Topic: Desktop Backup Woes!!!

[rishi]

Hi All,

Try as I might I have never been able to get the Backup to Desktop to work correctly...

A normal backup on our server would be about 8Gb. I wouldn't think this was overly large. What usually happens is that the backup flies along for a few minutes, gradually slows down over time and eventually grinds to a halt. The server has 800Mhz processor, 384Mb RAM and 240Gb disk space (3Ware RAID5). I've tried this from many different desktop machines (Mandrake, RedHat, WinXP Home, WinXP Pro, dual CPU, single CPU and many different variations of each) using many different browsers (opera, IE, Mozilla) using gigabit or 100Mbit network. On all these machines I've made sure they had heaps of free HDD space (20Gb+ free space) and I've even tried putting the backup file to external USB drives, FireWire drives, network drives (not on the server I'm backing up!) as well as secondary local drives. I honestly thing I've tried about 100 combinations.

No matter, I always get the same outcome... an uncomplete backup file. Has anyone got this to work correctly with backups of around 8Gb? If so, what could be going wrong here? Can you point me to something to try to get this to work?

As you can probably understand, I'd love to be able to backup all those system settings and stuff!

Second issue, assuming I can get this backup method to work, is there any way you can get it to exclude a particular iBay? We occasionally have about 200Gb of digital video on an ibay for viewing / checking through some software and I definately do not want or need to back this up! (It is kept on its original capture medium). I'm sure you can appreciate that it is not always practical to backup 200Gb of data that you don't really need a backup of!   Also, I don't want to have to wait until that job is finished and I can delete that data, to be able to do a backup... So what would be ideal would be an ability to deselect particular iBays from your backup when doing a Backup to Desktop. Anybody know of a way to do this? Could I try a command line option? I'd prefer the simplicity of backup/restore from the control panel.


Any help appreciated, really! Thanks,


Rishi.

[Anonymous]

Hi All,
Try as I might I have never been able to get the Backup to Desktop to work correctly...

A normal backup on our server would be about 8Gb. I wouldn't think this was overly large /quote]

Backup to desktop won't work as Linux is limited to 2Gig file size. You need Backup2WS from dmay

Unfortunately Contribs org contribs section points people to the version of backup for mitel version 5. When there having clicked for the 5 version, you need to look at the directory and go up in directory hiarchy to the branch that indicates smeserver
http://mirror.contribs.org/smeserver/contribs/dmay/smeserver/6.x/beta/

Actually some should also go to dmays own site because he mentions a need to remove some stuff to do with the 5 version before installing 6 version. His site is  www.myezserver.com

The above said I still find my backups won't start on schedule and I have to manually start the backup - perhaps I didn't correctly uninstall 5, or perhaps thats why its beta.

The exclude info provided in the backup screen works to prevent an ebay from backing up or I would have 27 of 1.5 gig files create.

As Linux is limited to 2 gig archives. Try the default CD size in backup to workstation which breaks the backup into several compressed archives of 650 megs. I use 1.5 gig backups as 3 fit on to a 4.5 gig DVD and the system has made 12 of these for me so your 8 gigs should be no problem.

Another solution which won't backup system files but works fine for Ibays and which I use to backup my accounting info nightly is to use WinRar on the Windows machine and create a backup which is designed to span cd's or DVD's. I had one brand of DVD's that would actually accept 4.5 gig files. Though the version I use now says 4.0 gig is the limit of a ISO file so you either have to go to 2.25 or 1.5 and put 2 or 3 files on the DVD.

You can set up a batch file with Winrar and then set up a nightly task in XP to do the backup.

The procedure is therefore to do your nightly or weekly backup to a workstation and then take those compressed archives and put them on CDrw or DVDrw the next day. Keep a weeks CD's plu midmonth and end month off site and you should be reasonably safe. Personaly I have an odd and even day batch file created and enough room on the workstation for 2 days backups so virtually never have to go to the rewriteable DVD's, but its nice to know they are there.

Ken

[rishi]

Hi Ken,

Thank you very much for your help. I have installed the backup2ws contrib as you suggested and it is certainly what I was looking for. Very handy little utility! I have a similar problem to you I think, regarding the automated backups not starting properly. I get lines like this in my logs:

May 25 21:00:01 hal e-smith[6608]: Processing event: pre-backup2ws
May 25 21:00:01 hal e-smith[6608]: Running event handler: /etc/e-smith/events/pre-backup2ws/S10mysql-delete-dumped-tables
May 25 21:00:01 hal ucd-snmp[2662]: Connection from 127.0.0.1
May 25 21:00:01 hal e-smith[6608]: S10mysql-delete-dumped-tables=action|Event|pre-backup2ws|Action|S10mysql-delete-dumped-tables|Start|1085482801 555572|End|1085482801 670856|Elapsed|0.115284
May 25 21:00:01 hal e-smith[6608]: Running event handler: /etc/e-smith/events/pre-backup2ws/S20mysql-dump-tables
May 25 21:00:02 hal e-smith[6608]: S20mysql-dump-tables=action|Event|pre-backup2ws|Action|S20mysql-dump-tables|Start|1085482801 671107|End|1085482802 565080|Elapsed|0.893973
May 25 21:00:02 hal e-smith[6608]: Running event handler: /etc/e-smith/events/pre-backup2ws/S30gentle-ldap-dump
May 25 21:00:03 hal e-smith[6608]: S30gentle-ldap-dump=action|Event|pre-backup2ws|Action|S30gentle-ldap-dump|Start|1085482802 565353|End|1085482803 363675|Elapsed|0.798322

Is this the problem you were having? It does this and then nothing more... I have installed the 6.x version from scratch.

Anyone else get this behaviour? I wonder if Darrel May is aware of this or able to help with this...

Cheers,
Rishi.

[Anonymous]

Hi Ken,

Thank you very much for your help. I have installed the backup2ws contrib as you suggested and it is certainly what I was looking for. Very handy little utility! I have a similar problem to you I think, regarding the automated backups not starting properly. I get lines like this in my logs:

May 25 21:00:01 hal e-smith[6608]: Processing event: pre-backup2ws
May 25 21:00:01 hal e-smith[6608]: Running event handler: /etc/e-smith/events/pre-backup2ws/S10mysql-delete-dumped-tables
May 25 21:00:01 hal ucd-snmp[2662]: Connection from 127.0.0.1
May 25 21:00:01 hal e-smith[6608]: S10mysql-delete-dumped-tables=action|Event|pre-backup2ws|Action|S10mysql-delete-dumped-tables|Start|1085482801 555572|End|1085482801 670856|Elapsed|0.115284
May 25 21:00:01 hal e-smith[6608]: Running event handler: /etc/e-smith/events/pre-backup2ws/S20mysql-dump-tables
May 25 21:00:02 hal e-smith[6608]: S20mysql-dump-tables=action|Event|pre-backup2ws|Action|S20mysql-dump-tables|Start|1085482801 671107|End|1085482802 565080|Elapsed|0.893973
May 25 21:00:02 hal e-smith[6608]: Running event handler: /etc/e-smith/events/pre-backup2ws/S30gentle-ldap-dump
May 25 21:00:03 hal e-smith[6608]: S30gentle-ldap-dump=action|Event|pre-backup2ws|Action|S30gentle-ldap-dump|Start|1085482802 565353|End|1085482803 363675|Elapsed|0.798322

Is this the problem you were having? It does this and then nothing more... I have installed the 6.x version from scratch.

Anyone else get this behaviour? I wonder if Darrel May is aware of this or able to help with this...

Cheers,
Rishi.

Can you tell me where or how you found the log mentioned.  Any of my logs that start with backup2ws are the manual backup I did.

Ken

[rishi]

Hi Ken,

The log I posted was just the general system messages (syslog). On Control Panel, do menu item 'View Log Files' then just choose to view the 'messages' log. Nothing more than that. Also, I have got the manual backup to work, so backups are happening again!

Cheers,

Rishi.