN installed on your system and you use the standard installation scripts rather than the CYGWIN specific scripts mentioned below, they will remove your mount points (automatically setup by the CYGWIN installation) and CYGWIN will no longer work until it is re-installed.

Once you have unzipped the binaries, open a window pointing to the binary installation folder (normally c:\bacula). This folder should contain additional folders such as bin. (For CYGWIN installations, this is c:\cygwin\bacula\bin, ...).

Continuing the installation process:

  • Open the directory c:\bacula\bin\bacula-fd.conf in the Windows Explorer by clicking on the bacula folder, then on the bin folder. Finally double click on the file bacula-fd.conf and edit it to contain the values appropriate for your site. In most cases, no changes will be needed, but you probably should change the name to be something unique on your system so that you can easily distinguish messages coming from different daemons. To make the conf file more general, we have not supplied the drive letter (e.g. c:) for the WorkingDirectory and the Pid Directory paths. You might consider adding explicit path specifications especially if you have more than one hard disk or more than one partition.
     
  • To do the final step of installation, double click on the Install.bat program. (For CYGWIN installations use the CygwinInstall.bat program.)
     

     
    This script will setup the appropriate mount points for the directories that Bacula uses, it will install Bacula in the system registry.
     

    If everything went well, you will get something similar to the following output in a DOS shell window:
     

     

    What is important to verify in the DOS window is that the root directory \ is mounted on device c:\. (Ignore this on CYGWIN installations).

    The DOS window will be followed immediately by a Windows dialog box as follows:
     

     

  • On Windows 98, Windows 95, or Windows Me, to actually start the service, either reboot the machine, which is not necessary, or double click on the Start icon in the c:\bacula\bin folder (c:\cygwin\bacula\bin on CYGWIN)
     
  • On Windows NT, Windows 2000, or Windows XP, to start the service, either reboot the machine, which is not necessary, or go to the Control Panel, open the Services folder and start the Bacula Service by selecting the Bacula File Server:
     

    Please ensure that the service can interact with the desktop. To do so, click on the Startup... button, and you should have something similar to the following (note, on WinXP systems the dialogs are significantly different, but in general have the same information):
     
That should complete the installation process. When the Bacula File Server is ready to serve files, an icon representing a cassette (or tape) will appear in the system tray; right click on it and a menu will appear. Select the Events item, and the Events dialog box should appear. There should be no error messages. By right clicking again on the system tray cassette icon and selecting the Status item, you can verify whether any jobs are running or not.

When the Bacula File Server begins saving files, the color of the holes in the cassette icon will change from white to green , and if there is an error, the holes in the cassette icon will change to red .

If you are using remote desktop connections between your windows boxes, be warned that that tray icon does not always appear.  It will always be visible when you log into the console, but the remote desktop may not display it.

Installation Directory

The Win32 version of Bacula must reside in the c:\bacula\ directory, and there must be a c:\tmp directory on your machine. The installation will do this automatically, and we recommend that you do not attempt to place Bacula in another directory. If you do so, you are on your own, and you will need to do a rebuild of the source. Note, on systems with Cygwin installed, Bacula should reside in c:\cygwin\bacula.

Upgrading

On Win98 systems, to upgrade to a new release, simply stop Bacula by using the tray icon and selecting the Close Bacula menu item, or by double clicking on the Stop icon located in the c:\bacula\bin directory, then apply the upgrade and restart Bacula.

On WinNT, WinXP, and Win2K systems, you may stop Bacula by using the tray icon menu as indicated above or alternatively you may stop Bacula by using the Services item in the Control Panel. Then to restart Bacula after the new files have been loaded, go to the Services dialog as shown above in the installation instructions and click on Start. On WinXP systems, the Services dialog is a bit different and is found by following: Control Panel -> Administrative Tools -> Component Services. Then click on Services (Local) in the left hand menu window and the services should appear in the right hand window, from which point, you can select Bacula and start it.

Post Installation

After installing Bacula and before running it, you should check the contents of c:\bacula\bin\bacula-fd.conf to ensure that it corresponds to your configuration.

Dealing with Problems

The most likely source of problems is authentication when the Director attempts to connect to the File daemon that you installed. This can occur if the names and the passwords defined in the File daemon's configuration file c:\bacula\bin\bacula-fd.conf on the Windows machine do not match with the names and the passwords in the Director's configuration file bacula-dir.conf located on your Unix/Linux server.

More specifically, the password found in the Client resource in the Director's configuration file must be the same as the password in the Director resource of the File daemon's configuration file. In addition, the name of the Director resource in the File daemon's configuration file must be the same as the name in the Director resource of the Director's configuration file.

It is a bit hard to explain in words, but if you understand that a Director normally has multiple Clients and a Client (or File daemon) may permit access by multiple Directors, you can see that the names and the passwords on both sides must match for proper authentication.

One user had serious problems with the configuration file until he realized that the Unix end of line conventions were used and Bacula wanted them in Windows format. This has not been confirmed though.

If there are other programs like Bacula on your system that use Cygwin, such as VCD-Easy, you may not be able to run the two programs at the same time because they are using different versions of Cygwin. As a consequence, if Bacula just won't start, see what other programs are running on your system.

Running Unix like programs on Windows machines is a bit frustrating because the Windows command line shell (DOS Window) is rather primitive. As a consequence, it is not generally possible to see the debug information and certain error messages that Bacula prints. With a bit of work, however, it is possible. When everything else fails and you want to see what is going on, try the following:

   Start a DOS shell Window.

   cd c:\bacula\bin
   bacula-fd -t >out
   type out
The -t option will cause Bacula to read the configuration file, print any error messages and then exit. the > redirects the output to the file named out, which you can list with the type command.

If something is going wrong later, or you want to run Bacula with a debug option, you might try starting it as:

   bacula-fd -d 100 >out
In this case, Bacula will run until you explicitly stop it, which will give you a chance to connect to it from your Unix/Linux server.

In addition, you should look in the System Applications log on the Control Panel to find any Windows errors that Bacula got during the startup process.

Windows Compatibility Considerations

If any applications are running during the backup and they have open files, Bacula will not be able to backup those files, so be sure you close your applications (or tell your users to close their applications) before the backup.

Bacula doesn't know about the system registry, so you will either need to write it out to an ASCII file using regedit /e or use a program specifically designed to make a copy or backup the registry.

In Bacula versions 1.30 and earlier, we used the Cygwin emulation of Unix open(), read(), write(), ... calls to access files. This worked pretty well for Win95, Win98, and WinMe systems, but not very well for the other systems (NT/2K/XP) because those systems have special security and ownership information that was not saved. In addition on the NT/2K/XP systems, older versions of Bacula were not always able to access all files due to system permissions restrictions.

As a consequence, in Bacula version 1.31 and later, we use Windows backup API calls by default. Typical of Windows, programming these special BackupRead and BackupWrite calls is a real nightmare of complications. The end result gives some distinct advantages and some disadvantages.

First, the advantages are that on WinNT/2K/XP systems, the security and ownership information is now backed up. In addition, with the exception of files in use by another program (a major disaster for backup programs on Windows), Bacula can now access all system files. This means that when you restore files, the security and ownership information will be restored on WinNT/2K/XP along with the data.

The disadvantage of the Windows backup API calls is that it produces non-portable backups. That is files and their data that are backed up on WinNT using the native API calls (BackupRead/BackupWrite) cannot be restored on Win95/98/Me or Unix systems. In principle, a file backed up on WinNT can be restored on WinXP, but this remains to be seen in practice (not yet tested). In addition, the stand-alone tools such as bls and bextract cannot be used to retrieve the data for those files because those tools are not available on Windows. All restores must use the Bacula restore command. This restriction is mentioned for completeness, but in practice should not create any problems.

As a default, Bacula backs up Windows systems using the Windows API calls. If you want to backup data on a WinNT/2K/XP system and restore it on a Unix/Win95/98/Me system, we have provided a special portable option that backups the data in a portable fashion by using portable API calls. See the portable option on the Include statement in a FileSet resource in the Director's configuration chapter for the details on setting this option. However, using the portable option means you may have permissions problems accessing files, and none of the security and ownership information will be backed up or restored. The file data can, however, be restored on any system.

You should always be able to restore any file backed up on Unix or Win95/98/Me to any other system. On some systems, such as WinNT/2K/XP, you may have to reset the ownership of such restored files. Any file backed up on WinNT/2K/XP should in principle be able to be restored to a similar system (i.e. WinNT/2K/XP), however, I am unsure of the consequences if the owner information and accounts are not identical on both systems. Bacula will not let you restore files backed up on WinNT/2K/XP to any other system (i.e. Unix Win95/98/Me) if you have used the defaults.

Finally, if you specify the portable=yes option on the files you back up. Bacula will be able to restore them on any other system. However, any WinNT/2K/XP specific security and ownership information will be lost.

The following matrix will give you an idea of what you can expect. Thanks to Marc Brueckner for doing the tests:

Backup OS Restore OS Results
WinMe WinMe Works
WinMe WinNT Works (SYSTEM permissions)
WinMe WinXP Works (SYSTEM permissions)
WinMe Linux Works (SYSTEM permissions)
     
WinXP WinXP Works
WinXP WinNT Works (all files OK, but got "The data is invalid" message)
WinXP WinMe Error: Win32 data stream not supported.
WinXP WinMe Works if Portable=yes specified during backup.
WinXP Linux Error: Win32 data stream not supported.
WinXP Linux Works if Portable=yes specified during backup.
     
WinNT WinNT Works
WinNT WinXP Works
WinNT WinMe Error: Win32 data stream not supported.
WinNT WinMe Works if Portable=yes specified during backup.
WinNT Linux Error: Win32 data stream not supported.
WinNT Linux Works if Portable=yes specified during backup.
     
Linux Linux Works
Linux WinNT Works (SYSTEM permissions)
Linux WinMe Works
Linux WinXP Works (SYSTEM permissions)

Utility Functions

The directory c:\Bacula\bin contains six utility routines (actually .bat files) that you may find useful. They are:
Start
Stop
Install
Uninstall
CygwinInstall
CygwinUnInstall
Any of these utilities may be used on any system, with the exception of the Start utility, which cannot be used on WinNT, Win2000 and WinXP systems. On those systems, the Bacula service must always be started through the Services sub-dialog of the Control Panel.

The Install and Uninstall utilities install and uninstall Bacula from the system registry only. All other pieces (files) of Bacula remain intact. It is not absolutely necessary for Bacula to be installed in the registry as it can run as a regular program. However, if it is not installed in the registry, it cannot be run as a service.

The Console Program

The Bacula Console program has been included in the distribution in the Bacula bin directory. You can execute it from any Windows DOS box. Using this program, you can start a job on the main server (Director) from your Windows workstation.

The testfind Program

A program named testfind is also included in the Bacula bin directory. This program is documented in the testfind section of the Utility Tools chapter of this manual. It permits you to list the files that will be backed up given the list of Include statements from your Director's configuration file. Note, the important functionality of this program (i.e. listing the files to be backed up) can be obtained directly in Bacula by using the estimate command in the Console program.

Windows Disaster Recovery

We don't currently have a good solution for disaster recovery on Windows as we do on Linux. The main piece lacking is a Windows boot floppy or a Windows boot CD. Microsoft releases a Windows Pre-installation Environment (WinPE) that could possibly work, but we have not investigated it. This means that until someone figures out the correct procedure, you must restore the OS from the installation disks, then you can load a Bacula client and restore files. Please don't count on using bextract to extract files from your backup tapes during a disaster recovery unless you have backed up those files using the portable option. bextract does not run on Windows, and the normal way Bacula saves files using the Windows API prevents the files from being restored on a Unix machine. Once you have an operational Windows OS loaded, you can run the File daemon and restore your user files.

Please see Disaster Recovery of Win32 Systems for the latest suggestion, which looks very promissing.

It looks like Bart PE Builder, which creates a Windows PE (Pre-installation Environment) Boot-CD, may be just what is needed to build a complete disaster recovery system for Win32. This distribution can be found at http://www.nu2.nu/pebuilder/ .

Windows Ownership and Permissions Problems

If you restore files backed up from WinNT/XP/2K to an alternate directory, Bacula may need to create some higher level directories that were not saved (or restored). In this case, the File daemon will create them under the SYSTEM account because that is the account that Bacula runs under as a service. This means that you may have some problems accessing those files when you run as administer. In principle, Microsoft supplies you with the way to cease the ownership of those files and thus change the permissions. However, a much better solution to working with and changing Win32 permissions is the program SetACL, whic can be found at http://setacl.sourceforge.net/ .

Backing Up the WinNT/XP/2K System State

A suggestion by Damian Coutts using Microsoft's NTBackup utility in conjunction with Bacula should permit a full restore of any damaged system files on Win2K/XP (and possibly NT systems). His suggestion is to do an NTBackup of the critical system state prior to running a Bacula backup with the following command:
ntbackup backup systemstate /F c:\systemstate.bkf
The backup is the command, the systemstate says to backup only the system state and not all the user files, and the /F c:\systemstate.bkf specifies where to write the state file. this file must then be saved and restored by Bacula.

To restore the system state, you first reload a base operating system if the OS is damaged, otherwise, this is not necessary, then you would use Bacula to restore all the damaged or lost user's files and to recover the c:\systemstate.bkf file. Finally if there are any damaged or missing system files or registry problems, you run NTBackup and catalogue the system statefile, and then select it for restore. The documentation says you can't run a command line restore of the systemstate.

To the best of my knowledge, this has not yet been tested. If you test it, please report your results to the Bacula email list.

Command Line Options Specific to the Bacula Windows File Daemon (Client)

These options are not normally seen or used by the user, and are documented here only for information purposes. At the current time, to change the default options, you must either manually run Bacula or you must manually edit the system registry and modify the appropriate entries.

In order to avoid option clashes between the options necessary for Bacula to run on Windows and the standard Bacula options, all Windows specific options are signaled with a forward slash character (/), while as usual, the standard Bacula options are signaled with a minus (-), or a minus minus (--). All the standard Bacula options can be used on the Windows version. In addition, the following Windows only options are implemented:

/servicehelper
Run the service helper application (don't use this it is deprecated.).
/service
Start Bacula as a service
/run
Run the Bacula application
/install
Install Bacula as a service in the system registry
/remove
Uninstall Bacula from the system registry
/about
Show the Bacula about dialogue box
/status
Show the Bacula status dialogue box
/events
Show the Bacula events dialogue box (not yet implemented)
/kill
Stop any running Bacula
/help
Show the Bacula help dialogue box
It is important to note that under normal circumstances the user should never need to use these options as they are normally handled by the system automatically once Bacula is installed. However, you may note these options in some of the .bat files that have been created for your use.

Building the Win32 Version from the Source

If you have the source code, follow the standard procedures for building Bacula on Unix in the Installation Section of this manual. Please don't forget to look at the Win32 specific instructions.


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Using Bacula to Improve Computer Security
Bacula 1.32 User's Guide
The Network Backup Solution
Copyright © 2000-2003
Kern Sibbald and John Walker