Backing up user profiles/data before deploying image

[george1421]

@RobertD I’m not seeing it as a big time waster, but I don’t know your environment. The backup of the profile and the reimaging process doesn’t need to be synchronized. The last day of school +1 deploy the usmt application and make the profile backup (or what ever you need for backup) and then have the application deployment script power off the computer.

I could also recompile the inits with the smbclient included. It would not add much code to the base image. You would then need to use a postinit script to slide in your site smb.ini configuration file into the /etc directory. But that is also possible.

[RobertD]

@george1421 - I hate to impose binaries into the inits if no one else has a use for them. I’m just trying to figure out a way to do this without adding additional mechanics to our current process.

[Sebastian Roth]

@RobertD Just a quick idea, maybe use a post-init script that copies the files to a NFS share?

[RobertD]

@Sebastian-Roth We are actually trying that right now, however we are struggling to mount it with write access. It keeps giving us “Read-only file system” when we try something like touch /imagesinit/userbackup/text.txt.

[EduardoTSeoane]

I do it.

Creating an rw nfs share and rsyncing folders from fog.postinit.

You can do it to fog or to another file server.

[george1421]

@RobertD You can install NFS on ms windows. I have a proof of concept on how to turn windows box into a fog storage node (not really recommended, but I wanted to see if I could do it). The point it is shows you how the setup the permissions for the nfs share so that FOS can mount it.

https://forums.fogproject.org/topic/6941/windows-server-as-fog-storage-node-proof-of-concept-blog

[RobertD]

Not sure why it isn’t working.

1. We created a new directory within our /images folder on the fog server called userbackup.
2. We set permissions with chmod 777 on this folder.
3. Booting a host with a deploy debug task.
4. From the host we tried the following

mkdir /userbackup
mount -o nolock,proto=tcp,rw "1.2.3.4:/images/userbackup" /userbackup
touch /userbackup/test.txt
"This is a read-only file system"

Are we missing something in our mount statement?

[george1421]

@RobertD Oh that’s a easy one. That is because /images is read-only at the share level. That is why fog uploads to /images/dev which is read-write at the share level.

showmount -e 127.0.0.1 might show this or /etc/exports will.

[RobertD]

So we should be mounting to a sub directory in images/dev…

Export list for 172.31.16.155:
/images/dev *
/images     *

[EduardoTSeoane]

@RobertD

add it to /etc/exports as an rw share
then execute as root

echo "/images/userbackup *(rw,async,no_wdelay,no_subtree_check,no_root_squash,insecure,fsid=2)" >> /etc/exports
exportfs -a
systemctl restart rpcbind # or something like i dont remember de name exactly
systemctl restart ntfs-server

Try it if you can.

[george1421]

@EduardoTSeoane said in Backing up user profiles/data before deploying image:

add it to /etc/exports as an rw share

You can do that just watch your IDs and pick the next integer.

something like

/images/userbackup *(rw,async,no_wdelay,no_subtree_check,no_root_squash,insecure,fsid=2)

Then an

exportfs -a
showmount -e 127.0.0.1

should show the new share.

[Sebastian Roth]

@EduardoTSeoane said in Backing up user profiles/data before deploying image:

echo “/images/userbackup *(rw,async,no_wdelay,no_subtree_check,no_root_squash,insecure,fsid=2)”

Guess you meant:

echo "/images/userbackup *(rw,async,no_wdelay,no_subtree_check,no_root_squash,insecure,fsid=2)" >> /etc/exports
...

[RobertD]

Wow you guys are a great help. We were looking at folder permissions that whole time when it was the share permissions.

[EduardoTSeoane]

@Sebastian-Roth
yes, i want to say that i correct it in the post