Holger - thanks for the quick feedback - a few comments and answers below:
-----Original Message-----
From: Holger Parplies [mailto:wbppc AT parplies DOT de]
Sent: Tuesday, August 18, 2009 2:49 PM
To: Nigel Kendrick
Cc: backuppc-users AT lists.sourceforge DOT net
Subject: Re: [BackupPC-users] New user- loads of questions
Hi,
Nigel Kendrick wrote on 2009-08-18 12:04:16 +0100 [[BackupPC-users] New
user- loads of questions]:
> I have just started to play with backuppc and am making good strides -
local
> (SMB) backups are working fine
I hope you mean SMB backups of local Windoze machines, not of the BackupPC
server ;-). In any case, welcome to BackupPC.
--> Yes, backing up Windows machines on the LAN via SMB
> [...]
> 1) I presume(?) SMB-based backups cannot do block-difference-level copies
> like rsync? We have a number of remote (over VPN) Windows servers and I'd
> like to backup their MSSQL database dumps - they are around 700MB at the
> moment and I presume via SMB the whole lot will get transferred every
time?
Correct. I'm not sure how well rsync will handle database dumps, though. You
should try that out manually (if you haven't done so already). Please also
remember that BackupPC will store each version independently, though
possibly
compressed (i.e. BackupPC only does file-level deduplication, not
block-level).
You only save bandwidth with rsync on transfer, not on storage.
--> Thanks, it's as I thought with SMB (all or nothing transfers).
--> Got 2TB of RAID 1 to play with so storage not an issue!
> 2) I have seen a number of guides for cwrsync on Windows-based PCs. Any
> votes on the best one and the best place to read up on this? I presume
that
> since we'd be backing up via VPN, we could run rsync directly rather than
> via an SSH tunnel?
As far as I know, rsync doesn't work correctly on Windoze (rsyncd does,
though). With a VPN, I'd definitely recommend plain rsyncd. I don't backup
Windoze myself, but Deltacopy is mentioned often on the list - there's a
thread from today [rsyncd on Vista 64-bit cygwin vs SUA] which you might
want
to check out.
--> Already started working with cwrsync/rsyncd and grabbed some files
from a local Win2K machine.
--> Going to try across the VPN later. Looking a 700MB MSSQL database
dumps - hoping to be pleased!
--> Just subscribed to the list so only seeing posts from around mid-day
onwards but will check the archives.
> 3) As the remote sites are linked via VPN, I could mount the remote shares
> to the local backup server and use rsync 'directly' - any pros/cons doing
> things this way (speed, reliability etc?), or is an rsync server on the
> remote servers a better approach?
If you mount the remote shares locally, you lose the benefit of the rsync
protocol *completely*, because the "remote" rsync instance is running on the
local computer and will need to read each whole file over the network in
order
to figure out which blocks don't need to be transferred (locally)
[snip]
--> Thanks, seems like rsyncd over the VPN is the way to go.
--> Also looks like rsync is more tolerant of high VPN latency
> 4) I am running the backup server on CentOS 5.3 and installed backuppc
from
> the Centos RPM. Ideally I'd like to run the app as the normal 'apache'
user
> - I read up on a few generic notes about doing this and got to a point
where
> backuppc wouldn't start properly as it couldn't create the LOG file. I
then
> went round in circles looking at file permissions before putting things
back
> the way they were in order to do some more learning. Is there a
> simple-to-follow guide for setting up backuppc to not use mod_perl - I
have
> read the docs but am still not getting there.
I believe the default *is* for BackupPC to *not* use mod_perl. Your RPM may
differ, but the upstream documentation will not reflect this.
The BackupPC CGI script needs to be run as backuppc user for various reasons
(access to the pool FS, access to the BackupPC server daemon, use of the
BackupPC Perl library), so you can either run the web server as backuppc
user
or implement some form of changing UID (the CGI script - BackupPC_Admin (or
index.cgi on Debian, don't know about Centos) - is normally setuid backuppc,
but that can't work with mod_perl, I believe).
Do you have a reason for not wanting to run apache as backuppc user
--> May not be an issue, but I have one server running SugarCRM in a 9-5
operation and
am planning to have the server do some overnight backups of LAN-based
machines and I am
just pre-empting this upsetting SugarCRM - it may not.
--> I have another that's a small Asterisk (Trixbox) server (again, 9-5
only), where Apache has to be run as 'trixbox' and I am wondering how this
may all fit together!
Thanks again,
Nigel
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