Ed Troy wrote:
>
> I have a small peer to peer network with several windows 95 machines and a
> windows 2000 machine and a linux machine. Ideally, what I would like to be
> able to do is to backup everything, on a regular, to a very large (and
> prehaps removable) ata hard drive on the linux box.
...
> Is Amanda what I am
> looking for?
AMANDA can do what you want, just leave the files that AMANDA creates on
your "very large" drive. Depending on the version you will use, she
might not "trust" those files (trust, that is, that they really have
made it to some tape ultimately), so you might have to use some trick.
As far as Windows is concerned you will not be able to backup the
registry, or swap file, or such active or system files, so a separate
measure has to taken for them. You will experience problems in the
estimates of incrementals for the vfat filesystems (not an AMANDA
problem per se, rather a tar/kernel issue): sometimes they will be as
large as full ones. To get around this, you will need to hack AMANDA a
little (but really only just a bit) and recompile (I will post a report
on this soon, whatever soon means...). You will need SAMBA on you Linux
box to back the Windows boxes with AMANDA. And you will need to be
fluent in commands like dd, tar, gzip and basic Linux administration.
Now the good news: After having gone around all the pitfalls above,
backups will never be an issue for you again! AMANDA will take care of
everything (Linux _and_ Windows hosts) and you will be free for more
creative tasks! Never again having to think "Hmm... shall I do a full
backup on that host today, and an incremental level 2 for that one, or
did I already do it yesterday - and which backups are due for the other
one?". All backups with one method, with a stable system :-), with
classic, standard tools, with a sophisticated strategy (one that really
deserves this name). Configure and forget. Period.
PS: You don't need (portable) backup media that are so large. The
important thing is that each medium has enough space for a full backup
of some (configurable in the disklist) portion of your filesystem plus
the incrementals for the rest (the increment level is decided by AMANDA,
so what really matters is the daily rate of change of your systems).
Read http://www.backupcentral.com/amanda.html for the details.
--
Regards
Chris Karakas
Don´t waste your cpu time - crack rc5: http://www.distributed.net
