On Sun, 22 Dec 2013 00:02:10 +0000 Winkel, Richard J. <...> wrote: > I have a hard time believing this is an unusual question but I swear > I've been googling everywhere without an answer! :) > I'm using rsync (under cygwin) to backup windows servers to a linux box > and it's working wonderfully, except that if a file is open rsync can't > access it even for reading. I know some windows-based backup programs > don't have the problem so I'm hoping there's some way to avoid it in > cygwin. I've looked at the cygwin mount options but don't see anything > obvious. Is there a way around it?
Hello, Richard You need to use VSS which stands for 'Volume Shadow copy Service' (or 'Volume Snapshot Service') on Windows. It is based on copy-on-write technology below the NTFS level and is used by Windows to make backups of the running system including of opened and locked files. (Also VSS utilizes a number of 'writers' that helps to make a consistent backup of opened database files for instance.) The shadow copy may be created by using different userspace tools: * vshadow.exe (http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb530725(VS.85).aspx) * vssadmin.exe (on the server OSes) * wmic.exe * by calling COM WMI objects from windows script host (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/188135) - VBA or JS scripts or from Windows PowerShell scripts. The easiest way to access the created shadow snapshot: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/adioltean/archive/2008/02/28/a-simple-way-to-access-shadow-copies-in-vista.aspx Then rsync can be used to copy files from the shadow snapshot after which the snapshot can be deleted. I believe there are already working solutions and programs that can be found. For example these articles: http://users.softlab.ntua.gr/~ttsiod/win32backup.html http://blog.jay2k1.com/2011/08/13/how-to-create-rsync-like-hard-link-backups-with-vss-on-windows/ If you will find something satisfactory for you, please let me know. -- -- Problem reports: http://cygwin.com/problems.html FAQ: http://cygwin.com/faq/ Documentation: http://cygwin.com/docs.html Unsubscribe info: http://cygwin.com/ml/#unsubscribe-simple
