Hi, On 2006.02.16, at 12:53 PM, A Rossi wrote:
He asked me if I could partition all of his workstation computers (running windows XP Professional SP2) with a windows partition, and a hidden partition which occupies most of the disk, that is accessible over the network to OpenBSD (actually he asked for FreeBSD, but I will change his mind...) to back up his server.
Years ago while working for an educational institution, I cobbled together some programs to allow some classroom machines to be brought back to SOE automatically every night after classes, as long as the machines were switched off at the end of the day. I used the automatic power ON feature on the PC's to switch them ON automatically at 11pm, and then Smart Boot Manager, which has boot schedule features which could be configured to automatically boot a hidden DOS partition if the PC's were booted at around that time. That hidden DOS partition would then run Ghost to restore the WinNT partition to SOE. Once that was done I had a small util power the machines OFF. Smart Boot Manager can be configured with a boot delay of zero seconds, so the staff should never see it. One thing you might be able to do, is if those PC's have the auto power ON feature, use smart boot manager to do much the same, but boot OpenBSD instead and maybe run Samba to receive those backups. Then have OpenBSD power those PC's off before work begins the next morning. Maybe rsync or Unison would be better. Having said all that, you really should be convincing him that a real backup scheme should be employed. That is dodgy. The backups could be corrupted through a multitude of ways or copied by a savvy malicious staff member. What if there is a fire? Shane J Pearson shanejp netspace net au ->|
