Windows Previous Versions

[jasonlitka]

Ok, I've been hammering away at this for the past 2 or 3 hours and have managed to get nowhere. I can't for the life of me get any auto-snaps to show up in Previous Versions when you right-click on a file in Windows.

I created the dataset, created a auto-snap job, waited for a snap to occur, created a share, added a file, waited for another snap to occur, changed the file, waited for another snap, then rebooted for good measure, and I'm still not seeing anything.

The smb.conf has snapdir set correctly as ".zfs/snapshot", format is correct at "auto-%Y%m%d.%H%M-2w", and vfs objects includes "shadow_copy2".

Any thoughts?

EDIT: Forgot to mention, I'm running 8.3.0-BETA1 because if I actually deploy this system I'll need support for the i350 NIC which I understand isn't in 8.2.

 

[pirateghost]

i am pretty sure the previous versions option within windows will only see files/backups done within windows. i do not think it is meant to interface with ZFS snapshots at all.

 

[jasonlitka]

i am pretty sure the previous versions option within windows will only see files/backups done within windows. i do not think it is meant to interface with ZFS snapshots at all.

It works with other ZFS-based systems.

 

[ben]

The directions are here. http://doc.freenas.org/index.php/Windows_(CIFS)_Shares#Configuring_Shadow_Copies

Check the gotchas and caveats listed to see if any of them help.

 

[jasonlitka]

Already ran through that document and no joy. The only difference is that I setup a general share where everyone had access, rather than two specific shares where only a single person had access. The snapshots are there because I can access them in the .zfs folder via SSH, they're just not showing under Previous Versions.

 

[cyberjock]

So your CIFS share is located at /mnt/zpool-name-here and not /mnt/zpool-name-here/somedata?

 

[pirateghost]

that is awesome. i was not aware that this worked like that... learn something new every other day or so ;)

 

[jasonlitka]

So your CIFS share is located at /mnt/zpool-name-here and not /mnt/zpool-name-here/somedata?

I did exactly what the doc said to do, I just only did it once, rather than twice, and rather than for a specific user, I setup it up to be R/W for "Everyone".

These are the steps I took:

1. Created a pool across two mirrored vdevs and named it "tank".
2. Created a dataset named "content".
3. Set the owner on the dataset to DOMAIN\Administrator, the group to DOMAIN\Domain Admins, and enabled Windows ACLs.
4. Created a snapshot task on tank/content.
5. Waited for a snapshot to fire.
6. Created a share on tank/content named "content".
7. Right-clicked on the share from Windows and set "Everyone" to R/W.
8. Created a text file named test.txt with the current date & time.
9. Waited for a snapshot to fire.
10. Edited the text file to have a second line with the new date & time.
11. Waited for a snapshot to fire.
12. Edited the text file to have a third line with the new date & time.
13. Right-clicked on the file and selected the "Previous Versions" tab expecting to see two previous versions and instead saw nothing.
14. Logged into the FreeNAS box via SSH, changed to the dataset's .zfs/snapshot folder, and verified that there were two previous versions sitting in there.
15. Restarted CIFS for good measure.
16. Nope, still no previous versions.

 

[cyberjock]

What version of Windows are you using? Just curious because I'm going to see if I can duplicate your result.

 

[jasonlitka]

What version of Windows are you using? Just curious because I'm going to see if I can duplicate your result.

Windows 7 Ultimate x64. Patched with everything from Windows Update as of last Tuesday or Wesnesday.

Previous Versions is working on that machine as I can connect to 2008 R2 and 2012 servers with VSS enabled and those all show previous versions as expected.

 

[cyberjock]

Well, I tried to do it and I couldn't get it to work. I'm definitely not very knowledgeable about the snapshots from the Windows side of the house. I know that reading the prerequisites and duplicating the steps in the guide does not work. Either I missed something, it's broken, or the steps are not complete.

 

[pirateghost]

i will test this out as soon as i have time to do so