Re: icacls or subinacl

I asked "why" in order to better understand the "what".

So, you want to use xcacls, subinacl, icacls, cacls (or presumably other
similar tools) to "collect" the permissions. Later you say you want to use
these to "backup" the permissions. To me, the term "backup" implies that the
information is to be used later to "restore" the permissions. But since I
cannot assume the why here...

Referring to a directory in one case and a drive in another casts a certain
amount of vagueness to the specific "what" you are concerned with., but
since I cannot ask "why" to help me understand the "what", I will try to
work with what I know...

None of these utilities appear to me to be designed for "backup" purposes.
Rather they allow the permissions to be displayed in such a way that you can
determine what the permissions are. That said, if you type this:

cacls /?

you will see that cacls has a "/T" switch that allows the processing of
files in subdirectories. Therefore, this command might do the trick:

cacls "X:\target folder" /t >"saved permissions.txt"

the .txt file will contain a listing of all of the ACLs applied to all of
the files and folders within the specified target directory (which could be
the root directory of a drive), assuming the account you use has sufficient
permissions there.

QED: you only want to collect permission information (done), and you want to
do it not for a single folder's immediate contents, but for all of the files
and folders it contains (done).

As far as I can see the case is closed from the point of view of the "what".
If there is actually more that you were looking for, you will either need to
expand on the "what" concept, or explain the overall goal (i.e. the "why").


/Al

"Todd Hudson" <tatung70@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:%23RuweVgpIHA.3548@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
I apperiacte the involved response...however forget the why I want to do
something and just look at the task. I want to use xcacls, subinacl,
icacls, cacls to collect the permissions of all files and folders of a
directory by pointing it at the drive letter and saying go.

Dont worry about whether something gets deleted, a user can change
permissions, etc. I am wanting to do x.

If you can help with this it woudl be appreciated. All I can see is that
all the above tools only backup permissions of a particular root
directory, not the entire drive.

Thanks



"Al Dunbar" <AlanDrub@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:e5KL3mZpIHA.1420@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
If I understand you correctly, you are not interested in restoring the
*content* of the files in question, but only in restoring the
*permissions* of those files to a previous state. This seems a bit
nonsensical, as if users can change permissions, they are likely to
delete, rename, or move files too.

It would be somewhat tricky to restore permissions to such a set of
files, given that some of them might no longer exist. Even assuming this
were not the case, your script would need to:

- collect a listing of the current permission settings (easily done with
cacls.exe)
- parse through the listing to determine what permissions to apply to the
files.

I rather suspect that you want to backup the content, folder hierarchy,
and permissions of a set of files. If that is so, neither cacls nor
subinacl will do, at least they will not do *all* of the work.

Your options include acquiring a software product designed to perform
data backups or using ntbackup.exe. In either case, there is a
relationship between the available products and the media on which they
can do their backups. Another option would be to write a script to create
a copy of the data on another, perhaps removable, storage volume. This
could be done using xcopy, robocopy, xxcopy, or a variety of others. With
robocopy, and assuming the backup volume was formatted with NTFS, there
would be no need to use cacls to save a listing of the permissions, as
the permissions could simply be copied from the source to the backup
media.

If the backup mechanism were incapable of including the permissions, then
you could use cacls to save this, and then write a script to parse that
and re-apply the permissions to any files you need to restore.

So I'll ask again: do you want your backup system to backup file data as
well as the permissions? and where and in what format do you intend to
store the backups (tape, disk, .zip file, other)?


/Al

"Todd Hudson" <tatung70@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:usb1%23EPpIHA.4736@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
All I want is to create a file that has all ntfs permissions in it that
I can then restore if needed.



"Al Dunbar" <AlanDrub@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:O0HaXpOpIHA.1580@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

"Todd Hudson" <tatung70@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:69D2720B-577D-447A-BDB5-F3408E097C31@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
I am trying to figure out a way to backup the entire drive (D, E, etc)
of a
Windows 2003 server. I tried looking at the syntax for subinacl and
icacls,
but either I could not figure it out or it just did not work.

Can anyone help?

I assume you are thinking of using subinacl and icacls to extract
ownership/ntfs permission information in order to store it with the
data so that your restore script, program, or whatever, can re-apply
the original permissions that restored files previously had. That's
fine, but I do no think either utility will actually create a copy of
the files themselves. I'm not sure what to suggest here, as I do not
know if you are doing a tape backup, an image copy to a removable
drive, or across the LAN to a storage device.

/Al








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