Re: [Samba] How to share the tape drive in samba server for windowsuser
I'm assuming you want to give your users the ability to backup and restore files at their will. If you're looking to share the tape drive so you can use Windows' native backup utility to write directly to the tape, sorry -- can't be done with Samba. This is because a tape drive is not seen by the system as a disk drive; the software wants to communicate directly with the drive. A tape drive is a sequential, exclusive access device, not a random access device. That means that only one process can read/write to the drive at a time, and the tape is written/read from front to back. First way to go about it is to create a share on the Samba server where the Windows users can create backup files (the backup utility will allow you to do this), then have the Samba server back this share up to tape then deletes the backup files. This isn't really ideal, because it's not getting written to tape right away, and there's no easy way for the user to restore from tape. A better way is to use a client/server backup solution which has a backup server running on the Linux box, and backup clients running on the Linux box and all the workstations. When a user wants to run a backup or restore job, the appropriate tape is placed in the drive on the Linux server, then they use the client to submit the job. The advantage here is that multiple jobs can be submitted simultaneously and they are queued; once they reach the top of the queue, the job runs, backing up the files from the workstation. A quick search reveals this software to look at: NovaNet (www.network-backup.com), Arkeia (www.arkeia.com), NetVault Workgroup Edition (www.bakbone.com), (Veritas BackupExec not available for Linux,) anyone know of open-source, multi-platform network-aware backup software? Arkeia Light is a free version for Linux that also supports two clients ( http://www.arkeia.com/arkeialight.html ). I'm not aware of any software that creates a virtual tape drive that can be seen by Windows' native backup software as a tape device. --Jon On Wed, 18 Jun 2003, Sathi wrote: Hello All, I have installed RedHat Linux-9 and configured has domian controller for windows users. I have HP's tape drive in this Machine. Is it possible to share this tape drive to all the windows users to this tape drive using Samba? Regards, Sathi -- To unsubscribe from this list go to the following URL and read the instructions: http://lists.samba.org/mailman/listinfo/samba
Re: [Samba] How to share the tape drive in samba server for windowsuser
Also check out Sync2Nas ( http://sync2nas.sourceforge.net/ ) and rsync ( http://rsync.samba.org/ ). --Jon On Wed, 18 Jun 2003, Jonathan Johnson wrote: A better way is to use a client/server backup solution which has a backup server running on the Linux box, and backup clients running on the Linux box and all the workstations. When a user wants to run a backup or restore job, the appropriate tape is placed in the drive on the Linux server, then they use the client to submit the job. The advantage here is that multiple jobs can be submitted simultaneously and they are queued; once they reach the top of the queue, the job runs, backing up the files from the workstation. A quick search reveals this software to look at: NovaNet (www.network-backup.com), Arkeia (www.arkeia.com), NetVault Workgroup Edition (www.bakbone.com), (Veritas BackupExec not available for Linux,) anyone know of open-source, multi-platform network-aware backup software? Arkeia Light is a free version for Linux that also supports two clients ( http://www.arkeia.com/arkeialight.html ). I'm not aware of any software that creates a virtual tape drive that can be seen by Windows' native backup software as a tape device. --Jon On Wed, 18 Jun 2003, Sathi wrote: Hello All, I have installed RedHat Linux-9 and configured has domian controller for windows users. I have HP's tape drive in this Machine. Is it possible to share this tape drive to all the windows users to this tape drive using Samba? -- To unsubscribe from this list go to the following URL and read the instructions: http://lists.samba.org/mailman/listinfo/samba
Re: [Samba] How to share the tape drive in samba server for windowsuser
On Wed, Jun 18, 2003 at 09:46:52AM -0700, Jonathan Johnson wrote: If you're looking to share the tape drive so you can use Windows' native backup utility to write directly to the tape, sorry -- can't be done with Samba. This is because a tape drive is not seen by the system as a disk drive; the software wants to communicate directly with the drive. A tape drive is a sequential, exclusive access device, not a random access device. That means that only one process can read/write to the drive at a time, and the tape is written/read from front to back. You could probably do something clever with a magic script in the Samba config, but it still wouldn't work with native Windows backup utilities. (Are there native Windows backup utilities that can access a remote tape drive?) You could probably get it to work with tar under Cygwin if you tried hard enough. But if Cygwin's tar doesn't have remote-tape access disabled, you'd be better off using that instead--it's much lower overhead. ... A quick search reveals this software to look at: NovaNet (www.network-backup.com), Arkeia (www.arkeia.com), NetVault Workgroup Edition (www.bakbone.com), (Veritas BackupExec not available for Linux,) anyone know of open-source, multi-platform network-aware backup software? There's always Amanda (http://www.amanda.org/). It can back up Windows clients in one of several ways. The three obvious ones are: 1: build the Amanda client software under Cygwin. See http://randomnotes.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/Amanda-Cygwin-HOWTO.html for instructions. I use this method to back up my Windows 2K laptop. 2: use Amanda's smbclient interface as described in the Amanda documentation. 3: smbmount (or other network filesystem) the Windows client drive on a Unix/Linux/BSD machine and have Amanda back that up. There's been some effort to create a native Windows Amanda client, but I don't think it's completed or usable yet. -- JF -- To unsubscribe from this list go to the following URL and read the instructions: http://lists.samba.org/mailman/listinfo/samba
