Hi,

Les Mikesell wrote on 2014-11-10 12:13:43 -0600 [Re: [BackupPC-users] Unable to 
read 4 bytes]:
> On Mon, Nov 10, 2014 at 12:06 PM, tschmid4 <tschmid4 AT utk DOT edu> wrote:
> >
> > I've added a new Windows (Virtual Box) server running on RHEL 7 platform.
> > That is giving me a no ping (host not found)
> > Message in the Backuppc Configuration Editor.
> >  Xfer: SMB
> > I've compared it to an existing Windows box on the network and it's setup
> > identical as far as I can tell.
> 
> That might be as simple as having the Windows host firewall on.  If
> you want to leave it that way and you are able to map the share(s) you
> are trying to back up from smbclient or other windows hosts, you can
> set PingCmd to something like /bin/true to keep it from failing.

actually, "host not found" is a failure to resolve the host name (by DNS and
netbios). While setting PingCmd to /bin/true (or "&{sub {0}}" if you prefer
saving a fork and don't mind cryptic code ;-) *will* resolve the issue (if not
the host name), it also makes backups fail instead of not being attempted when
the host is actually down. That might not be a problem - I believe BackupPC
handles retries in the same way - but it will mess up things like your
blackout schedule. The list of possible solutions is long, with the simplest
being to add a line in /etc/hosts on the BackupPC server for the machine in
question. If you have a DNS server on your network, you'd rather add it there,
which may be slightly more complicated, but will give you network wide
(consistent) resolution of the host name. Other than that, there's the Windoze
way of getting the WINS server setup right (smb.conf on the BackupPC server)
or, possibly, matching up the host name you use in BackupPC with what the host
itself thinks it is called. Setting the domain/workgroup to match is also a
good idea :).

If your Windoze client is named "windozebox" (as far as BackupPC is concerned)
and has the IP 1.2.3.4, your /etc/hosts line would be something like:

1.2.3.4         windozebox.yourdomain.com       windozebox

(both tabs and spaces should be accepted, use whatever other entries use).

In any case, the /etc/hosts entry is the easiest way to try out what happens
when name resolution is working (*). You might then run into the issue Les is
referring to (ping denied by Windoze firewall).

Hope that helps.

Regards,
Holger

(*) 1.) Theoretically, it is possible to configure a Linux system in a way
        that /etc/hosts is *not* be used for name resolution, but it usually
        is not set up that way, and even if, I'm not sure all commands
        actually honour that configuration ;-).
    2.) I'm assuming your Windoze box has a static IP. If it gets a random
        IP via DHCP, you can still *test* what would happen by creating an
        entry matching the *current* IP assignment (and deleting it again
        after testing!). For production use, you would then need to either
        have the Windoze host register its IP with the DNS server, use a
        combined DHCP/DNS server (like 'dnsmasq'), or use netbios for name
        resolution. That will likely involve using a WINS server, assuming
        your Windoze host is on a different network segment than the BackupPC
        server (I'm guessing that otherwise things would already work).

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