Hi,

On 6/21/2007 11:50 AM, Kern Sibbald wrote:
> Hello,
> 
> Recently, I bought a Windows Vista laptop ($$$ -- hint), so that I could test 
> the Bacula FD on it.

Me too :-)

> First a few comments on Vista:
> 
> Good things (at least for users):
> 1. It has nice looking graphics

Have you noticed the memory consumption of the 3d window manager?

> 2. It has a lot of features

... which is not necessarily an advantage, IMO.

> 3. They sure are packing a lot of "3rd party" software into their kernel
>     (e.g. virus checkers, disk repartitioners, encrypted folders,
>     automatic file backup, ...).  I wouldn't want to be 
>     an independent Windows utility software vendor.

Quite true, though I think that today this not yet a problem. The virus 
checker, for example, is more or less a joke. IMO, again.

> 4. You right click on many menu items to get a lot more functionality.
> 5. They have installed the software in a much more reasonable set of
>     directory names (shorter and no spaces).  If I am not mistaken, most
>     the old XP directory names are there too (sort of -- see below).
> 
> 
> Not so good things:
> 1. It is pretty big pig -- it squats in 500MB of memory, uses about 60GB of
>     disk, and it took over an hour to boot up the first time, and quite a long
>     time the second time; after defragging the disk, it boots in a reasonable
>     time.
> 2. Although the new directory structure has more reasonable directory names
>    (shorter and no spaces), they have provided "junctions" to the old names
>    for compatibility. Unfortunately few third party programs such
>    as Bacula know about junctions, so they get confused, and typically
>    this manifests itself as references to files/directories that do not seem
>    to exist ...

Only migrating configuration files from existing applications is a pain...

> 3. VSS (Volume shadow copy) is not compatible with the older
>     code used by Bacula.

That's bad, though I knew it :-)

> 4. System services can no longer interact with the desktop, which means that
>     the Bacula tray monitor does not work.

This is the right behaviour from a security-conscious point of view.

> 5. There are a number new levels of security, which means that after
>     installing Bacula,  you cannot edit the conf files without explicitly
>     finding the right dialog and changing your permissions on the files.  
> 6. Due to junctions not being really downward compatible, the Bacula menu
>     links to the conf files complain that the file does not exist.  By the
>     way, junctions have been around for a while, but were apparently never
>     used in a default install.  However, on Vista, there are a lot of
>     junctions in the default install.
> 7. The new hard disk is 100GB the pre-loaded software uses 36GB.
> 8. Due to the need for swap space (2GB RAM) and snapshot space, the largest
>    size available to load Linux along side of Vista is 28GB  -- i.e. as
>    mentioned above, the system needs 60 GB of disk, and this is a virgin
>    system (with the Bacula FD loaded).

I set aside 32 GB for linux, but will install it later...

> So where are we with Bacula:
> 1. After 6 hours of upgrades to my WinXP system (62 SP1 updates, then SP 2,
>    then install .NET Framework, then install Windows SDK, perhaps I will have
>    the new VSS code loaded, 
> 2.  *perhaps* as their documentation claims, it is now a simple recompile with
>    new header files (I doubt it very much).

I'll keep my fingers crossed...

> 3. Junctions are another story, and I have no idea how much work that is
>    going to be.

Should work somewhat similar to soft links, I guess.

> 4. Even if the new VSS works, it will only work on WinXP, Windows server 2003,
>    and Vista, which means that in VSS mode, it is unlikely that the Bacula FD
>    will support older systems (Win98, WinMe, WinNT, ...) as it currently does.

Not a serious issue I think.

> 5. Time estimate: since I'm not getting paid for this: none.

Let's see if some experienced windows programmer needs practice with 
Vista :-)

Arno

> Best regards,
> 
> Kern
> 
> 
> 
> 
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-- 
IT-Service Lehmann                    [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Arno Lehmann                  http://www.its-lehmann.de

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