Hello,
Does anyone have a link to a windows FD binary that supports windows NT 4.0?
For one of my customers, I support a windows NT 4.0 (SP6?) machine. This device is mission critical for my customer to operate a CNC milling machine. I've taken what steps I can to isolate the machine from the network. It has a dedicated path back to my rocky linux 9 server, for filesharing purposes. Frequently modified files (CAD drawings, gcode machine tool path files) are stored on the fileshare. Generally, the files and configuration for this device don't change very much, so an old system image has generally proven suitable for backup purposes.
However, this is changing for reasons unrelated to the machine itself (explained below). Recently an application on the NT 4.0 machine suffered corruption in one of its INI files. I was able to restore a suitable backup from my system image, but I'd like to back up the drive on a more frequent basis if possible. Some of the corrupted application files weren't found in my system image, and while I got away with it this time I'd like better protection.
I already use bacula to back up the fileserver. Is an NT 4.0 windows binary out there somewhere? My googling only found 13.0.4 and 15.0.2 windows binaries on
bacula.org. I did find references to NT support in the bacula 5.x manual, so maybe a bacula 5.x windows fd binary could work?
I've seen discussion of issues backing up user workstations recently on the list, and I suspect that even if I do have a suitable binary, I will face similar issues with this NT host. The NT computer is turned on along with the milling machine, when the main power switch is thrown. The system runs on 386 era hardware, so is quite single thread limited. Even if I configure backup jobs to run automatically once the machine starts or while it is turned on, I am concerned that the FD could hog resources that the controller needs to do its job of instructing the hardware on where to go.
It occurs to me that I could try to train the operator of this machine to manually run a backup. Unfortunately, the operator is elderly, and has somewhat diminished capacity. In this last year, backups have become much more important because of this. I am concerned that if I rely on this operator to run backups, the backups may not run.
Finally, even if you don't have any information on this, please, if you think you're 'slipping' mentally, go to a doctor. My customer has unknowningly been having micro-strokes for years, and only this year did he finally have a big one. Turns out he really was 'slipping' as he's feared since I met him in 2017. Now he's substantially worse off than before. The doctor determined that he'd had 4 strokes because there were 4 different areas in his brain with reduced activity. Only one of them had happened recently. If he'd managed to prevent even this most recent stroke he'd be so much better off.
Regards,
Robert Gerber
402-237-8692
