I've done some testing on my own Vista system, I posted previously, but here's a short recap followed by the results after some tweaking.
1. Using my FileSet that I had defined for my XP system, my full backup would end up over 300GB's, when the Vista drive only had 100GB's on it. 2. I'd see a bunch of errors such as: Could not open directory C:/Documents and Settings/joeshmo/AppData/Local/Application Data/Application Data/Application Data/Application Data/Application Data/Application Data/Application Data/Application Data/Application Data/Application Data/Application Data/Application Data/Application Data/Application Data/Application Data/Application Data/Application Data/Application Data/Application Data/Application Data/Application Data/Application Data/Application Data/Application Data/Application Data/Application Data/Application Data/Application Data/Application Data/Application Data/History: ERR=The name of the file cannot be resolved by the system. 3. I added the following to my FileSet definition for my Vista box to exclude the junctions from the backup: Exclude { File = "C:/MSOCache" File = "C:/*.TMP" File = "C:/ProgramData/Application Data*" File = "C:/ProgramData/Desktop" File = "C:/ProgramData/Favorites" File = "C:/ProgramData/Start Menu" File = "C:/ProgramData/Templates" File = "C:/$*" File = "C:/Users/All Users" File = "C:/Users/Default User" File = "C:/Users/*/Application Data" File = "C:/Users/*/Cookies" File = "C:/Users/*/NetHood" File = "C:/Users/*/PrintHood" File = "C:/Users/*/Recent" File = "C:/Users/*/SendTo" File = "C:/Users/*/Start Menu" File = "C:/Users/*/Templates" File = "C:/Users/*/Local Settings" File = "C:/Users/*/My Documents" File = "C:/Documents and Settings" } Results: After adding the exclusions for the junctions, my backup completed and used up 56GB's worth of hard drive space (as opposed to over 300GB's without the exclusions). I'll attempt to restore some data from that backup tonight to see if recovery functions, but at least the backups are now the size I would expect. I suppose the only downside of this is, if I restore, none of the junctions will be recreated. Mike -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Kern Sibbald Sent: Thursday, June 21, 2007 04:50 To: bacula-users Cc: bacula-devel Subject: [Bacula-users] Bacula and Windows Vista Hello, Recently, I bought a Windows Vista laptop ($$$ -- hint), so that I could test the Bacula FD on it. First a few comments on Vista: Good things (at least for users): 1. It has nice looking graphics 2. It has a lot of features 3. They sure are packing a lot of "3rd party" software into their kernel (e.g. virus checkers, disk repartitioners, encrypted folders, automatic file backup, ...). I wouldn't want to be an independent Windows utility software vendor. 4. You right click on many menu items to get a lot more functionality. 5. They have installed the software in a much more reasonable set of directory names (shorter and no spaces). If I am not mistaken, most the old XP directory names are there too (sort of -- see below). Not so good things: 1. It is pretty big pig -- it squats in 500MB of memory, uses about 60GB of disk, and it took over an hour to boot up the first time, and quite a long time the second time; after defragging the disk, it boots in a reasonable time. 2. Although the new directory structure has more reasonable directory names (shorter and no spaces), they have provided "junctions" to the old names for compatibility. Unfortunately few third party programs such as Bacula know about junctions, so they get confused, and typically this manifests itself as references to files/directories that do not seem to exist ... 3. VSS (Volume shadow copy) is not compatible with the older code used by Bacula. 4. System services can no longer interact with the desktop, which means that the Bacula tray monitor does not work. 5. There are a number new levels of security, which means that after installing Bacula, you cannot edit the conf files without explicitly finding the right dialog and changing your permissions on the files. 6. Due to junctions not being really downward compatible, the Bacula menu links to the conf files complain that the file does not exist. By the way, junctions have been around for a while, but were apparently never used in a default install. However, on Vista, there are a lot of junctions in the default install. 7. The new hard disk is 100GB the pre-loaded software uses 36GB. 8. Due to the need for swap space (2GB RAM) and snapshot space, the largest size available to load Linux along side of Vista is 28GB -- i.e. as mentioned above, the system needs 60 GB of disk, and this is a virgin system (with the Bacula FD loaded). So where are we with Bacula: 1. After 6 hours of upgrades to my WinXP system (62 SP1 updates, then SP 2, then install .NET Framework, then install Windows SDK, perhaps I will have the new VSS code loaded, 2. *perhaps* as their documentation claims, it is now a simple recompile with new header files (I doubt it very much). 3. Junctions are another story, and I have no idea how much work that is going to be. 4. Even if the new VSS works, it will only work on WinXP, Windows server 2003, and Vista, which means that in VSS mode, it is unlikely that the Bacula FD will support older systems (Win98, WinMe, WinNT, ...) as it currently does. 5. Time estimate: since I'm not getting paid for this: none. Best regards, Kern ------------------------------------------------------------------------- This SF.net email is sponsored by DB2 Express Download DB2 Express C - the FREE version of DB2 express and take control of your XML. No limits. Just data. Click to get it now. http://sourceforge.net/powerbar/db2/ _______________________________________________ Bacula-users mailing list Bacula-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/bacula-users ------------------------------------------------------------------------- This SF.net email is sponsored by DB2 Express Download DB2 Express C - the FREE version of DB2 express and take control of your XML. No limits. Just data. Click to get it now. http://sourceforge.net/powerbar/db2/ _______________________________________________ Bacula-users mailing list Bacula-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/bacula-users