Backing up user profiles/data before deploying image

[RobertD]

@george1421 - I was afraid cifs wasn’t in the FOS which makes sense because it needs to be as lightweight as possible. I’ve looked into USMT, but it adds complexity and time to our re-imaging process in which we have limited time and staff for the size of school district we are.

Our campus techs typically don’t even login to the machine when re-imaging. They shut it off, run through the registration process and walk away. It’s completely finished when they come back. Adding additional steps to this process will prevent us from completing the re-imaging projects over summer due to the sheer number of machines we have to re-image. This is why it’s appealing to let FOG do it as part of it’s process.

I suppose I could always rsync it to the FOG server like /images/profiles/ then move everything off the fog server to an SMB share via FTP, but that seems kind of clunky.

[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