What a multitude of options I have! I'll probably end up not reporting
these solutions to my client, so that he'll use a more traditional
backup method.
The OpenAFS solution would be nice, if I could find it in package
form for OpenBSD, or a port for FreeBSD, but I can find neither. Also,
if it weren't for some of the reasons below, it would be a decent
solution, except for hiding the process from the users.
Having the machines auto-boot and load a hidden OS sounds like a
great idea... if I had the hardware to carry it out. I do not believe
that the motherboards support that feature. Shane also points out the
excellent fact that this is a little dangerous. Although, I didn't
mention it, I was secretly hoping for a solution that could implement a
sort of parity, similar to that of RAID5, where if one of the computers
died, the backup would still be useable. I also did not mention that
there was another backup solution in development, but these seemed
irrelevant at the time of posting.
My client didn't really like the idea of just making a windows
partition and disallowing the users from accessing it with permissions,
because then they'd know about something... And some might complain
about it being "broken" - they have several "older" people on staff who
aren't as computer literate.
And, honestly, I did not know that windows even has daemons. I thought
that was a Unix concept.
Anyways, thanks for the input, and don't stop! One idea might spark a
thought in the right direction (as is the case with me, usually).
A Rossi
P.S.
My apologies to those of you who use console-based mail clients. I'm
still trying to figure out how to get Thunderbird to wrap my text at 72
characters. Yes, I know about the setting under Tools > Options, but
that doesn't seem to be working correctly...
Eric Johnson wrote:
On Wed, 15 Feb 2006 17:53:14 -0800 A Rossi <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
wrote:
> Hi, I've been hired by a client to perform a number of network
> services for him, most of which are completely unrelated to my
> topic. Now, onto my topic: 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. He doesn't want his employees to know about it
> or to be able to interact with this "hidden partition" in any way.
> I told him that it is not possible, because windows controls the
> hardware (being the OS on the system) and the only way it would
> work was if he had *BSD on the system. But, because he is paying
> me, I thought I should give him the benefit of the doubt, and ask
> the pros in this area. So, is it possible for OpenBSD to access a
> bunch of "hidden" (I put it into quotes because it could be any
> non-windows compatible partition,
>
> because it won't show it then) partitions on networked workgroup
> computers and treat them like one big disk for backup?
It might be possible to do something similar by setting the
permissions on the partition to disallow all access from the normal
user. The users would be able to see the existence of the partition
but not be able to access it if they can't change the permissions.
Then if you can find a windows NFS server that runs as a daemon and
allow the partition to be accessed over the network only from the BSD
server.
Or if you could find a ssh daemon for windows, you could use that to
allow the server to use scp to transfer files back and forth.
Eric Johnson
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