On 28/04/10 00:50, jdb AT mayhem DOT com wrote:
> I'm primarily a Linux user, and have been quite happy with Bacula on 
> Linux.  I also have some Windows servers which I'm stuck managing as 
> well, and I have Bacula configured on those.  One of those servers, a 
> Windows Server 2003 machine, recently managed to corrupt its SOFTWARE 
> registry to the point that it wouldn't boot. 
> 
> Is it possible to restore just the registry without restoring the entire 
> backup?

To restore the hives you'd have to boot a different Windows install with
the Bacula agent running and the disks for the win2k3 server attached.
You can't restore onto the 2k3 machine's registry hivesbecause they're
read-only to applications while the OS is using them. You *may* be able
to restore them to an alternate location on the running server's disks,
then reboot into the recovery console and move them into place, though.

Honestly, you're probably better off restoring your disk-image backup of
the server then updating the user data from your backups. That's usually
by far the easiest way to repair a dead Windows server.

( Please don't say "what disk-image backups?" You're running Windows
servers, so you must keep some kind of disk image backup of the OS
install... )


Looking at MSDN, it appears that Bacula may have to explicitly support
the VSS registry writer to do registry backups. See:

  http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa384595%28VS.85%29.aspx

OTOH, since the default paths appear to be under
\Windows\System32\config\, then with vss enabled it may be that the
hives can be automatically backed up.

If you've excluded that directory, you're almost certainly out of luck.
Check the registry key mentioned above to see if that's where the hives
are saved by VSS - if it's a different location you could be lucky.

Even if it is, restoring the hives could be ... interesting. See the
MSDN article referenced. Maybe it's easier with the recovery console.



Ugh. Reading this stuff, I'm beginning to feel sorry I recently bought a
Win2k8 server. Still, it was that or an Apple XServe to replace the
destroyed-by-water old XServe, and unlike Apple at least Microsoft fixes
bugs faster than they introduce them.


-- 
Craig Ringer

Tech-related writing: http://soapyfrogs.blogspot.com/

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