Topic: Scheduled Desktop Backup To CD

[Haydn Lowe]

I think it would be great to see a capability to backup files to a CD (700 Mb).
(Basically a scheduled Desktop Backup to a CD rather than a remote desktop)

With the following features:

  Choose which ibays to include/exclude
  Email reminder to insert CD
  Daily Desktop backups to CD
 
ie - a selective backup of files (like the desktop backup), but instead they are burnt to CD (using mkisofs & cdrecord  or CDBackup perhaps) in a daily backup fashion.

--------------- explanation of why I'd like to have a feature like this ----------------

I realise what I am proposing is not going to work for everyone, but many smaller organisations (including ours) would probably find this appropriate - providing they have reasonably small storage requirements.

e-smith is easy to install / re-install so why back all of it up all the time?
take a hard drive image when it's first installed, and
Perform regular backups of selected files (like a Desktop Backup)

A proposed redundancy solution is as follows:

   1) Run RAID1 Provides basic recovery from a disk crash.

   2) Use Rsync (or something similar) to copy selective files/ibays to an 'archive' ibay on  a daily basis (provides easy recovery if someone accidentally deletes a file).

   3) Also perform regular automatic backups of the same selective files to a CDR / CDRW on the server. (provide reminder emails same as tape backup) Rather than having to manually copy the file accross a network, and then burn it to CD.

What do people think?

[Aaron]

I'd like the same thing for the same reasons you've given.

Other reasons I'd offer up is that for small backup sizes a tape drive & tape media is quite a bit more costly than a burner & CD, not to mention faster when you need a critical file off backup and waiting an hour for a tape to complete isnt in the cards.

The problem I foresee in this feature ever manefesting itself in a future e-smith release is simply the following observation:

                               a 700MB backup = small fish.

E-Smith/Mitel doesnt cater to small fish, as evidenced by their product pricing strategy.

For instance, I'd love to enjoy the excellent SL E-Mail Virus offering but it is out of financial reach for an < dozen person office. If not out of reach, a very hard sell to unearth a firmly rooted and reliable Norton-type solution that provides both an e-mail *and* desktop protection for the same or usually lower cost. That is reality.

The more likely scenerio for this suggestion would be to be fulfilled as a user contributed add-on (either paid or free).

In the meantime, I'm working on sonething similar and if make headway I'll let you know!

[stephen noble]

>The more likely scenerio for this suggestion would be to be fulfilled as a user
>contributed add-on (either paid or free).

www.dungog.net/sme/howto/backup.html

my approach was to split the backup to desktop into cdrom size chunks
then you burn them manually

regards
stephen noble
dungog.net/sme

[Haydn Lowe]

> then you burn them manually

I really feel it needs to be automatic. - otherwise it doesn't happen.
I agree, we're talking about Small Fish yes, but the backups are still important, AND a CD backup solution is definitely cheaper, and probably sufficient for many small businesses. (and plus this IS a 'Wish' list) - lots of small fish can look awfully like big fish.

Lack of automation is the main weakness I can see with the currently available Desktop Backup solutions, and with SME for small businesses in general.

Solve this problem (and SME pricing), and you've got yourself an effective, and (very) low cost comms server solution which will work on commonly available standard PC hardware - Perfect!

I'm in the process of hacking out something along these lines, and may post something more here if it turns out OK - I'm no SME expert at this point though!

[Charles Hood]

DVD burners are coming down in price, that would be a good solution even for "medium" fish.

[Bruce]

Since we're all dreaming, I'd like to select what I backup. My web site stays fairly static, and I can do a CD backup manually. The e-mail and configuration files would be great. Right now, I've installed a CD burner and use Norton Ghost to create an image every week, and manually copy  individual files to my desktop when I make changes.

[Haydn Lowe]

I've done a fair bit of work, and have implemented a CD Backup System for
Linux, and e-smith.

Haven't quite got it all there, but getting close...

I'd also like to hear from anyone willing to help out with this.

Have a look at cd-utils.sourceforge.net

[C.K. Kung]

I used mkcdrec to automatic backup to CD/RW everyday. And I modified "Backup or restore | Configure tape backup" to Configure to CD/RW then I can set what time to reminder by email and backup.


http://mkcdrec.ota.be/project/index.html

[Haydn Lowe]

http://cd-utils.sourceforge.net

I've written a module for server-manager which allows you to:

  - Backup to CD
  - Restore from CD
  - Perform scheduled backups to CD
  - Burn data and Audio files to CD

  - Choose which files are/aren't backed up
  - Choose which days the backups happen.

  - All controlled via the SME Server Web Based server-manager

Its pretty simple to install - (but is not in an rpm yet.)
I am in the process of testing it comprehensively but it seems to work fine. I encourage people to try it out.

I've made it all available at http://cd-utils.sourceforge.net
please let me know what your experiences are - and if your interested in helping us refine this further...

[guestHH]

Hi,

I've got this one working perfectly, which does all the things aked for.
http://cdbk.sourceforge.net/

Regards,
guestHH

[ryan]

Can this module be modified to allow backup to a file share and use the server-manager tools or is it only to CDR?  I will download it today.

Thanks for posting it Haydn.

ryan

[Haydn Lowe]

It's probably more appropriate to address questions like this on the sourceforge site.

I'll post an answer there.

http://sourceforge.net/projects/cd-utils

Cheers
Haydn

[Aaron]

Haydn, great add-on, busy playing with it right now on a 5.5 test box.

The only issue I have is that the panel doesnt allow specification of a CD on a 2nd bus (ie: I have an existing SCSI tape on a SCSI controller in addition to the existing IDE drives & CDRW.

For it to work I need to enter 1,0,0 as the device, but the form barks an error if more that two digits are used as the SCSI device.

Here the SCSI bus listing:
# cdrecord -scanbus
Cdrecord 1.9 (i686-pc-linux-gnu) Copyright (C) 1995-2000 Jörg Schilling
Linux sg driver version: 2.1.39
Using libscg version 'schily-0.1'
scsibus0:
        0,0,0     0) *
        0,1,0     1) *
        0,2,0     2) *
        0,3,0     3) *
        0,4,0     4) 'ARCHIVE ' '4326XX 27871-XXX' '4BGD' Removable Tape
        0,5,0     5) *
        0,6,0     6) *
        0,7,0     7) *
scsibus1:
        1,0,0   100) 'ATAPI   ' 'CD-R/RW 32X10   ' 'T.GA' Removable CD-ROM
        1,1,0   101) *
        1,2,0   102) *
        1,3,0   103) *
        1,4,0   104) *
        1,5,0   105) *
        1,6,0   106) *
        1,7,0   107) *

The other nice addition might be to flatten any CDRW before using as it kicks out any CD-RW with previous stuff on it. But that is gravy.

Tx, Aaron!

[ryan]

When I run "cdrecord -scanbus" as root, I get the following error:

cdrecord:  No such file or directory.  Cannot open SCSI driver.

I have HP 7200 cdrw that is recognized by bios and was used to install 5.1.2.  Can someone please suggest how I get cdrecord to work.

Thanks for any help,

ryan

[Aaron]

Have you done a "modprobe ide-scsi" to load the module?