How to make a backup/filesharing server

scottgc622 · 2009-03-11

Basically what i would like to do is setup a server at my parents house that will unless someone suggests otherwise run REstore a linux server OS and i would like it so it would periodically pull information off all the computers it is hooked up to and back them up as well i would like to run a web server off of it and if not too much fileshare so i could hook up to it and up/download files to it. So can anyone help me? or am i just dreaming lol i was thinking about running abyss web server or apache for the web server and i hear restore has that feature to pull info off computers its networked to. so i appreciate the help thank you

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DesertFox

· #2 · Mar 11, 2009

Yeah this is pretty simple IF you have some experience with Linux or BSD or Solaris, etc.

I don't have any winbloze boxes but I have a bunch of BSD and Linux machines and a Solaris box. What I do is set up a cron job to rsync everything over to the backup machine periodically. Rsync is excellent but you could accomplish a similar thing with making an NFS server on your backup box and mounting shares on your boxes you want to back up to it.

You can setup Apache for static content or PHP pretty easy also.

If you are going to do this across the net you will also have to get either a static IP or a dynamic DNS so you can get your boxes to connect to the backup box.

The only thing I don't know about is backing up winbloze machines. For that I think you need Samba but like I said I don't run it so I don't know.

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Frog_Racer

· #3 · Mar 11, 2009

you can run any distro of linux tbh, if you are into downloading/uploading torrents and web links look up the peice of sofware called torrentflux-b4rt or rtorrent with wtorrent

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scottgc622

Discussion Starter · #4 · Mar 11, 2009

Quote:

Originally Posted by DesertFox

I don't have any winbloze boxes but I have a bunch of BSD and Linux machines and a Solaris box. What I do is set up a cron job to rsync everything over to the backup machine periodically. Rsync is excellent but you could accomplish a similar thing with making an NFS server on your backup box and mounting shares on your boxes you want to back up to it

I am not familiar with the term "cron job" would you elaborate? as well as NFS server

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Frog_Racer

· #5 · Mar 12, 2009

Quote:

Originally Posted by scottgc622

I am not familiar with the term "cron job" would you elaborate? as well as NFS server

cron job is like the task scheduler in windows, but a little limited

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DesertFox

· #6 · Mar 12, 2009

Why is cron limited? Cron is a batch process you can set up to run at any time you want. There are hourly, daily, weekly, and monthly processes. You can run scripts and do pretty much anything you want, either as root (superuser) or regular user. This facility is very often used for backing up and synchronizing things but you can use it to run any script you want, and any number of scripts you want.

NFS is a file system sharing protocol developed by Sun. Network File System allows Linux and Solaris boxes to mount a foreign file system as if it were local. So in your case you could set up an NFS server on your backup box and mount the shares (filesystems) on your remoted boxes. Then your backup is just a matter of using rsync or cp to copy from one filesystem to the next, just like you had the filesystem locally on the same box.

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Frog_Racer

· #7 · Mar 12, 2009

Quote:

Originally Posted by DesertFox

Why is cron limited? Cron is a batch process you can set up to run at any time you want. There are hourly, daily, weekly, and monthly processes. You can run scripts and do pretty much anything you want, either as root (superuser) or regular user. This facility is very often used for backing up and synchronizing things but you can use it to run any script you want, and any number of scripts you want.

with windows you can set it by a set ammount of idle time, to wake the pc to do the task, or not as the case may be, run after an event has happened and whether to stop the task if the computer ceases to be idle and to do the ask wether the computer is on battery power or not (laptop feature)

cron is useful
windows vista task manger is even more useful

Im not knocking cron, but microsoft has innovated (for once) with this, really the server should be dumb, and let microsoft software do the leg work.

Im not pro/anti microsoft/linux, Im pro-easy.

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error10

· #8 · Mar 13, 2009

Easy <===> Powerful. It's a continuum. Sorry.

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DesertFox

· #9 · Mar 13, 2009

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Quote:

Originally Posted by Frog_Racer

with windows you can set it by a set ammount of idle time, to wake the pc to do the task, or not as the case may be, run after an event has happened and whether to stop the task if the computer ceases to be idle and to do the ask wether the computer is on battery power or not (laptop feature)

Linux is based on UNIX, which is a true multi user operating system. Windows is a GUI which was hacked and hacked and hacked to deliver what home users want which is playing games and surfing the net.

Servers and minicomputers don't sleep and they don't hibernate or need to be woken up. There is a completely different purpose for NIX and Windows and the features you are talking about aren't all relevant in the real world of computing.

There are alternate cron demons which probably offer some bells and whistles over the basic cron, but I haven't ever needed them.

I personally don't see the advantage to having all kinds of features I'll never use but I understand people who like gadgets would be impressed by those things. Do you really use them? I doubt it. That's one of the things that makes Bloze bad. Bloat.

Complexity kills and long instruction path is bad. Bad for performance and bad for reliability. It's exactly because of all the unnecessary features (and of course the hundreds of thousands of lines of anti-piracy code and stuff to keep track of your every move) that Bloze can't get out of it's own way. You need more and more horsepower for every new release. You can still run the latest BSD and Linux on the oldest hardware you have and it will run like a house afire.

An OS should do some things and not others. When you try to turn an OS into an application (or in the case of bloze) when you try to turn an application into an OS, you may find yourself adding feature after feature. But OS is not about features, it's about offering fundamental services and APIs so that applications can run on top of them.

Anything that can be done on Winbloze can be done better and more correctly on UNIX.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Frog_Racer

cron is useful
windows vista task manger is even more useful

I don't think anything about WInbloze is more useful. It may have more features, but I don't consider that a benefit when I'm looking at an OS. I may want an application to be feature rich, but there's a big difference between an OS and an application, except in Blozeville where they have obliterated that distinction.

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