i have no issues or complaints with sysadmins setting up their own systems
for their own sites and nothing bad to say about it.
one thing that i know about software systems is the the most vanilla setup
is the best setup. if a software is deployed with a big number of changes,
version changes can break these modifications. this can leave a user stuck
on a single old version or modifying their entire site to the next version.
i did post your info on the wiki as im sure it will be useful for many
people but would also like to influence devolopement to remove the need for
many of these workarounds.
i think we need a much more general approach to this issue. as long as the
laptops can be seen with nmblookup then a minor modification to the core
program to wakeup much more frequently and skip the standard blackout
period. when a host comes online, it broadcasts on the local network that
arrival and i think we could get backuppc to monitor that broadcast and do
an immediate backup of that machine based on the standard criteria. some
'smarts' should be included to keep from having extra backups done because
of network disconnects and such.
the solution could be a helper daemon that watches for the broadcasts and
also does some broadcasts itself, reads the config file for that host and
the main config file and sends the backup command to backuppc. could be
done in a bash script but perl might be a bit better. any ideas on this??
keep in mind, the goal should be a solution that can be presented to
developement for inclusion.
On 10/13/07, Stephen Joyce <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
> Hi Dan,
>
> I was kinda assuming that each admin would, after testing to see if s/he
> wanted to use it, write scripts that automate the heavy lifting. As a lazy
> sysadmin, if I have to do any task more than twice, I'll probably script
> it!
>
> For instance, I have:
> install.bat (creates folders, sets permissions, copies all the files
> onto
> the laptop, runs the gtk+ installer in silent mode, and finally launches
> puttygen)
> fixup-user.sh (creates the laptop-user's home dir on linux, creates all
> the directories and sets the permissions correctly), etc.
>
> So to set this up for a new laptop I have to:
> 1. create the user in my infrastructure (everyone's will be different
> depending on if you use /etc/passwd, ldap, etc)
> 2. run setup-user.sh on the BackupPC server
> 3. double-click install.bat on the Windows laptop
> 4. scp the ssh key to the BackupPC server
> 5. add the host to BackupPC
> 6. run an initial backup
> 7. educate the user
>
> I didn't include those scripts because they're VERY specific to my
> infrastructure. I was kinda assuming that any admin capable of setting up
> BackupPC would be capable of writing these scripts. If I'm wrong, I can
> post mine.... but again, they make assumptions based on my infrastructure
> and I was trying to avoid the "here's one more script to do a find/replace
> in".
>
> PS. You're on your own for step 7. :-)
>
> Cheers, Stephen
> --
> Stephen Joyce
> Systems Administrator P A N I C
> Physics & Astronomy Department Physics & Astronomy
> University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Network Infrastructure
> voice: (919) 962-7214 and Computing
> fax: (919) 962-0480 http://www.panic.unc.edu
>
> Some people make the world turn and others just watch it spin.
> -- Jimmy Buffet
>
> On Sat, 13 Oct 2007, dan wrote:
>
> > this link has been added to the Tips and tricks portion of the wiki.
> >
> > but
> >
> > does anyone else see this as a complicated workaround? i read through
> the
> > windowsxp setup and it is not trivial. what i mean is, repeating that
> > process on any number of laptops would be a hassle.
> >
> > i wonder if it might be more efficient to just have an ssh script on the
> > windows machine that would login and launch a backup which the windows
> > machine gets on the network?? i think it may be a simpler solution.
> >
> > any thoughts?
> >
> > On 10/13/07, Stephen Joyce <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> >>
> >> Full details with apps and scripts at
> >> http://www.physics.unc.edu/~stephen/on-demand-backuppc/
> >>
> >> I'll add this to the wiki when I have time.
> >>
> >> Cheers, Stephen
> >> --
> >> Stephen Joyce
> >> Systems Administrator P A N
> I C
> >> Physics & Astronomy Department Physics &
> Astronomy
> >> University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Network
> Infrastructure
> >> voice: (919) 962-7214 and
> Computing
> >> fax: (919) 962-0480
> http://www.panic.unc.edu
> >>
> >> If it wasn't backed up, then it wasn't important.
> >>
> >> On Tue, 9 Oct 2007, Stephen Joyce wrote:
> >>
> >>> Hi,
> >>>
> >>> I needed a way for to conveniently backup my users' laptops. Some of
> >> these
> >>> are rarely, if ever, on our LAN. So, I implemented an on-demand backup
> >>> solution using Unison (rsync like directory sync util with gui) and
> >>> BackupPC.
> >>>
> >>> laptop ---------> "cache" disk -------------> "archive" disk
> >>> ^ ^
> >>> | |
> >>> Unison on- BackupPC checks
> >>> demand over for new files in
> >>> SSH tunnel cache hourly
> >>>
> >>> When a user initiates an on-demand backup via unison, the connection
> is
> >>> over SSH (fewer potential firewall issues). After Unison finishes, a
> >> flag
> >>> is set on the cache disk to indicate to BackupPC that fresh files
> exist.
> >>> BackupPC checks for this "freshness flag" instead of performing a ping
> >> of
> >>> the client. If new/fresh files exist on the cache, then an rsync based
> >>> backup is performed (of the host's directory of the cache disk) and
> the
> >>> flag removed. (There's a lot more logic and checks to prevent
> >> simultaneous
> >>> operations that I'm omitting here.)
> >>>
> >>> This setup allows mobile users to backup and restore files from the
> most
> >>> recent backup (the one on the cache disk) using the Unison gui. If an
> >> older
> >>> version of a file is needed, the user can log into the BackupPC
> server's
> >>> CGI and retrieve it from a prior backup.
> >>>
> >>> This provides a near-optimal solution, I think, for laptop backups.
> The
> >>> very first backup of a laptop may take a few minutes if there is a lot
> >> of
> >>> data (so should occur on the local LAN if possible), but future
> backups
> >> for
> >>> most users take under 5 minutes!
> >>>
> >>> If anyone is interested in my exact setup (pre and post dump scripts,
> >>> backuppc config, client backup script, etc) please let me know. If
> >> there's
> >>> sufficient interest I'll clean them up a bit, removing the
> site-specific
> >>> bits, and post them to the web.
> >>>
> >>> Cheers, Stephen
> >>> --
> >>> Stephen Joyce
> >>> Systems Administrator P A N
> I
> >> C
> >>> Physics & Astronomy Department Physics &
> >> Astronomy
> >>> University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Network
> >> Infrastructure
> >>> voice: (919) 962-7214 and
> >> Computing
> >>> fax: (919) 962-0480
> >> http://www.panic.unc.edu
> >>>
> >>> Don't look back. The lemmings are gaining on you.
> >>>
> >>>
> >>
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> >>>
> >>>
> >>> --
> >>>
> >>>
> >>
> >>
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> >
> > --
> >
> >
>
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