Case: 00520428 - Veeam B&R 7.0 other OS FLR problem

[serverbu]

Hello,

we are setting up a test environment for veeam B&R to validate B&R for a later use in our productive environment.
The environment consists of Windows and Linux Servers.
FLR for Windows works like a charm, unfortunately for Linux it works but without preserving file ownership. The shown user and group id in the backup are correct, but the restored files have altered ownerships.
We created a user named veeam on a Linux test machine which veeam used to log in to Linux and restored the files to a restore folder we made readable to all users.
But although we checked "preserve permissions and ownership" the owner is changed to user veeam and the group users which is user veeam's primary group.
As this approach isn't working for us [we] wanted to try to connect via ssh from our Linux machine to the FLR appliance to pull the files through a tar to preserve the permissions and ownerships this way.
There comes in another problem; we can't log on to the appliance.
We tried user root with the name of the veeam master machine plus _r as password tried in all lower case, all uppercase, only first letter uppercase without success.
we tried user root with the name of the veeam proxy machine plus _r as password all in lower, all in upper and only first letter in upper case still without success.
in a last desperate attempt we tried the name of the appliance machine first we tried VeeamFLR_test10_r then we tried only test10_r and as a last resort even tried Veeam_test10_randomid_r as password even without success.

our test master is named vmbackupd01t and the proxy vmbackupd02t, if we understood the kb and the various answers in this forum correct the password had to be vmbackupd01t_r which doesn't seem to be the case despite all these answers.

Maybe someone can help us with this issue or at least point us in the right direction please.

[foggy]

The FLR appliance root password should be <Hostname of the server where vPowerNFS is running>_r. So could be your repository server if it runs vPowerNFS.

I will check regarding the ownership issue.

[foggy]

Btw, you can set the Linux FLR appliance password in the Credentials Manager (Manage Credentials on the main Veeam B&R menu).

Regarding ownership restore: the expected behavior is that file ownership is restored correctly while there are issues with folder ownership restore (we are planning to address those in the future). Can you please confirm, you're experiencing issues with file or folder ownership restore?

[serverbu]

For anyone having the same Problem with the password to the FLR appliance:
In Veeam Backup & Replication got to Menu -> Manage Credential -> choose the Account root with the Description "FLR helper appliance credentials" -> click edit and set your own password.
This should be self-explanating but to be sure: the new password works only for appliances started AFTER password was set. Machines that where already running are using the old password.
Thanks to Denis Bozhkov from Veeam Support team for this.

The advice to pull the Files through the FTP service didn't work either, ownerships are altered to the user who started ftp (and this is the right behavior or else anyone loading some files from a third party ftp wouldn't have rights on these files)
For anyone who want to know how we keep permissions and ownerships intact:
We connect from our Server to the Appliance through ssh, tar the files we want to restore, pull the tar from the appliance and extract the tar with the preserve permissions flag. This works as intended.
ssh -n <ip or dnsname of FLR appliance> 'cd <path of the file to be restored within the appliance e.g. /media/dm-6/home>; tar pcvf - <files|folders to be restored e.g. *|/bin|/bin/[filename]|/bin /home' | tar pxvf - -C <path where the files should be restored on the machine in either absolute path or starting from the point you started ssh>
e.g. "ssh -n flr-app01 'cd /media/dm-6/home/veeam; tar pcvf - /bin' | tar pxvf - -C /home/veeam/_restore_"

best regards

...
Regarding ownership restore: the expected behavior is that file ownership is restored correctly while there are issues with folder ownership restore (we are planning to address those in the future). Can you please confirm, you're experiencing issues with file or folder ownership restore?

simply: both.

We tested with single file which was a simple text document created for testing purpose, every time the files ownership was altered. Then we testet with empty folder and the ownership of that was altered finaly we tested with folder containing the text document and the ownership of the foleder was altered as well as the containing file.

The transfered file (the tar) ownership are also altered using our method, but since this alters the ownership of the tar only and not the file inside the tar, this doesn't concern us.

[tsightler]

The advice to pull the Files through the FTP service didn't work either, ownerships are altered to the user who started ftp (and this is the right behavior or else anyone loading some files from a third party ftp wouldn't have rights on these files)

Some FTP clients support a "mirror" style option that can preserve permissions. For example, I've previously used lftp for this purpose.

For anyone who want to know how we keep permissions and ownerships intact:
We connect from our Server to the Appliance through ssh, tar the files we want to restore, pull the tar from the appliance and extract the tar with the preserve permissions flag. This works as intended.
ssh -n <ip or dnsname of FLR appliance> 'cd <path of the file to be restored within the appliance e.g. /media/dm-6/home>; tar pcvf - <files|folders to be restored e.g. *|/bin|/bin/[filename]|/bin /home' | tar pxvf - -C <path where the files should be restored on the machine in either absolute path or starting from the point you started ssh>
e.g. "ssh -n flr-app01 'cd /media/dm-6/home/veeam; tar pcvf - /bin' | tar pxvf - -C /home/veeam/_restore_"

With V7 rsync is also included on the Other OS FLR CD so it's a great way to pull files for restore and preserve permissions and most Linux admins are already quite familiar with it. Can be especially useful in cases of restoring entire directories where many of the files are unchanged, or for large files since it will only transfer changes. The command is just normal rsync run from the machine you want to restore the files to, so your command could be morphed into:

Code: Select all

rsync -avP root@flr-app01:/media/dm-6/home/veeam /home/veeam/_restore_

Note that I'm not indicating there's anything wrong with the tar method, it works great as well and has been documented on the forum before, however, I'm just pointing out that with V7 the rsync option is there and can be quite useful as well, especially since it's pretty much the standard way to move files around on Linux.

[Vitaliy S.]

Serverbu, please be aware that ownership settings are restored only if you have privileges to change the owner at the remote Linux host where files are restored. Have you tried to restore files under root account or any other user but with root elevation option enabled? Do you see the same issue?

[serverbu]

Serverbu, please be aware that ownership settings are restored only if you have privileges to change the owner at the remote Linux host where files are restored. Have you tried to restore files under root account or any other user but with root elevation option enabled? Do you see the same issue?

The user (named veeam) we created for restore purpose was created in an admin group which has root elevation option enabled to access the _restore_ folder which lies within every users home dir.
We elevate ourself using sudo and the account veeam was added to sudoers.
How does the elevation works from the FLR appliance? Some script i assume, if so, can this script be edited generaly so that every new FLR VM gets this script or can we pass argument to this script somewhere through settings in the veeam menu?

[serverbu]

...
Some FTP clients support a "mirror" style option that can preserve permissions. For example, I've previously used lftp for this purpose.
...
With V7 rsync is also included on the Other OS FLR CD so it's a great way to pull files for restore and preserve permissions and most Linux admins are already quite familiar with it. Can be especially useful in cases of restoring entire directories where many of the files are unchanged, or for large files since it will only transfer changes. The command is just normal rsync run from the machine you want to restore the files to, so your command could be morphed into:

Code: Select all

rsync -avP root@flr-app01:/media/dm-6/home/veeam /home/veeam/_restore_

...

Thanks for the advice on lftp will check this one out and compare ease of use with ssh and rsync