The INI file contains most of the critical (and non-confidential) settings the engine uses. Typically one changes these values by using any of the following methods:
- Backup Client GUI
- Web Console - Edit INI GUI
- Web Console - Edit INI GUI > Edit as Text mode
- WholesaleBackup Server
- Text editor - such as notepad.exe ensuring to maintain Unicode (or UTF8) text file encoding.
These methods are outlined in greater detail in the following article: How to manage deployed backup software configuration locally or remotely.
About The INI
The INI file is broken down into sections, for visual convenience. Sections are delineated by text between [ and ]. Lines beginning with a semi-colon ';' are comments and ignored.
Information about each setting follows:
[Info]
Contains comments generated when the INI file was last written including the Version of the software, the Account, and Domain/Computer.
[Alerts]
emaillogs - Set to 1 if the client is to email logs at end of each backup/restore and 0 otherwise.
noconnect - An alert will be emailed to a client if this number of days has elapsed since the client connected to the backup server.
nodata - An alert will be emailed to a client if this number of days has elapsed since the client sent data to the backup server.
[Backup]
archive - Set to 1 to clear archive attribute flag on files backed up, 0 means leave flag unchanged.
after - Command to run after a backup is complete. See also before.
auxiliary - Full pathname to secondary (rotation) backup folder (typically a USB device). See also doauxiliary.
before - Command to run before a backup is run. See also after.
backupkeys - Set to 1 to back up this software's encryption key (password) to the remote server and allow the backup host to help recover it. Set to 0 for regulatory compliance.
cache - Local temporary workspace.
compression - Compression level between 0 (off) and 10 (maximum). Default is 5.
doauxiliary - Set to 1 (and specify auxiliary) if rotation backups are desired. Note requires dolocal is set to 1 and vault folder is specified. Set doauxliary to 0 if to disable secondary local backups.
dolocal - Set to 1 to do local backups to vault folder. 0 disables local backups.
doremote - Set to 1 to do remote backups to the remote backup server(s). 0 disables remote backups.
doWDI - Set to 1 to enable Windows disk image backups. See WDIsrc and WDIdest.
localfirst - Set to 1 to complete local backup and then synchronize it offsite, 0 means run local backup and remote backup in parallel.
maxupspeed - Use this to cap your Internet bandwidth to this maximum upload speed in KB/s. A value of 0 means uncapped. See also pausespeed. This value can be set on Expert Settings tab when running in expert mode.
plugins - Legacy, folder only used if $SYSTEMSTATE is specified in selections for Server 2003.
retention - The number of days to preserve old copies of files. Retention must be between 1 and 65535. See also versions.
rigoroussync - When there is more then 1 backup vault, then when doing a sync (at end of backup or via -sync or -synclocal command line flags) then setting this value to non-zero will cause the sync to check the existence of each file in the storage vault with its entry in metadata DB to be sure no files are actually missing from disk. This can be set from client GUI on the Backup->Settings tab as well. Note that using this setting will significantly slow down the sync time when there are hundreds of thousands or millions of blocks in the storage vault so please use this setting with care. It is typically used if you suspect that blocks have actually been lost from a disk in one of the storage vaults (e.g. due to disk I/O errors, etc.) and will help in retransferring files between back vaults (whether local or remote) in the event of data loss within a vault.
vault - The location of local backup folder (vault). See also dolocal.
versions - The number of versions of files to retain. 0 means infinite. See also retention.
WDIsrc - The drives that will be backed up by Windows Disk Image backups. This is in addition to any system-critical drives. There is no issue if system-critical drives are listed here. If more than one drive is listed here, they should be separated by only a comma. For example, C:, D:.
WDIdest - The destination drive where the Windows Disk Image backups will be locally saved to. Only one drive can be listed here, and it can NOT be one of the system-critical drives or a drive listed under WDIsrc.
[EMail]
email_cc - E-mail address to use on CC line when emailogs set and SMTP info provided.
email_from - E-mail address to use on from the line when emailogs set and SMTP info provided.
email_to - E-mail address to use on to line when emailogs set and SMTP info provided.
smtp_host - SMTP email host to use to send outbound e-mail from this software.
smtp_port - TCP port the SMTP server listens on. Default is usually 25, but it maybe 465 for SSL/TLS or 587 for SSL.
smtp_ssl - Set to 1 if SMTP host requires SSL, else set to 0.
smtp_tls - Set to 1 if SMTP host requires TLS/Start-TLS, else set to 0.
smtp_user - SMTP account (often a full e-mail address).
Need help with SMTP settings? Please check out this list of common SMTP email configurations.
[Logs]
logs - Folder where logs are kept.
logdays - Number of days of logs to retain.
[Schedule]
delay - Number of minutes between continuous runs (used when schedule = 0)
fileage - When running in continuous mode (schedule = 0) this is the number of hours (0 - 24) to wait between backing up the same file again.
monfri - HH.MM of scheduled backup launch for weekdays, used when schedule = 1 or schedule = 3.
pause - Set to 1 to use pausemonfri, 2 to use pausesatsun, 3 to use both.
pausespeed - Bandwidth cap to use in KB/s to use when pause is specified. See also maxupspeed.
pausemonfri - HH.MM of scheduled weekdays pause time, used when pause = 1 or pause = 3.
pausesatsun - HH.MM of scheduled weekend pause time, used when pause = 1 or pause = 3.
satsun - - HH.MM of scheduled backup launch for weekends, used when schedule = 2 or schedule = 3.
schedule - Set to 0 for continuous, 1 for monfri, 2 for satsun, and 3 for both monfri and satsun.
shutdown - Set to 1 if you want the computer to shut down when a backup completes. Set to 2 if you want the computer to reboot when a backup completes.
waituntil - MM/DD/YYYY to wait until before launching next backup.
weekdays - A list of days indicating which are to be considered Weekdays for backup selections. 0 is Sunday, 1 is Monday, ... The default is 12345.
weekend - A list of days indicating which are to be considered Weekend for backup selections. 0 is Sunday, 1 is Monday, ... The default is 06.
[User]
billcode - The backup host's billing system token for this backup account.
organization - The user's organization they specified at software installation time.
userfirstname - The user's first name they specified at software installation time.
userlastname - The user's last name they specified at software installation time.
useremail - The user's e-mail address they specified at software installation time.
userphone - The user's phone number they specified at software installation time.
[Restore]
restoreemptyfolders - When set to 0, empty folders or folder trees in the restore selections will not be recreated. When set to 1, when a backup is run, if there are any empty folders or folder trees in the restore selections, the empty folder structure will be recreated. The default is 0.
restoremodifydate - When set to 0, when files are created in the restore path, they will be given a Modify Date for the time the file was restored. When set to 1, the restored files will be given the Modify Date the original file showed at the time it was backed up. The default is 0.
[Expert]
blockupgrade - Set to 1 to prevent the client from auto-upgrading itself. The default for this setting is 0. We strongly encourage you to allow the client to auto-upgrade itself so you benefit from the latest enhancements, security features, performance improvements, and fixes.
debug - Set to 1 to enable verbose information to go into log files.
donotfollowlinks - Set to 1 to backup junction points and symbolic links as links and set to 0 to follow them and back up what the links point to. See ignorelinkwarn INI setting as well.
doubleencrypt - Set to 1 to backup/restore EFS files as Microsoft encrypted in addition to our encryption, 0 means files are unencrypted in Windows before backing up (may result in access denied errors with 3rd party apps) and so they will be restored as unencrypted.
hiderestore - Turn this on to hide the Restore tab when the GUI opens (note opening in GUI in -expert mode will always show the Restore tab). See also hidesettings and lockGUI.
hidesettings - Set this to 1 to hide all the Backup tabs as well as the Monitor->E-Mail tabs. Set this to 2 to just hide the Backup->Settings tab. If hidesettings in non-zero, opening the GUI in -expert mode will always show these tabs. See also hidesrestore and lockGUI.
fuzzydates - Ignore nano-seconds in all file times. This is to workaround a bug encountered in Synology NAS devices where they return 9s instead of 0s for nano-seconds.
ignorelinkwarn - Set to 1 to ignore warnings about mounted volumes, junction points, and symbolic links. See donotfollowlinks INI setting as well.
inactivity - Used by service. Indicates the number of hours (minimum 0 and maximum 7*24) for service to wait before killing what it thinks is a hung engine.
keepalives - Set to 1 to have engine send TCP keep-alives. 0 means don't send them.
keepfreemb - The number of MBs to keep free on any volume (disk) or share the engine writes to during a backup or restore. This setting is so that the engine will not fill up a critical system volume.
powersoftwo - Set to 1 to show all sizes using 1024 for KB, MB, etc. Set to 0 to show all sizes using 1000 for KB, MB, etc.
preservedeleted - if set to 0 will flush deselected and deleted files after retention period (which must be non-zero for preservedeleted to work). WARNING: if shares or mapped drives are selected and not online for any backups during retention period the software will assume corresponding selected data has been deleted and these files will be aged away. This setting can be changed on the Expert Settings tab as well.
priority - Set on Expert Settings tab when running in expert mode. The scheduling service will launch the engine to do backups using this CPU priority. 0==NORMAL_PRIORITY_CLASS, 1=BELOW_NORMAL_PRIORITY_CLASS, 2=IDLE_PRIORITY_CLASS. Default (recommended value) is 0.
quotamb - Number of MBs of storage to allow on the remote backup server(s).
sync - Set to 1 to always synchronize local and remote storage vault(s) and end of each backup. We recommend to always set this to 1, but it can be turned off (with a 0 setting) to improve performance, but you do so at your own risk.
threads - Set to 1 to allow multi-threaded backups (which are much faster) -- highly recommended. 0 disables threads.
vss - 0 means don't use VSS (Volume Shadow Copy Service), 1 (default) means use VSS_BT_COPY mode and 2 means use VSS_BT_FULL mode.