rsync on Windows questions

Fabian Cenedese
Fri, 01 Jul 2016 08:35:00 -0000

At 10:12 01.07.2016, Simon Hobson wrote:
>> I'm having problems with the user rights. The backup works
>> ok but after restoring some files I can't access them.
>
>That's to be expected.
>NTFS has a very rich permissions system and rsync won't be capturing
that. While it's a PITA, your best best is resetting permissions after
restore. It's probably as 'simple' (for your own documents etc) to
select the top level folder they are in, go to permissions, and have Windows
re-apply them recursively - but as to the exact steps, I can't remember as
Windows is something I avoid as much as I can get away with.

I know how to do it (or at least managed to do it manually), but this backup
and restore should also be usable for "normal" users that don't
know about
or don't want to fiddle with access rights.

>Overall, while rsync is a good tool for many things, for backups in the
Windows world it's probably not a good fit except for your own documents
where it's "easy" to reset file permissions after a restore.
Trying to do other than documents (ie the system and applications) is pretty
well guaranteed to lead to security permissions screwed up to the point where
it's not worth doing the backup in the first place.

This is meant to copy local documents so they're not lost in case of a
locky attack. This is not a complete backup, just kind of a Windows poor
man's time-machine where the files on the server are not accessible to
viruses. It'd be perfect if I could just force rsync to run as the local
user
instead of some linux/cygwin user. OK, the best thing would be a native
rsync for Windows :)

There are several tools out there that use a cygwin rsync and just offer
a GUI for easier handling. I was wondering if they don't have this problem
or if they compile a special rsync without the user rights stuff.

Thanks

bye  Fabi