On 2006-05-12 17:41, Jon LaBadie wrote:
for doing my wife's machine.
Are there any good, free/cheap, windows backup programs suitable
for incorporating into an amanda scheme?
Talking about wifes: I do the backup of my wife's machine with
BackupPC, using the rsyncd-method (one of the possible mechanisms
in the program).
- On the PC, you need to install a small directory c:\rsyncd
containing the cygwin rsyncd program, and start it as service.
- On a Linux server you need to install the BackupPC program (written
in perl).
BackupPC works by making a rsync (network and cpu-load efficient) copy
of the files. Identical files are hardlinked on the server: that way
you can keep many fulls/incremental online, using not too much
diskspace. The savings get even bigger when you backup multiple PC's.
One of the advantages is that, because she travels a lot with her
laptop, the laptop is not always online, but backupPC makes a backup
when she is back. Automatically. Through a webpage you can also
schedule an incremental backup when it is convenient: e.g. just before
leaving on a trip, etc.
I'm just starting to learn the thing -- not too much experience yet.
Problems encountered:
- somehow the rsyncd program kept running taking lots of CPU (just
producing heat, not making things slow -- very strange). This
was after the viruschecker found a virus, and was hanging with a
message 'delete - quarantaine... etc' but there was nobody to
answer the question that night. Just noticed in the morning. But
afterwards it keps using CPU, even when the backup was finished.
Reboot helped.
- I got my webpage screwed up (tightening the permission too much)
and can't get it to work again, without setting it too wide open -- need
more studying.
All in all a good program, considering my limited experience with it.
Not suitable for bare-metal restores!
But possibilities to hook things like registry-dumps etc are available
(no experience).
The backup-tree on the Unix/Linux server can of course be written
to tape too, using Amanda.
http://backuppc.sourceforge.net/
When I get more experience, and see how this complements Amanda in
some environments, I may write something on the wiki.
--
Paul Bijnens, xplanation Technology Services Tel +32 16 397.511
Technologielaan 21 bus 2, B-3001 Leuven, BELGIUM Fax +32 16 397.512
http://www.xplanation.com/ email: Paul.Bijnens AT xplanation DOT com
***********************************************************************
* I think I've got the hang of it now: exit, ^D, ^C, ^\, ^Z, ^Q, ^^, *
* F6, quit, ZZ, :q, :q!, M-Z, ^X^C, logoff, logout, close, bye, /bye, *
* stop, end, F3, ~., ^]c, +++ ATH, disconnect, halt, abort, hangup, *
* PF4, F20, ^X^X, :D::D, KJOB, F14-f-e, F8-e, kill -1 $$, shutdown, *
* init 0, kill -9 1, Alt-F4, Ctrl-Alt-Del, AltGr-NumLock, Stop-A, ... *
* ... "Are you sure?" ... YES ... Phew ... I'm out *
***********************************************************************
|
