Re: [ubuntu-uk] Using rsync (or something) to remotely backup a windows drive

[John Edwards]

On Fri, Apr 24, 2009 at 02:35:47PM +0100, Alan Lord (News) wrote:
> On 24/04/09 13:03, Samuel Toogood wrote:
> Also, do check out rdiff-backup (It's in the repos).
> 
> It does reverse incremental backups using rysnc: 
> http://www.gnu.org/savannah-checkouts/non-gnu/rdiff-backup/

Dirvish is a similar incremental backup system that uses rsync
and can backup a Windows machine.

There is a HOWTO guide on installing and configuring rsync
on Windows here:
  http://www.dirvish.org/StevesWindowsGuide/Windows_Dirvish_Guide.html

I've not done it myself, though I have used the command line
Cygwin rsync.


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Re: [ubuntu-uk] Using rsync (or something) to remotely backup a windows drive

[doug livesey]

> Also, do check out rdiff-backup (It's in the repos).

I love it!
I'm going to have to rethink my original idea, due to the incremental vs
BackupExec files thing, but for a personal backup strategy, rdiff-backup
seems to be the ticket.
Nice & simple, like me!
(Okay, I'm not that nice.)

2009/4/24 Alan Lord (News) 

> On 24/04/09 13:03, Samuel Toogood wrote:
> >
> > doug livesey  wrote
> >> Hi -- I have a drive that gets a weekly backup of a Windows network
> > stored to it, and I would like to have that backed up in turn remotely.
>
> Also, do check out rdiff-backup (It's in the repos).
>
> It does reverse incremental backups using rysnc:
> http://www.gnu.org/savannah-checkouts/non-gnu/rdiff-backup/
>
> HTH
>
> Al
>
>
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Re: [ubuntu-uk] Using rsync (or something) to remotely backup a windows drive

[Alan Lord (News)]

On 24/04/09 13:03, Samuel Toogood wrote:
>
> doug livesey  wrote
>> Hi -- I have a drive that gets a weekly backup of a Windows network
> stored to it, and I would like to have that backed up in turn remotely.

Also, do check out rdiff-backup (It's in the repos).

It does reverse incremental backups using rysnc: 
http://www.gnu.org/savannah-checkouts/non-gnu/rdiff-backup/

HTH

Al


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Re: [ubuntu-uk] Using rsync (or something) to remotely backup a windows drive

[Samuel Toogood]

doug livesey  wrote
> Hi -- I have a drive that gets a weekly backup of a Windows network 
stored to it, and I would like to have that backed up in turn remotely.

When you say 'a drive', is that on a windows box, or a linux box or a NAS?
> To that end, I have an IP address that I wish to sync it to, and can 
setup any machine/OS behind it that I want to.
> What I was hoping to do was to have the backup drive synced each week, in 
a manner similar to TimeMachine's, so that after an initial sync, only the 
changes get sent, but that allows us to access any week's synced backup 
image if needed (TM lets you browse them amazingly, but as long as it could 
be done, it wouldn't have to be that posh).
> 
> My thoughts so far have been to setup a linux box running rsync to 
remotely access the backup drive, for the following reasons:
> 1) I beleive that rsync has the functionality I require (though I could 
be wrong).
> 2) If our Windows network gets taken out by a virus or something, having 
the backup be on a different OS would provide extra security.
> 3) I'm more confident in setting this up on a linux machine than a 
Windows one (though still not exactly cocky about it).
> 
> I'd really appreciate any advice that folks could give me on this -- am I 
wrong in my ideas? would this even work? are there any hideous pitfalls 
awaiting me? is there a better way to do it? etc.
> 
> Cheers for any & all input,
>Doug.
I'd suggest rsnapshot, which uses rsync and allows you to browse 
incremental backups as though they are full. If you're backing from a 
windows box, DeltaCopy looks like it is what you want 
(http://www.aboutmyip.com/AboutMyXApp/DeltaCopy.jsp) though i've not used 
it personally.

HTH,

Sam 

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Re: [ubuntu-uk] Using rsync (or something) to remotely backup a windows drive

[Tony Travis]

Michael Holloway wrote:
> There is a command line tool for windows i think called "robocopy" (im
> not in the office to check). On my network I use a scheduled task of
> robocopy to backup windows machines to a local samba share, and then
> rsync that to replicate remotely. I do an incremental backup which is
> normally pretty quick, but I'm not sure about restore previous versions
> etc.

Hello, Michael.

There is an Amanda client for Windows too:

http://wiki.zmanda.com/index.php/Zmanda_Windows_Client

Not used the Amanda client on Windows though - I use Linux ;-)

Bye,

Tony.
-- 
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and Health, Greenburn Road, Bucksburn, Aberdeen AB21 9SB, Scotland, UK
tel +44(0)1224 712751, fax +44(0)1224 716687, http://www.rowett.ac.uk
mailto:a.tra...@abdn.ac.uk, http://bioinformatics.rri.sari.ac.uk/~ajt

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Re: [ubuntu-uk] Using rsync (or something) to remotely backup a windows drive

[Michael Holloway]

There is a command line tool for windows i think called "robocopy" (im
not in the office to check). On my network I use a scheduled task of
robocopy to backup windows machines to a local samba share, and then
rsync that to replicate remotely. I do an incremental backup which is
normally pretty quick, but I'm not sure about restore previous versions
etc.



On Fri, 2009-04-24 at 11:53 +0100, Andrew Oakley wrote:
> On 24/04/2009, doug livesey  wrote:
> > Hi -- I have a drive that gets a weekly backup of a Windows network stored
> > to it, and I would like to have that backed up in turn remotely.
> 
> Rsync will do that. However Rsync is not native to MS-Windows, neither
> is SSH/SCP which Rsync can operate over. You may encounter problems
> setting up Rsync on MS-Windows. If you achieve success with Rsync,
> well done. If not... then my simpler solution, for backing up client
> MS-Windows machines onto a Linux server, has been:
> 
> * Set up Samba and Windows Filesharing so that the Linux server can
> see the MS-Windows hard drives over Samba
> 
> * Write a Bash script which mounts the MS-Windows share, then uses Zip
> to traverse to share.
> 
> * Run the Bash script using Cron
> 
> Zip supports many backup-friendly options, including directory
> recursion, incremental updates, timestamping and exclusion lists. For
> example, I have mine set to exclude video files such as  AVI, since
> these are so large they'd quickly fill the server.
> 
> You could probably use Tar/Gzip instead. I chose Zip because it was
> better supported under MS-Windows than tgz. In particular I wanted to
> make it easy for MS-Windows users to extract their own backups out of
> the archive.
> 
> Another feature I considered but did not implement was to use the
> "magic packet" to wake the MS-Windows clients from standby a few
> minutes before the backup.
> 
> -- 
> Andrew Oakley and...@aoakley.com
> 


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Re: [ubuntu-uk] Using rsync (or something) to remotely backup a windows drive

[Andrew Oakley]

On 24/04/2009, doug livesey  wrote:
> Hi -- I have a drive that gets a weekly backup of a Windows network stored
> to it, and I would like to have that backed up in turn remotely.

Rsync will do that. However Rsync is not native to MS-Windows, neither
is SSH/SCP which Rsync can operate over. You may encounter problems
setting up Rsync on MS-Windows. If you achieve success with Rsync,
well done. If not... then my simpler solution, for backing up client
MS-Windows machines onto a Linux server, has been:

* Set up Samba and Windows Filesharing so that the Linux server can
see the MS-Windows hard drives over Samba

* Write a Bash script which mounts the MS-Windows share, then uses Zip
to traverse to share.

* Run the Bash script using Cron

Zip supports many backup-friendly options, including directory
recursion, incremental updates, timestamping and exclusion lists. For
example, I have mine set to exclude video files such as  AVI, since
these are so large they'd quickly fill the server.

You could probably use Tar/Gzip instead. I chose Zip because it was
better supported under MS-Windows than tgz. In particular I wanted to
make it easy for MS-Windows users to extract their own backups out of
the archive.

Another feature I considered but did not implement was to use the
"magic packet" to wake the MS-Windows clients from standby a few
minutes before the backup.

-- 
Andrew Oakley and...@aoakley.com

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Re: [ubuntu-uk] Using rsync (or something) to remotely backup a windows drive

[doug livesey]

Currently the backup I'll be syncing comes in at ~140gib, so it shouldn't be
too hard to ensure that we have at least twice that on the sync drive.
& I'll look into the --inplace option, cheers.
Thanks very much for your advice, there -- good to know I'm on the right
track!
Cheers,
   Doug.

2009/4/24 Tony Travis 

> doug livesey wrote:
> > [...]
> > I'd really appreciate any advice that folks could give me on this -- am
> > I wrong in my ideas? would this even work? are there any hideous
> > pitfalls awaiting me? is there a better way to do it? etc.
>
> Hello, Doug.
>
> I manage a network of 31 Ubuntu-based bioinformatics servers in Europe,
> and I use rsync to replicate local backups remotely for critical
> machines. You need to bear in mind several things, not least of which is
> the network bandwidth that is actually available to you.
>
> There are also some limitations to rsync that you should be aware of. In
> particular, by default rsync doesn't remove the existing old file on the
> remote end until the transfer completes successfully. Not a problem if
> you have lots of disk space on your remote backup server, but it's a BIG
> problem if you don't because the rsync's never succeed :-(
>
> Another problem that I've encountered is that rsync can be very slow
> updating BIG files. This is because it has to calculate checksums for
> all the blocks in both files before deciding which block to transfer.
> What I've done in this situation (space tight on the remote server and
> BIG files being rsync'ed) is to use the rsync --inplace option.
>
> Bye,
>
>Tony.
> --
> Dr. A.J.Travis, University of Aberdeen, Rowett Institute of Nutrition
> and Health, Greenburn Road, Bucksburn, Aberdeen AB21 9SB, Scotland, UK
> tel +44(0)1224 712751, fax +44(0)1224 716687, http://www.rowett.ac.uk
> mailto:a.tra...@abdn.ac.uk, 
> http://bioinformatics.rri.sari.ac.uk/~ajt
>
> --
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> https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-uk
> https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UKTeam/
>
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Re: [ubuntu-uk] Using rsync (or something) to remotely backup a windows drive

[Tony Travis]

doug livesey wrote:
> [...]
> I'd really appreciate any advice that folks could give me on this -- am 
> I wrong in my ideas? would this even work? are there any hideous 
> pitfalls awaiting me? is there a better way to do it? etc.

Hello, Doug.

I manage a network of 31 Ubuntu-based bioinformatics servers in Europe, 
and I use rsync to replicate local backups remotely for critical 
machines. You need to bear in mind several things, not least of which is 
the network bandwidth that is actually available to you.

There are also some limitations to rsync that you should be aware of. In 
particular, by default rsync doesn't remove the existing old file on the 
remote end until the transfer completes successfully. Not a problem if 
you have lots of disk space on your remote backup server, but it's a BIG 
problem if you don't because the rsync's never succeed :-(

Another problem that I've encountered is that rsync can be very slow 
updating BIG files. This is because it has to calculate checksums for 
all the blocks in both files before deciding which block to transfer. 
What I've done in this situation (space tight on the remote server and 
BIG files being rsync'ed) is to use the rsync --inplace option.

Bye,

Tony.
-- 
Dr. A.J.Travis, University of Aberdeen, Rowett Institute of Nutrition
and Health, Greenburn Road, Bucksburn, Aberdeen AB21 9SB, Scotland, UK
tel +44(0)1224 712751, fax +44(0)1224 716687, http://www.rowett.ac.uk
mailto:a.tra...@abdn.ac.uk, http://bioinformatics.rri.sari.ac.uk/~ajt

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