Re: icacls or subinacl

This issue you provide wont work. The switch you describe will only backup the specified directory permissions and everythgi below there. I want to back the entire drive's permissions.

If I backup the permissions only to a file, then later I can restore them if something changes.Again, lets stay focused on what the goal is instead of trying to troubleshoot what happens if a directory gets deleted, etc.



"Al Dunbar" <AlanDrub@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message news:eTH3FqhpIHA.2256@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
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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