> Definitely sounds like a very helpful tool and if it works it should

It's not really a tool, it's integrated in rsync itself. ;-)

> avoid a lot of the kludges associated with other methods (such as the
> recursive script I wrote to automatically launch VSS and rsyncd based
> on an arbitrary rsyncd.conf file). I too am a bit surprised it works
> in XP since XP has a rather broken notion of VSS that does not allow
> easy access to the shadow mounts (I had to use a separate program
> called dosdev.exe to associate shadow mounts with accessible drive
> letters). Also vshadow.exe for XP seems to have different parameters
> and more limited functionality than versions for Vista and later
> Windows Server releases.
>

Microsoft has a SDK which has seperate include files and library files
for XP and Windows 2003 (and newer: Vista, 2008, 7).

I compiled 2 binaries, one for XP and one for Windows 2003 and newer.

Have a look:

http://www.consolejunky.net/cwrsync-vss/

> That being said, I wouldn't think that the protocol=28 limitation

I actually tested it with a really old rsync version, which only supports
protocol=26 and it worked fine.

> should affect your tool assuming that you are not making major changes
> to the basic rsync source code -- i.e. I assume (hope?) you are just
> wrapping the rsync source in code that uses something like vshadow.exe

I compiled rsync with code that calls the Windows VSS-API directly,
it doesn't need to create a seperate drive-letter, it just creates a
snapshot on the fly at the moment it needs it.

rsync has 4 steps it goes through:
1. accept connection from client, start a new rsync-process to handle it
2. make a filelisting
3. check file content and copy content to client
4. clean up and stop process

between step 2 and 3 the VSS-API is called.

(I've only used it for readonly backup-type runs)

> to set up an equivalent shadow mount for the target backup module (as
> read in from the rsyncd.conf file) and then runs rsync on the
> equivalent shadow mount rather than on the original module. I also
> assume you are using at least version 3.0 sources for rsync.

I compiled it against the latest: 3.0.6

Other versions aren't even that difficult.

I presume you use backuppc, I don't have one setup here, could you test
the binaries with a backuppc testrun for me ?

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