Windows – Backup client for Windows: open source, rsync and VSS

Meanwhile I have worked out any issues and have a solution which works for me since a few weeks. In case anybody is interested I am posting the details here. This article by Troy Johnson has helped along the way.

Prerequisites

• Truecrypt installed on Linux and available on the path
• a TC container prepared and available at /home/deepc/var/backup.tc
• cygwin and rsync installed on Windows and available on the path

Linux

I made two shell scripts to mount and unmount the Truecrypt container on the Linux box. Those scripts are being called remotely via ssh from the Windows machine:

~/bin/backup-mount.sh:

#!/bin/bash
# usage: backup-mount.sh <password>
~deepc/bin/backup-umount.sh
echo "$1" | sudo truecrypt -t --slot=2 -k "" --volume-type=normal --protect-hidden=no /home/deepc/var/backup.tc /home/deepc/mnt

~/bin/backup-umount.sh:

#!/bin/sh
sudo truecrypt -d /home/deepc/var/backup.tc

Windows

remote-backup.cmd:

@echo off
setlocal
set HOME=c:\home
set LC_ALL=de_DE.utf-8
set LC_CTYPE=de_DE.utf-8
set LANG=de_DE.utf-8

rem --iconv=utf-16,iso-88591
ssh -p THESSHPORT -i ../.ssh/id_dsa deepc@theremotehost.com bin/backup-mount.sh THEPASSWORD
rsync -rltvzPm --modify-window=1 --exclude-from=../etc/backup/excludes.txt --chmod=ugo=rwX --delete --delete-excluded --files-from=../etc/backup/files-from.txt -e "ssh -p THESSHPORT -i ../.ssh/id_dsa" --log-file=../tmp/remote-backup.log /cygdrive deepc@theremotehost.com:/home/deepc/mnt
ssh -p THESSHPORT -i ../.ssh/id_dsa deepc@theremotehost.com bin/backup-umount.sh

Put this batch file into the task scheduler, e.g. with a daily schedule. Be sure to adjust username, remote host, ssh port, Truecrypt container password, and of course the backup paths. Sorry but I could not bring myself to clean this up more after having wasted too much time already...

With this script Rsync will read includes and excludes from two text files, e.g.:

files-from.txt:

/c/Home/
/c/Users/deepc
...

excludes.txt:

Firefox/Cache
Firefox/*.lock
Thunderbird/*.lock
Thunderbird/**/*Junk*
Thunderbird/**/filterlog.html
Thunderbird/**/*.msf
Home/tmp
...

Done?

This is answers the original question. There is only one minor issue: special characters in filenames on Windows are mangled on Linux, with ext2 being used in the TC container on Linux. I tried all combinations for the --iconv parameter I could think of but to no avail. Seems I have to live with that - unless some brave soul has read until here, knows the answer, and enlightens me in a comment ;-) (NTFS in the container is not an option)

Windows Backup and Restore can do a full image backup while the machine is running. The images can be restored using the Windows installation disk's repair tools. Backups are compressed, and you can select a local disk or a network share to back up to.

The backup tool can be controlled from the command line using wbadmin.exe. This works both for client operating systems (Windows 7, Windows Vista) and server OSes (Server 2008, Server 2008 R2). The basic commands are as follows:

START BACKUP              -- Runs a one-time backup.
STOP JOB                  -- Stops the currently running backup or recovery
                             operation.
GET VERSIONS              -- List details of backups recoverable from a
                             specified location.
GET ITEMS                 -- Lists items contained in a backup.
GET STATUS                -- Reports the status of the currently running
                             operation.