Manage backup schedule on server side

[Eduardo de Oliveira]

Hello,

I'm implementing Minarca and I would like to know if it's possible to manage Minarca Client schedule through Minarca Server or it's exclusively managed by Minarca Client itself, and if it's not, if there's plans to do so.

Thank you!

[Patrik Dufresne]

Hello Eduardo,

I see you have been busy testing and exploring Minarca this weekend. Here is a reply to all your questions.

> I'm implementing Minarca and I would like to know if it's possible to manage Minarca Client schedule through Minarca Server or it's exclusively managed by Minarca Client itself, and if it's not, if there's plans to do so.

> Does Minarca supports or there’s plans to support schedule through Minarca Server? Right now I do believe that Minarca Client save this info on client side.

> Kopia takes an interesting approach: the policies (which include backup folders and schedule) is stored into server itself, so when reinstalling Kopia and login into the repository it reimports the policy to the machine, and it also allow changing it on server side. It would also mean that Minarca Client > > would need to always run on background to update its policies and do bi-directional sync of its settings with the server.

Current version doesn't allow control of the Minarca schedule and minarca file section from the central server. There is a plan to include this feature, but it has not been a priority for now. https://gitlab.com/ikus-soft/minarca/-/issues/5

> I'm translating Minarca Client right now, but I couldn't find the Minarca Server po files yet. Does it exists or there's plans to add multilanguage support for Minarca Server too?

Thanks for the translation ! Here a link to the server po files: https://gitlab.com/ikus-soft/rdiffweb/-/tree/master/rdiffweb/locales

> I saw that Minarca Client uses NSI as the package installer.

> I do believe that using WiX and MSI installer format instead would allow to batch program install and uninstall, and installing it through Active Directory (AD).

> There's plans for adding MSI support or Minarca team is open to provide installer into this format too? I could try to merge a commit to the repo to add this as an option to Minarca Client.

Yes, the installer for Windows makes use of NSIS. It's already possible to install minarca unattend using the "/S" flag.

I don't have any plans to provide an MSI installer as NSIS serves me well. That said if you do provide a pull request to generate a MSI I might look into it.

> Actually, the "Outlook Offline Data" option simply appends "" to . But depending on Outlook version, it saves files on "%USERPROFILE%\Outlook Files", but "Outlook Files" folder may be different depending on Outlook language (e.g. "Outlook Files" is translated to "Arquivos do Outlook" in PT-BR).

> Here's a sample on using Outlook MAPI to fetch all stores paths from Outlook: https://github.com/XescoAlarcon/analisi-formulariweb-mama/blob/d89b81d33d79a258c21a19457ef1b228b512d48e/analisi.py#L29C26-L29C32

> I wanted to say “%USERPROFILE%/Documents/Outlook Files”. 

>

> Also, I do believe that Minarca Client could use a modular/plugin architecture for its pattern folders detection (similar as GLPI Agent does for its modules), which could allow developers to add and maintain backup folders patterns more easily. The software can use its pattern approach as is and add > a sub folder called “patterns” (similar to “locales”) and them load all sub files from there parsing their output/returns as new patterns to be added to the patterns that already exists, as mixing the Outlook discovery logic to the pattern.py seems outside of the scope of the function of that file.

>

> I also would like to know how Minarca manage patterns for existing backups. Right now I do believe it’s setup them only when the backup is first created, which would be an issue if user create an Outlook store after the backup has been first created and the pattern to backup Outlook files has been selected, or if Outlook has been installed after Minarca Client has been setup (as it seems that Minarca Client shows a pattern only if the directory has been found into the machine during backup creation). Does Minarca Client periodically updates the detected patterns and show then on the list when editing the backup? Also, implement such new behavior to Minarca Client (detecting new PST locations on the fly) would also requires the Minarca Client to check for new Outlook stores before running the backup when backing up Outlook data is selected.

As you discover, the include and excludes patterns is a manual configuration. During the initial configuration, Minarca proposes default configurations that might help configuring the backup and also identify files or folders that we might not think about. In most cases, the file selection needs to be adjusted when configuring the backup.

A plugin approach to define the include and exclude pattern might be interesting to implement. But again, it's not my priority right now. So it might take a while until it gets implemented.

> Does Minarca Client supports VSS? It's required to backup locked files into a consistent state on Windows, e.g. PST files from Outlook while it's running.
> Notice that VSS snapshot creation requires Admin Rights. Duplicate and Cobian Backup circumvents this by implementing a service which runs with highest privileges and create the VSS snapshot before running the backup task.
> Another alternative would be running the task with SYSTEM privileges, which also would allow the task to backup folders which the current user wouldn't have access. We could also implement it simply checking "Run with highest privileges" and requesting username/password to be able to create VSS through Minarca as it does to run Minarca when user is logged off, but we would also need to check if user has Admin rights as "Run with highest privileges" option do not work if user isnt' an admin.

Minarca does not support VSS. As you mention, it requires admin rights and additional complexity to make this all work reliably. The only files/application that seems to get impacted is Outlook files. As a workaround, I'm asking the user to close their Outlook about their day job or I implement a pre-backup command that closes Outlook.

I also think backup of Outlook files is suboptimal, it's a Huge file that grows indefinitely and if a user ever needs to restore a single email from it, you need to restore the whole file. So the direction I'm heading to backup email is connecting directly to the IMAP server and archiving the email are "eml" files. This makes archiving easier and incremental. It also allows users to restore a single email. I plan to deliver this feature as a beta feature by december.

I hope it clarifies most of your questions.

If you are wondering what is our next priority, take a look at our next milestone: https://gitlab.com/groups/ikus-soft/-/milestones/34#tab-issues

 

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