Topic: backup2ws , How to using Midnight Commander

[Ken]

The following is a tentative How to for setting up backup2ws, the best backup procedure I can think of by D May.

I have added some info about adding a Recovery Record so your backup will work even with a few bad sectors.

Assuming you are backing up to a Windows Workstation  copy all files (currently4)  from

http://mirror.contribs.org/smeserver/contribs/dmay/mitel/contrib/Backup2ws/

to a location on your SME server such as


\yoursmeserver\Primary\files\backup2ws\

Then go to your physical server and log in as
root             (instead of admin)
password    (same as admin)

then type mc to start Midnight Commander

this will show you a directory and /.. is highlighted
press enter on /..
then highlight /home                  press enter
then /e-smith                             press enter
then ~primary                            press enter
then /files                                  press enter
thenbackup2ws                          press enter

finally you are at the directory with all 4 files
/home/e-smith//files/primary/files/backup2ws

highlight *install.sh and press enter

backup2ws should install

You also have a command line at bottom of Midnight commander so now all you have to do is type exit and press enter to get back to root and then exit again to get out to login screen.

Now from a workstation type the ip address of your server - followed by server manager, in my case
http://10.0.0.1/server-manager
you then enter admin for name and your password
at the bottom of the list under the title Unknown is backup2ws.

You should test that it is working by making a small backup such as
backing up
/var to //yourWorkstationName/bu

You need to create a share on your workstation called bu and should try copying something to there from another workstation to make sure it works.

Also as I found out the hard way the workstation name in Windows is Capitallized as in //Servername/bu and not //servername/bu

and it should be //Servername/bu with forward slashes and not back slashes.

You may want to install WinRar on your Windows computer, this was wrar310.exe that you downloaded. This will let you extract saved data files.

I was using winrar to back up i-bays before finding out about backup2ws by
Darrel May . as it may also be used as a batchfile.

There is a option to use a recovery record that I was using in the form of -rr1%%
 that adds 1% to file size but allows a restore even with up to 1% in bad sectors or you could use -rr3%% or whatever for a larger safety margin assuming the same method is used in linux. I am assuming that after your backup to workstation you will then copy the data to CDRW the next day and this is where a recovery record could become more important as we all have probably experienced a bad sector on a floppy and I assume the same can happen on a cd.

I did a test of backing up of only /var and it was 5,034kb but by adding a 10% recovery record in the form of
 -rr10%% /var  in Edit Source it went to 5,486 kb

You may want to set recovery record size at enough to allow for bad sectors such as 1% or several % so it still works well within your backup CD or CD's needs.

Or someone may well have better suggestions.

Thanks Mr. May for what promises to be a very good backup system.

Ken

[Ken]

After rebooting server

backup2ws under Unknown is missing.

However Backup to workstation is under Administration and seems to be the same so the question is - was it there before, already built in under 6.03 or did it get changed to this once I rebooted the server.

Also of interest - A 911 backup would not work but I have copied the entire line  and placed it in a new backup job and that has created a directory and a backup file seems to be growing inside.

Last thought if a -rr1%% can be added to include a recovery record  which allows up to 1%  errors to be fixed in file perhaps other items like the compression method can also be added if for instance it is not compressing to maximum.

Ken

[xinux]

I notice there is an error on the link, actual link to download backup2ws is http://mirror.contribs.org/smeserver/contribs/dmay/smeserver/6.x/contrib/backup2ws/

 

[raem]

Ken

> A 911 backup would not work but I have copied the > entire line  and placed it in a new backup job and > that has created a directory and a backup file
> seems to be growing inside.

While that may appear to backup the same data as a 911 job does, in my experience only the original actual 911 backup job includes the mysl datbase dumps.
So be careful if you rely on that other pseudo 911 job, it will be missing the mysql data, which will be a very bad thing if you actually need to do an emergency restore. You won't have any database data !!

I don't know why your 911 job does not work for you, it runs OK for me.
I suggest you resolve that problem rather than rely on the pseudo 911 job, which won't restore everything.