linux backup (1 Viewer)

[Jtek74]

Ok Linux Guru's here is my dilemma,
I have one windows 7 pro pc, one windows xp home pc, one linux ubuntu 9.04 laptop and one windows home server (120 day trial)pc. I would like to install some form on linux on the server but I would like it to automatically back my pc's like windows home server does. Also, I really like "Drive Extender" in home server and wonder is there is anything like that in linux land.
thanks for the help!
Justin

 

[llama]

There are many types of backup software available in Linux land. I use Unison http://www.cis.upenn.edu/~bcpierce/unison/ successfully to pull data from my Windows partition on my laptop (work stuff) to a NAS, and to back up my music on my desktop machine.

I use Ubuntu because it is Debian-based, rather current, and has a large & friendly user base. As for Drive Extender you could partition your machine to contain its own backup partition and again utilize any of the many tools for copying data.

 

[Jtek74]

Thanks for the link, from what I read though, it seems Unison is set up to backup files "over the internet" ie remote server backup. I assume this would still work for an internal network? Also, have you ever used Back-in-Time? I am really more concerned with backup of critical data than syncing folders. I am definitely going to go with Ubuntu server, I have been using ubuntu/kubuntu about '05 but just as a desktop OS. So all the functionality of the server OS is new to me.
thanks for your help on this!
Justin

 

[eaux-yeah]

Have you ever seen Greyhole? I don't know?

Back-in-Time is basically a front-end to rsync. Learn rsync! Its not hard and can back files from disk-to-disk or in server/client mode between systems.
You can easily create a backup script and toss it in a cron job and have it send you e-mails reports, if you want.

So far, I have found the ultimate backup solution to be FreeBSD 8 w/ZFS using 2 RAID drives. It is serious stuff!

Btrfs for Linux aims to be the equivilent of Suns ZFS. So far, it looks promising. We'll see?
Until Btrfs is solid, there are cool fun things to do with LVM2 and fs snapshots. Could be worth a look/see.

 

[Jtek74]

Have you ever seen Greyhole? I don't know?

Back-in-Time is basically a front-end to rsync. Learn rsync! Its not hard and can back files from disk-to-disk or in server/client mode between systems.
You can easily create a backup script and toss it in a cron job and have it send you e-mails reports, if you want.

So far, I have found the ultimate backup solution to be FreeBSD 8 w/ZFS using 2 RAID drives. It is serious stuff!

Btrfs for Linux aims to be the equivilent of Suns ZFS. So far, it looks promising. We'll see?
Until Btrfs is solid, there are cool fun things to do with LVM2 and fs snapshots. Could be worth a look/see.

Checked out Greyhole and it does look like it works like Drive Extender..But the only problem for me is the fact that its still in Alpha (or maybe Beta) testing. But this definitely could be a solution further down the road. The only reason I am interested in this is i am too cheap to buy a new larger (1TB or greater) hard drive. But I have 6 or 7 smaller drives lying around in various sizes from 80gb to 200gb.
I will take your advice on rsync. If there is a command line way to do it just usually seems to work better and faster, although sometimes i am too lazy to learn the commands and just use the gui!
And definitely your FreeBSD+ZFS in a RAID setup is very nice. I have worked with the ZFS in sun and certianly know my way around most RAID configurations. I havent worked with FreeBSD though, so i would have a little learning curve there. If i did anything like that I would just do Sun Solaris and ZFS but most of my drives are various sizes so it makes my RAID setup not so great since some of the drives are WAY smaller than the others.
I think ubuntu server with ext4, using Back-in-Time (or rsync) for now will probably work best for me. i will try Greyhole to see how well it "works for me"...
Thanks for the advice.
-Justin