From owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Fri Mar 12 20:01:10 2004 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.freebsd.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 45B5916A4CE for ; Fri, 12 Mar 2004 20:01:10 -0800 (PST) Received: from mail013.syd.optusnet.com.au (mail013.syd.optusnet.com.au [211.29.132.67]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 3FBE843D49 for ; Fri, 12 Mar 2004 20:01:09 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from anubis357@optusnet.com.au) Received: from rdlax10-a248.dialup.optusnet.com.au (rdlax10-a248.dialup.optusnet.com.au [198.142.5.248])i2D40uV01419; Sat, 13 Mar 2004 15:00:57 +1100 From: anubis To: Marty Landman , freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Date: Sat, 13 Mar 2004 14:04:42 +1000 User-Agent: KMail/1.5.4 References: <6.0.0.22.0.20040309174210.21cd7918@pop.face2interface.com> In-Reply-To: <6.0.0.22.0.20040309174210.21cd7918@pop.face2interface.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Disposition: inline Message-Id: <200403131404.42487.anubis357@optusnet.com.au> Subject: Re: using samba for backups X-BeenThere: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.1 Precedence: list List-Id: User questions List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Sat, 13 Mar 2004 04:01:10 -0000 > > Are there any potential pitfalls to this approach, iow are there > any compatibility issues that come up if I copy files from a nix > box to a windows box and vice versa? The problem I can see is that you may have problems with attributes. It depends on what you are trying to backup. With data you can just copy from windows to samba. Depending on how you have it set up you should be able to keep the windows file attributes. We use rsync to make hourly backups of all our data on a mirror server to allow users to access data if the windows fileserver goes down. This gives us time to fix the problem without 50 people demanding to know when we will have the problem fixed. With the os use a native tool designed to backup and restore the os. This will make sure that you have the proper file attributes when restoring. We backup our windows servers to a samba share using both v2i and veritas backupexec. they can both backup to file so we just store the backup files on the samba servers. v2i has network support and you can boot off the v2i disk, browse to the samba share and then restore the whole os. For bsd we do dumps of the os using dump and break up the dumpfiles into cd sized chunks then store them on removable drives. This could be anything even your windows machines. If there is a problem, write them to cds reboot your server with the fixit cd and restore. > > On the side it's getting to be such a pleasant development > environment on my lan that I can't help shake this awful feeling > that something's going to mess up big time. I have trouble trying to not think of my bsd boxes in terms of windows reliability. Once started the bsd boxes just keep on trucking. Its taken a while but I can now just rely on the bsd boxes to do their job while I now only worry about windows. At then end of the month we laugh and chant the quote from a MS employee. "We are seeing crazy uptimes of 30+ days now"