Microsoft provides a way of mounting a read-only snapshot as a volume using their vshadow program. However, it does not provide a way to unmount the snapshot (I wonder what would happen if I deleted the snapshot?). Going through the documentation on MSDN I found UnexposeSnapshot Method, and added the ability to use it in the vshadow. However, it says that it's only supported for Vista and Server 2008 machines. Is there anyway around this? The XP configuration for vshadow won't compile. It would be really bizarre if Microsoft wrote a way to mount volume shadow copies in XP and server 2003, yet didn't provide a way to unmount them.
Any ideas?
Use Windows' built-in mount management utility mountvol.exe.
On API level, you should be able to use DeleteVolumeMountPoint.
There is a command line tool inside the Windows Vista platform sdk that can be used to create batch files that operate on snapshots. I don't know if you mean that one, but it definitively works this way: You invoke it and it will create the snapshot. Then it will launch another process that you specify. Then that process (e.g. another batch file or the same batch file) will run. When it ends, the command line tool will remove and delete the snapshot.
Related
I'm new to Azure-Pipeline and struggling to put together a C++ oriented pipeline that uses camke which properly compiles, run tests and build documentation on Ubuntu, macOS, and Windows.
I managed the macOS and Ubuntu cases rather easily but am struggling with the Windows case not knowing what's installed and what's in system PATH for the given image & container I've selected.
Not being super familiar with the Azure-Platform I'm basically relying on commit-push-run-pipeline every single little change to my YAML file thus wasting time and resources.
I can't imagine that the only way is to blindly try out commands by commit, push and run the pipeline.
I managed to find a basic description of the currently (hopefully) available images here following the included software link for Windows link yoou end up on a comprehensive list of what's supposedly installed (I have some doubts on whether this documentation actually matches the content of the image). Calling some of those tools like cmake and choco, present in the above list, failed. Whether or not they're actually installed and in system PATH I have no idea.
Q1: Is there any way to locally test out an Azure-Pipeline YAML?
Q2: Is there any way to figure what is actually installed on a given image/container (without issuing a DIR /s from the root folder??)
Q3: Is it possible to connect to a running container (or is it a VM???) instance and directly tinker with it?
Q4: Alternatively, is it possible to run such an image locally (Docker)? Does it imply execution on a Windows machine or is that a standalone VM image?
EDIT: Found out about this question, although doesn't quite answer mine: Is there a tool to validate an Azure DevOps Pipeline locally?
Q1: Is there any way to locally test out an Azure-Pipeline YAML?
The answer is yes. You could create your private agent to execute the Azure-Pipeline YAML.
Self-hosted agents
Q2: Is there any way to figure what is actually installed on a given
image/container (without issuing a DIR /s from the root folder??)
Just as you know, we could check the document Software for the software installed on the agent. If you want to know the install the path of some software, you could check the debug log from the build task. For example, cmake. We could check the build log from the cmake task:
Q3: Is it possible to connect to a running container (or is it a
VM???) instance and directly tinker with it?
For the hosted agent, I am afraid the answer is not.
Q4: Alternatively, is it possible to run such an image locally
(Docker)? Does it imply execution on a Windows machine or is that a
standalone VM image?
The answer is yes, we could Run a self-hosted agent in Docker. And it imply execution on a Windows machine.
I need to do some heap dumps and it would be great to have an easy (and fast) way to get the files as seamless as possible.
Current way doing it is:
Create file
Optional: Upload SSH key to EC2 instance if not yet known(depending on security model used)
Open SSH session (not using ASM as it has some OsX flaws)
copy docker container file to EC2 instance
SCP the file to local machine
Cleanup
This seems overwhelming complex for getting a single file. Is there a more straight-forward way in doing it? As this is an on demand use case I'd be ok with manual AWS Console way or using tools to do it more convenient. THX
I want to create a new Google Cloud instance with Hardenedbsd iso. Hardenedbsd is a FreeBSD based OS. I checked public documentation on https://cloud.google.com/compute/docs/images/import-existing-image but I couldn't see FreeBSD on supported OS section.
Is there a way to do that?
FreeBSD works pretty well in GCE, the upload procedure of a custom image or making your own is quite easy I would say even better than with AWS, therefore high are the changes the same could apply for Hardenedbsd, the only "trick" is that after you have your raw disk you need to use gnu tar to upload the image:
gtar -cSzf freebsd.tar.gz disk.raw
To create the disk.raw I use this script https://github.com/fabrik-red/images/blob/master/fabrik.sh (root on ZFS) to read more about the procedures you could check: https://fabrik.red/post/google/
For testing or getting an idea, you could try FreeBSD 12.0
https://github.com/fabrik-red/images/releases/download/12.0/disk.tar.gz
I haven't tried working with any *BSD on Google Cloud Platform so take my words with a grain of salt.
You could try booting the instance in rescue mode (if supported) and perform a dd to write the Hardenedbsd to the main disk.
You could also take a look on Packer from Hashicorp which is meant to create OS images to be deployed on the cloud.
https://www.packer.io/docs/builders/googlecompute.html
I've been using a Windows 2008R2 EC2 instance for some time. As of today, it still works. I started working with the AWS API, and I was unable to start my instance using the API, the error message being "not authorized for images", specifically : An error occurred (AuthFailure) when calling the RunInstances operation: Not authorized for images: [ami-088dab1e]
That's when I learned about deprecation.
From what I read, what this means is that the AMI being used is no longer publicly available. When using the API call "describe-images", this image cannot be queried. While it apparently can still be used from the console, the API simply doesn't support it and will not start an instance using that image ID. On the console, the AMI description reads : Cannot load details for ami-088dab1e. You may not be permitted to view it.
I understand how to find a new image and I think I understand how to launch my instance using a new image. However, I have lots of custom software installed on this instance. So before I try it, I want to know if I will lose that custom software installation if I launch my existing instance with a new AMI. I'm hoping that my custom software won't change, but I'm skeptical. I don't want to fire up a brand new version of Windows and start from scratch. Mostly, I don't want to lose what I've already got.
I know this is a basic question, but I've looked all over, and I haven't yet found a straightforward answer. I was hoping y'all would know. Thanks.
I think I've found an answer here: AWS EC2 new instance from image AMI
When launching an instance from an Amazon Machine Image (AMI), the disks will contain an exact copy of the disk at the time that the AMI was created.
In other words, if I start a new instance, I'll lose my installed software. WRONG!
Launching != starting. More editing to come once I get this completely figured out.
So, given that updated Windows images are created and deprecated all the time, and the Windows OS is constantly updated by Microsoft, one must wonder how it is a static Windows image can be used with other software? It seems like far more trouble than it's worth, if you've got to constantly reinstall your software to keep your Windows system up to date.
Amazon recently came up with a solution for that, here: Patching Windows
I don't know how to do it yet, but this seems like exactly what I need in order to keep Windows up to date, and keep my installed software intact.
Can anyone clarify an issue? I'm using the VSS API (C++ using VSS2008 and the latest SDK running on XP SP3) in a home-brew backup utility*.
THe VSS snapshot operations work fine for folder that have no subfolders - i.e. my email and SQL server volumes. However when I take a snapshot of a folder that does contain subfolders, the nested structure is 'flattened' in the snapshot - all sub-directories cease to exist.
So here is the question: I am aware that support for VSS on XP is a bit limited but is there a way to specify a snapshot be non-recursive? The docs are not very helpful ...
I got really tired of buggy rubbish that costs boatloads and fails every few days so I thought I'd roll my own. It'll get onto CodeProject at some point. If anyone is interested let me know and you can have a (source) copy when it's ready ...
Thx++
Jerry
Your question is confusing...
VSS does not work at a "folder" level. It works a "volume" level.
You "snap" a volume and you will have a device path which you can "open" using the filesystem api (which will automatically mount the device volume with a filesystem) on a file by file or you can access the device directly (sector by sector).
It should be easy to backup all files on the snapped device volume (don't forget all of the file streams and ACL's for NTFS files), your problem will be restoring them... VSS will not help you on the restore. The main problem will be restoring a system volume, where you will need another OS to boot to like WinPE or DOS or something else. If your not worried about system volumes then restore can be easy.
If you backup the data in terms of sectors, then you get the added benefit that if you write a volume device driver for it (to look like a volume or HD) then windows will auto-load a filesystem driver for it. This gives you a free explorer application, this is what most sector based backup applications do. Also it gives them VM possibilities.
Even if you are doing simple file backups, it helps to understand filesystems (NTFS, FAT, etc) so that you know what you can/should backup and restore. Do you know what a NTFS reparse point is? How are you going to deal with it if you hit one during your backup? Do you know how windows actually boots and what files you need to backup and restore and "patch" to be able to have a chance at booting. On a restore, how best do you lay out the NTFS volume as not to affect NTFS performance on the restored volume? Are you going to support restoring system volumes to new hardware, what does that require you to do just to have a chance of working? The questions are endless.
System backup/restore is not easy, there are lots of edge cases (see some of the questions above) that you don't know about until you hit them.
Good luck on you project, I hope I haven't put you off too much, I'm just saying there is a lot of work to be able to deliver a backup application that most people have have no idea about.
Comment on the above - if a 'writer' is playing the VSS game then it will ensure that the file system is in a happy state as part of the VSS setup.
In the case of MS SQL Server - check that it is a VSS writer. If it is then your snapshot of the DB files should be OK. If not, then its in what is called a 'crash state'. So for example if you are using MySQL or some other non-MS, non-VSS aware SQL database - your backup may or may not be coherent ('a good one'). In that case it may be better than nothing, but it it may also still be useless. Using VSS MAY result in a better integrity from which to make your backup, but of the files are open, they are open and if the app does not play in the VSS pig-pen then you may or may not be hosed.