On 12/04/2013 01:34 PM, Russell R Poyner wrote:
> In my new position I'm looking for options for backing up laptops and
> tablets. Most of these machines rarely connect to our wired network or
> vpn.
We solved this by creating a script on the client side that rsync's the user's
data to a central file server (which is backed up by BackupPC). That way the
client has control over when the backup runs. The user actually has control...
they get a pop-up when the client wants to do a backup, and they have the
option of postponing it, in case they're on a slow connection. They can
manually launch it at any time, as well. (And they get a warning... it's on
their own head if they postpone the backups indefinitely and then want us to
recover a file they never allowed to be backed up.)
We opened a (alternate) port in the firewall for rsync (via ssh) to connect to
the file server, and the .authorized_keys entry restricts the connection to
running the specific rsync server-mode on a specific directory. So the laptops
come through the firewall and don't have to be connected to VPN to do a backup.
I can share the code for all that if anybody's interested.
For Android tablets, I use FolderSync, by Tacit Dynamics. (It's not doing an
"Android" backup. If you want that, there are specific apps for that. I use
My Backup Pro, by Rerware.)
FolderSync supports Dropbox, Sugar, etc, but I use it over SFTP to our own
server. It supports two-way sync, and I use it to sync a data directory. I
can drop files on the "network" side and they appear on my tablet
automatically, and vice-versa. Sadly, it doesn't yet support rsync, but the
author is planning to add it. It's pretty good, but it can't do file
comparisons... it transfers the whole file if any meta-data changes.
For iOS... well, those users are SOL. IT never said we'd support them.
--
Carl D Cravens (raven AT phoenyx DOT net)
Talk is cheap because supply inevitably exceeds demand.
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