The Tuesday 2004-11-02 at 10:11 +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.
Yes, you do have a shell, in the form of a Dos shell. Time ago, I did it using a batch script file. The "backup" was made in the windows machine using infozip, which is a command line equivalent of winzip (ie, like the old pkzip/pkunzip in dos). If I remember correctly, making use of the "archive" atribute you can do incremental backups easily. Then the ziped archive was transferred to a share on the server. The batch file fired by the "equivalent" of cron in windows. I forgot its exact name now... task scheduler or something. 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. -- Cheers, Carlos Robinson