topic Re: Backup & ACL in Operating System - OpenVMS

Backup & ACL

Petran Bisschops — Thu, 27 Oct 2005 03:54:42 GMT

Is there a way to retain a file's ACL information in a backup/restore operation?

I get the impression that a file's ACL information is not saved during a backup operation and hence during a restore, the ACL info is lost.

Your comments would be greatly appreciated.

Regards,

Petran Bisschops

Re: Backup & ACL

Daniel Fernandez Illan — Thu, 27 Oct 2005 04:02:33 GMT

Hi
I had tested backup/restore on files with ACL information and info is not lost.
Saludos.
Daniel.

Re: Backup & ACL

Volker Halle — Thu, 27 Oct 2005 04:05:11 GMT

Petran,

using the /INTERCHANGE qualifier would explicitly ask backup to NOT copy/save ACLs.

There was a recent discussion of the behaviour of BACKUP and ACLs in ITRC:

http://forums1.itrc.hp.com/service/forums/questionanswer.do?threadId=960236

Volker.

Re: Backup & ACL

Uwe Zessin — Thu, 27 Oct 2005 05:03:37 GMT

I think BACKUP 'forgets' to save the ACL of the top-level directory. What I always do is something like this:

$ backup DISK1:[000000]DIR1.DIR;, [DIR1... and so on.

Re: Backup & ACL

Petran Bisschops — Thu, 27 Oct 2005 05:25:14 GMT

Hi,

I investigated a bit more...

It was a Top directory so Uwe's comment could apply.

I think that the Restore action did someting that I did not expect - the file extracted from the backup had no acl attached but the directory the file was extracted to, had an ACL that defined that new files should by default get an ACL. However the extracted file did not inherrit te ACL.

If I copy a file to this directory or create a new file in this directory, these files will inherrit the ACL.

So I conclude that backup behaves differently from copy.

However, it still leaves me with the problem that a file with no ACL, that is extracted from a backup into a directory that should by default propagate an ACL, does not do so.

Petran.

Re: Backup & ACL

Jan van den Ende — Thu, 27 Oct 2005 05:36:03 GMT

Petran,

BACKUP does NOT retain ACLs, except:
BACKUP/IMAGE (does an exact restore)
and
BACKUP /OWN=ORIGINAL

But, like UWE indicated, this does NOT apply for toplevel directories.

For toplevel directories the best way is to use Uwe's workaround, or, as per John Gillings:

$ BACKUP :[000000...]/OWN=ORIG.

But, in my experience, all too often the construct with [000000...] is also used as INPUT specifier, and now you create a REAL 000000.DIR
The second time around that creates :[000000.000000...] , and now you are in trouble.

All in all, I prefer Uwe's method over John's.

hth

Proost.

Have one on me.

jpe

Re: Backup & ACL

Jan van den Ende — Thu, 27 Oct 2005 05:47:58 GMT

Petran,

your extra info crossed my reply.

To have backup use the OPTION=DEFAULT ACL, you specify

BACKUP /OWN=PARENT

There is some logic involved: by default the process doing the restore becomes the owner, making ACLs potentially conflicting. Now, the parent dir as owner removes this potential conflict, and assosicating the ownership with the parent dir probably implies the wish to copy all of the security. (which is implemented)

Success

Proost.

Have one on me.

jpe

Re: Backup & ACL

Petran Bisschops — Mon, 31 Oct 2005 03:50:08 GMT

Dear all,

Thanks for your response.