[Box Backup] Win32 port (was: BoxBackup Server Side Management Specs (Draft0.01))

[Ben Summers]

On 24 Sep 2004, at 00:33, Chris Wilson wrote:

> Hi all,
>
> I second the call for duplicate file detection :-)

Unfortunately there's only one of me.

>
>>> But then, at the moment a nice frontend for M$-users might be of a
>>> slightly higher importance ...
>>
>> Yes, there does seem to be a lot of demand for a Win32 version!
>
> I'm about to start working on this.

Before you start changing code, it will be much easier if you work on a 
checkout of my CVS repository. The released code is run through a 
script which does various modifications like adding the license at the 
top of each file, so patches from released code are not as easy to 
integrate as they might be.

I also have some extended notes on porting to Win32, if anyone wants a 
copy. (I have already sent one to Chris.)


>  Feature requests please? My current
> list stands at:
>
> No server version (use Linux dammit :-)

Surely you mean OpenBSD?

Seriously, a Win32 server is unlikely as it depends on the behaviour of 
the UNIX filesystem. On Windows you can't delete or move another file 
over a file which is currently open.

>
> For the client bbackupd:
>
> * registry backups

Dump the registry to a file and back that up?

> * open file backups
> * support for drive letters

I would have thought that the existing mechanism of backup locations 
will handle this reasonably well.

> * backup Windows attributes and file permissions
> * native non-Cygwin compile
> * operation as a service (done already in 0.0.8?)

No. The client is essentially unchanged in 0.08.

> * socket/pipe interface to GUI administrator
>
> New GUI admin tool:
>
> * start/stop/restart bbackupd
> * monitor status of bbackupd, using socket interface
> * overview status page (for dummies)
> * detailed status page:
> ** scanning/sending/waiting
> ** status of each file (last backup date, reason for not backing up if 
> any)
> * GUI view of server (disk space used, files stored)
> * restore and compare GUI
> * configuration GUI (what to back up, lazy/standard, min and max age)
>
> I'm planning a GUI tool written in wxWindows, so it would run both on
> Windows and Linux, and hopefully MacOS X if/when that becomes a 
> supported
> platform for boxbackup?

It works on Mac OS X, it just doesn't back up the resource fork of the 
files. I will only really consider it supported when it does this, 
otherwise it might surprise users when files are restored.

This requires multiple streams to be implemented, which currently 
there's no neat way of doing. Now that WinXP SP2 uses multiple streams 
to store file security information, it's probably required for Win32 as 
well. And I might as well support sparse files while I'm at it.

Not a difficult task, but then, not exactly trivial either. But I 
should do it, mainly so I can backup my main work computer with my own 
software, instead of just all my servers.

>
> I could definitely use some help on this project, if anyone is up for 
> it
> :-)

A few other people have a bit of a start on this. I will try and put 
everyone in touch with each other.

Ben