Losing trustee rights to a volume can be a real pain. There have been a number of different native ways to backup volume trustees. It's hard to know or decide on one. Why decide? Use multiple ones to ensure that you're able to restore the trustee assignments if you need to.

I have created a utility called TBACKUP, which "bundles" these solutions, and creates appropriate .NCF files for backing (and restoring!) up volume trustees. In short, it:

• prompts you for a list of servers to process (if JRB Utility LISTOBJ.EXE is found in your path, it'll present you with a list of servers)

• creates TBACKUP.NCF for selected servers (see content below)

• from the list of servers, it creates TRUSTEEX.NCF (to run TRUSTEE.NLM) and TRUSTBARX.NCF (to run TRUSTBAR.NLM) with entries for each writeable volume

• creates a TRUSTEE_R.NCF and TRUSTBAR_R.NCF at the root of each writeable volume for restoring the trustee assignments according to the data file each utility creates

You can schedule trustee backups by adding TBACKUP.NCF to SYS:\ETC\CRONTAB:

40 23 * * * TBARBACK.NCF

You'll surely be able to recover trustee assignment when you need to.

The TRUSTEEX.NCF and TRUSTBARX.NCF is by default configured to keep 4 generations of their data files. Some of these files can be large. If you need to conserve space, or don't need that number of backups, simply edit the NCFs accordingly.

TBACKUP.NCF:

# Volume Trustee Backup script, using multiple methods.  
# use all methods below if you're really paranoid/nervous about losing your trustee assignments
 
# REF: http://thebackroomtech.com/2007/08/01/howto-quick-and-dirty-edirectory-backups
 
# TRUSTEE.NLM can save all trustees on all volumes to a single file:
#   TRUSTEE SAVE ALL SYS:\Trustees.txt
# however, it's preferred to have trustee run for each individual volume, so that
# individual volume trustees can be restored.
# A Windows-based utility, TBACKUP.EXE, will create TRUSTEEX.NCF containing
# the correct lines for backing each mounted (writable) volume's trustees.
# It also will create an associated NCF on each volume for restoring the trustees
TRUSTEEX.NCF
 
# TBACKUP.EXE will (also) create TRUSTBARX.NCF containing the correct lines for 
# backing up each mounted (writable) volume's trustees using the TRUSTBAR.NLM
# It also will create an associated NCF on each volume for restoring the trustees
TRUSTBARX.NCF
 

# INVENTORY is a command that creates Volume_Trustees.xml and Volume_Inventory.xml at the
# root of each volume
# REF: http://developer.novell.com/documentation/vfs/vfs__enu/index.html?page=/documentation/vfs/vfs__enu/data/bp8ffe8.html
INVENTORY