Backup on windows (we must use hardlink, not junction)

Just to confirm…
Actually, UrBackup successful backup hardlink but not junction on windows.
So, if you wanna be sure to backup you data, please use hard-link on windows FS, not junction.

Any plans to remove this limitation such that Windows installations that use junction points can work with urbackup. The application that uses junction points is the separation of system from user data which is useful on SSD installations where system is installed on SSD and user data on hard drive with one junction point to make it all work smoothly,

So you have C: on an SSD and mount a hard disk at e.g. c:\Program files ?

Thanks for responding. I have the entire windows installation (c:/) on SSD except that the user data (c:/users) is actually located on another drive (d:/) with a junction point on c: pointing to d:/users. To all things that access c:/users it looks as if the user directory is still on c:/. When I backup the system with any low level imaging software such as Actions True Image, I have to make sure both the c:/ partition and the d:/ partition are included in backup. Most programs running at normal level don’t see the junction because it’s handled by at low level by OS. So anything doing file level copying doesn’t care and works fine. Since I haven’t been able to get image backup of this machine but I have gotten file backups I assumed the junction point was not being handled by whatever was building the VHD. And, I’m not sure I trust the file by file backup.

Also I’m not sure I know difference between junction point and hard link in windows. I’ll look into that.

Junctions are directory symlinks. Only Mac OS allows directory hard links.

This setup should not cause the image backups to fail.

Well, I guess it must be something else. Here’s the log which seems to be saying the same over and over:

Errors 16.10.14 09:50 Request of image backup failed. Reason: Opening filesystem on device failed. Stopping.
Errors16.10.14 09:50 Backup failed

The thing is that I can read entire filesystem with other backup programs such as TrueImage with no issue. Any suggestions on what I should try?

I’ll post other messages about failure on other clients on another thread.

Thanks for your help.

Can you have a look at the client-side logfile?

Yes, Here it is:

Starting full image backup…
Request of image backup failed. Reason: Opening filesystem on device failed. Stopping.
Transferred 141 bytes - Average speed: 168 Bit/s
Time taken for creating image of client Picard: 7s
Backup failed
Exponential backoff: Waiting at least 40m before next image backup

That is the extent of the log on the client machine. There are, of course, numerous entries because of the retries which all produce same result. This is the Win7 machine with junction point between main system (SSD) and c:/users (actually on D;/users). I had assumed that was the problem until your response about junction points.

I appreciate any other guidance or comment.

The client may log a little bit more about the issue. See here http://www.urbackup.org/administration_manual.html#x1-710009.2 for where the clients save the log data.

Ok. I think I’m doing this right re logs. I went to c:\Program Files\urbackup on Win7 client set args file to debug, restarted server, requested a full incremental backup on the client via the server, waited a while, and the both logs (on client and server). I noticed that the client log in urbackup directory had following

2014-10-19 10:44:51: WARNING: Restarting shadow copy of C:\ because it was started by this server
2014-10-19 10:55:05: WARNING: Restarting shadow copy of C:\ because it was started by this server
2014-10-19 10:55:33: WARNING: Restarting shadow copy of D:\ because it was started by this server

Log that’s shown in Windows tray icon was

tarting full image backup…
Request of image backup failed. Reason: Opening filesystem on device failed. Stopping.
Transferred 141 bytes - Average speed: 200 Bit/s
Time taken for creating image of client Picard: 7s
Backup failed
Exponential backoff: Waiting at least 21h 20m before next image backup

Log shown on server was:

Errors
19.10.14 06:59
Request of image backup failed. Reason: Opening filesystem on device failed. Stopping.
Errors
19.10.14 06:59
Backup failed

I’m not sure this is right. So I tried to reinitiate a full image backup on client via server.Last Image backup column momentaritly showed that the backup was qued but then that message went away afer a few minutes when I refreshed web page.

FWIW. Message in debug.txt log on client from day before

(snip)
014-10-18 20:31:10: ERROR: SQL: disk I/O error Stmt: [BEGIN IMMEDIATE;]
2014-10-18 20:31:10: ERROR: Error in CQuery::Execute - disk I/O error Stmt: [UPDATE journal_ids SET last_record=? WHERE device_name=?]
2014-10-18 20:31:10: ERROR: Error: Parent of file Firewall.log not found -4
2014-10-18 20:31:10: ERROR: Error: Parent of file Firewall.log not found -4
2014-10-18 20:31:10: ERROR: Error: Parent of file Firewall.log not found -4
2014-10-18 20:31:10: ERROR: Error: Parent of file Firewall.log not found -4
2014-10-18 20:31:10: ERROR: Error in CQuery::Execute - cannot commit - no transaction is active Stmt: [END;]
2014-10-18 20:31:10: ERROR: SQL: cannot commit - no transaction is active Stmt: [END;]
2014-10-18 22:41:10: WARNING: Restarting shadow copy of C:\ because it was started by this server
2014-10-19 06:59:33: ERROR: Error opening device file (\?\GLOBALROOT\Device\HarddiskVolumeShadowCopy73:) Errorcode: 123
2014-10-19 06:59:33: ERROR: Opening filesystem on device failed. Stopping.

The problem is that I can’t tell where the messages on debug.txt for one client begin and the others end. So the above is an excerpt which I assume applies to the Win7 client.

How do you correlated messages in debug.txt with those on server and those on try icon? II suspect I’m not interpreting logs correctly and 'm not sure where to go from here.

Here’s an updated log from client that I think shows the period of time when incremental backup of Win7 machine was requested by server. I don’t know what the reference to the device file is for/to.

014-10-19 06:59:33: ERROR: Error opening device file (\?\GLOBALROOT\Device\HarddiskVolumeShadowCopy73:) Errorcode: 123
2014-10-19 06:59:33: ERROR: Opening filesystem on device failed. Stopping.
2014-10-19 10:44:51: WARNING: Restarting shadow copy of C:\ because it was started by this server
2014-10-19 10:55:05: WARNING: Restarting shadow copy of C:\ because it was started by this server
2014-10-19 10:55:33: WARNING: Restarting shadow copy of D:\ because it was started by this server
2014-10-19 12:16:56: ERROR: Error opening device file (\?\GLOBALROOT\Device\HarddiskVolumeShadowCopy79:) Errorcode: 123
2014-10-19 12:16:56: ERROR: Opening filesystem on device failed. Stopping.
2014-10-19 12:17:01: WARNING: Restarting shadow copy of C:\ because it was started by this server
2014-10-19 12:17:07: ERROR: Error opening device file (\?\GLOBALROOT\Device\HarddiskVolumeShadowCopy80:) Errorcode: 123
2014-10-19 12:17:07: ERROR: Opening filesystem on device failed. Stopping.
2014-10-19 12:17:12: WARNING: Restarting shadow copy of C:\ because it was started by this server
2014-10-19 12:17:18: ERROR: Error opening device file (\?\GLOBALROOT\Device\HarddiskVolumeShadowCopy81:) Errorcode: 123
2014-10-19 12:17:18: ERROR: Opening filesystem on device failed. Stopping.
2014-10-19 12:17:23: WARNING: Restarting shadow copy of C:\ because it was started by this server
2014-10-19 12:17:29: ERROR: Error opening device file (\?\GLOBALROOT\Device\HarddiskVolumeShadowCopy82:) Errorcode: 123
2014-10-19 12:17:29: ERROR: Opening filesystem on device failed. Stopping.