Hi Sergio, Sergio Dominguez wrote:
Hi all,
I am setting up a backup system wich rsyncs with different desktops to copy the data across to another desktop with a very big hd, pretty simple.
But I do not know how to go about laptops. People carry them around and they might be connected at anytime, as they might not, and the idea is that tthe backup be completely automatic, my boss does not want to press any button or do anything.
How can I detect when a laptop (which has windows 2000 and a fixed IP, by the way) has got online in order to do the backup then?
Any other ideas? Although I have not done it, I immediately thought of a script solution ie When a laptop user logs off, have his username call the script that will ask the user if they would like to backup. The script could be called from within the users home directory when they shutdown and thus be removed or added as the users progress through the organization.
If they select 'Yes' it would start the rsync backup process and possibly give the end user a read out of the time remaining for backing up their laptop(based on the amount of data and the network transfer rate. If they select 'No' they are disconnected from the network and have none of their work backed up. Each laptop user should be asked to sign some form of indemnity, where, if they do not regularly backup, they will lose all their new work since the last backup. Hope it helps -- ======================================================================== Hylton Conacher - Linux user # 229959 at http://counter.li.org Currently using SuSE 9.0 Professional with KDE 3.1 ========================================================================