On Tuesday 02 November 2004 13:37, jalal wrote:

On Tue 2 November 2004 11:24, pinto wrote:

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On Tuesday 02 November 2004 09:11, jalal wrote:

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Anyone have any experience and/or solutions in this area?

___________________

~ a few years ago, i did backup a Windows 3.11 whole system, as a "tar.gz" file

when that tar.gz was extracted onto a new hard disk, on another PC , it worked just fine, without problems.

best rgds __________

Thanks Pinto

But as I mentioned, this is not for a computer guru, but someone who doesn't know what tar is, nor gzip and doesn't want to tar up a whole system, which is anyway difficult to do when the system is running. Besides, Windows systems do not usually come with tar or gzip.

Thanks anyway... :-)

1) Winzip can open tar and GZipped files, check maybe it can build them also... 2) You don't need to read the files on the linux server do you? just save them right? So all you really need is a network share on linux and some kind of Windows software to do back... Or am I missing something? I would suggest you use TrueImage by Acronis... Jerry

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GPG fingerprint = 3D45 5509 D380 26A4 523E A9D8 A66A 5F38 CA43 BB0E

On Tue 2 November 2004 12:38, David SMITH wrote:

On Tue, Nov 02, 2004 at 10:11:31AM +0100, jalal wrote:

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I have a client who is using Windows XP and wants to backup his files (preferably automatically) to my Linux server.

Normally in Linux I would suggest rsync, or tar/gzip/ftp or similar solutions

But what would work under Windows? Does Windows have a shell and shell tools? I suspect not. And this is not a computer guru anyway.

Anyone have any experience and/or solutions in this area?

Make the Windows machine export its file system, mount it on the Linux machine using Samba, and use crond/tar/gzip/etc?

I've just persuaded these guys to tighten up their security by closing down things that they don't need, especially shares and such, so that wouldn't go down too well... "All you files are now backed up in Russia..." <bg> Nah, I need to find something that will work over the internet without glaring security holes, so I think I need to find a windows version of rsync/ssh. Or maybe just winzip and upload via ftp. Cygwin is, unfortunately, a little too complicated and rather overkill. -- GPG fingerprint = 3D45 5509 D380 26A4 523E A9D8 A66A 5F38 CA43 BB0E

On Tue 2 November 2004 16:24, Jerry Westrick wrote:

On Tuesday 02 November 2004 14:34, jalal wrote:

...

On Tue 2 November 2004 12:38, David SMITH wrote:

...

On Tue, Nov 02, 2004 at 10:11:31AM +0100, jalal wrote:

...

I have a client who is using Windows XP and wants to backup his files (preferably automatically) to my Linux server.

Normally in Linux I would suggest rsync, or tar/gzip/ftp or similar solutions

But what would work under Windows? Does Windows have a shell and shell tools? I suspect not. And this is not a computer guru anyway.

Anyone have any experience and/or solutions in this area?

winscp3 can do scp/sftp command, but I don't know about batching that... WebDrive (40$ at http://www.webdrive.com) will allow you to "Add a network drive" to a linux SFTP(SSH) server, and then you can do what ever you want/need...

Jerry

Brilliant! Looks like just the thing. Many thanks Jerry jalal -- GPG fingerprint = 3D45 5509 D380 26A4 523E A9D8 A66A 5F38 CA43 BB0E

On Tuesday 02 November 2004 8:34 am, jalal wrote:

On Tue 2 November 2004 12:38, David SMITH wrote:

...

Make the Windows machine export its file system, mount it on the Linux machine using Samba, and use crond/tar/gzip/etc?

I've just persuaded these guys to tighten up their security by closing down things that they don't need, especially shares and such, so that wouldn't go down too well...

You can set up a password-protected share on the Windows machine and squirrel away the password on the Linux machine. That should be pretty safe on the Windows side. Paul

Your biggest problem could be on the windoze side, with it's stupid permissions scheme, especially contrived to make you feel secure. They have most of the permissions hardwired into the code!!!!!When i ran into this a while back i had to first export stuff to the doze "SHARED" folder, then i could bring it into linucs. You might ask around for a hack of that situation, i am no hacker of any significance. On Tuesday 02 November 2004 02:26, Hans du Plooy wrote:

On Tuesday 02 November 2004 11:11, jalal wrote:

...

I have a client who is using Windows XP and wants to backup his files (preferably automatically) to my Linux server.

[snip]

...

But what would work under Windows? Does Windows have a shell and shell tools? I suspect not. And this is not a computer guru anyway.

Windows does have scripting abilities, but I don't know much about them.

What I did was make a share on the windows box, with user+password auth. Then I wrote a script that mounts that share on the linux box, copy the stuff, and unmounts it again. Works beautifully.

-- Kind regards Hans du Plooy Newington Consulting Services hansdp at newingtoncs dot co dot za

Using cygwin run rsych with the '-d' flag to make it a daemon. It will work like a regular rsync server. There may even be a native windows rsync server available. -NIck On Tue, 2 Nov 2004 08:19:04 -0500, Bruce Marshall wrote:

On Tuesday 02 November 2004 04:11 am, jalal wrote:

...

I have a client who is using Windows XP and wants to backup his files (preferably automatically) to my Linux server.

Normally in Linux I would suggest rsync, or tar/gzip/ftp or similar solutions

But what would work under Windows? Does Windows have a shell and shell tools? I suspect not. And this is not a computer guru anyway.

Anyone have any experience and/or solutions in this area?

Would it be possible (that is, feasible) to use rsync from the linux side to backup the windows disks...? Probably the best way...

-- Check the headers for your unsubscription address For additional commands send e-mail to suse-linux-e-help@suse.com Also check the archives at http://lists.suse.com Please read the FAQs: suse-linux-e-faq@suse.com

On Tue 2 November 2004 19:38, Osho GG wrote:

A while ago, I backed up entire "My Documents" (which was over 2GB) directory in Windows to a Linux using unison - which is a rsync like (but better than rsync in my experience) utility which is available for both Windows and Linux (No need to install Cygwin). Download it from

http://www.cis.upenn.edu/~bcpierce/unison/

Install unison on windows machine and also on linux machine. Then on Windows machine, start a unison server from a command line and on a linux machine just use the unison GUI - it is pretty painless process. If you run into troubles, make sure you use the same version of unison on both machines. Unison also supports ssh if that is what you need.

Unison is very useful for recurring backups. On subsequent backups, unison (like rysnc) only backs up the data that has changed. There is more documentation on unison's page if you want more info.

Osho

Funny, I use Unison to sync my laptop... didn't even think of it. And I didn't know they have a Win version. Thanks for the reminder. jalal -- GPG fingerprint = 3D45 5509 D380 26A4 523E A9D8 A66A 5F38 CA43 BB0E

On Thursday 04 November 2004 8:07 pm, Carlos E. R. wrote:

The catch is that windows may refuse access to files that are in use at the moment. Better do sometime a mirror image, using ghost or equivalent.

But there are complete backup solutions around - amanda comes to my mind.

I still like the solution where the backup is initiated from the Linux server (usually via cron job) and the Windows user need not do anything. No extra software (other than Samba) needed. Paul

On Thursday 04 November 2004 10:46 pm, David Rankin wrote:

The problem with XP is that it will not share the users "My Documents" directory or below without absolutely forcing it to do so. Unless the user wants to ignore the security risk and share his "My Documents", then the files he wants to backup should be put somewhere else. "Shared Documents" or where ever.

rsync is still your answer. From the linux box write a 1 line script or just add a crontab entry that basically is

rsync -(your options) \\windowsXP\Shared/ Files\directory \\linuxbox\whereever

don't simply use rsync -e, because there is no 1 for 1 mapping of file attributes from windows to unix. However, rsync is smart enough to do an incrimental.

you can improve upon you script by testing to see that the windows box is online before invoking rsync. It doesn't really hurt if it isn't, you just get bigger log files.........

I'm confused. If the XP machine isn't set to share "My Documents", then how can rsync do its work? And if it is set to share "My Documents", why does it matter (from the point of view of the XP machine) what tool the Linux machine is using to retrieve some or all of the files? I think you can deal with the security risk by placing a password on the share (on the XP machine) and providing that password to the smbmount command on the Linux machine that makes the connection. I did something like that with a Win2K machine, and Win2K, I believe, is even fussier about access privileges. Paul

jalal wrote:

Many thanks for all the input from folks around here.

In the end, we decided to create an ftp space. Most of the users are comfortable with zipping up their Document files and ftp'ing them up to the server (when they remember to). They will use a naming convention for the files which includes the date and I'll try and find a way to rotate and manage the files on the server.

Some confusion over the use of the singular in my description, 'my client' is a company which includes 6-8 computers, 3 of which are laptops which are not online all the time, so what would work for one would not work for others. It also means that a pull solution from the server wouldn't work.

Those machines that are on all/most the time will get some sort of automated solution, maybe I'll use the DOS shell, maybe something written in VBScript or possibly make use of the built in backup program.

Thanks again.

jalal

It sounds like you have your solution down, but I thought I might throw this idea out for consideration: If you're looking at backing up each user's "My Documents" folder, then a combination of Samba and redirection of My Documents would work well. Gerry

On Friday 05 November 2004 09:46, jalal wrote:

On Tue 2 November 2004 10:11, jalal wrote:

...

I have a client who is using Windows XP and wants to backup his files (preferably automatically) to my Linux server.

Normally in Linux I would suggest rsync, or tar/gzip/ftp or similar solutions

But what would work under Windows? Does Windows have a shell and shell tools? I suspect not. And this is not a computer guru anyway.

Anyone have any experience and/or solutions in this area?

TIA jalal

Many thanks for all the input from folks around here.

In the end, we decided to create an ftp space. Most of the users are comfortable with zipping up their Document files and ftp'ing them up to the server (when they remember to). They will use a naming convention for the files which includes the date and I'll try and find a way to rotate and manage the files on the server.

Some confusion over the use of the singular in my description, 'my client' is a company which includes 6-8 computers, 3 of which are laptops which are not online all the time, so what would work for one would not work for others. It also means that a pull solution from the server wouldn't work.

Those machines that are on all/most the time will get some sort of automated solution, maybe I'll use the DOS shell, maybe something written in VBScript or possibly make use of the built in backup program.

For such things I use ActiveState perl. thier Perl Dev kit is awesome, and lets you generate (huge 8-( ) exe's that can be delivered without dll dependacies etc.... And the Perl Libraries will have all the tools you need prebuilt. Jerry

Thanks again.

jalal

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GPG fingerprint = 3D45 5509 D380 26A4 523E A9D8 A66A 5F38 CA43 BB0E