Franklin Harper

Installing Ubuntu 8.04 works right out of the box except for wifi.

But that is very easy to take care of by installing the bcm43xx-fwcutter package.

Ok, I’ve finally decided to get off my butt and do something about making backups of all the precious family data. Up until now it has just been waiting to fall into a digital black hole.

Ingredients

• one linux server
• enough hard disk space to make backups
• family PCs running Windows that have precious data on them
• a home network
• General information about using snapshot/rsync backup method
• snapback2 backup software

From here on, I’ll suppose that the server, windows PCs and network are already installed.

To get a working backup system, do the following

• Install Config::ApacheFormat from CPAN

      perl -MCPAN -e shell
      cpan> install Config::ApacheFormat
  

• Install snapback2

• Create /etc/snapback2.conf containing something like this with a Directory directive for each PC

      Hourlies 4
      Dailies 7
      Weeklies 4
      Monthlies 12
      #AutoTime Yes
      AutoTime No
      Compress No
      Debug 4
  
      #AdminEmail backups@yourdomain.org
      AdminEmail you@yourdomain
      AlwaysEmail Yes
  
      LogFile /var/log/snapback.log
      ChargeFile /var/log/snapback.charges
  
      Exclude core.*
  
      SnapbackRoot /etc/snapback
  
      #DestinationList /mnt/backup1 /mnt/backup2
      DestinationList /root/snapshot
  
      RsyncShell none
      Directory /mnt/FranksDocs/
      Directory /mnt/JonsDocs/
      Directory /home/share/
  

• Run snapback2 from cron every hour

    0 * * * * /usr/bin/snapback2
  

• Configure PCs to share documents read only

• Use automount and Samba to access the documents on the PC hard disks

  • Put the following into /etc/auto.master

    /mnt file:/etc/auto.mnt
    

    • For each PC add something like this into /etc/auto.mnt

      • FranksDocs -fstype=smbfs,username=guest,password=,ro,fmask=755,dmask=755 ://192.168.0.4/FranksDocs
  • make sure automount is started at boot time (symbolic link in /etc/rc5.d)
  • Export backups locally read-only through NFS (/etc/exports)
    • /root/snapshot/localhost/mnt/FranksDocs 127.0.0.1(secure,ro,norootsquash) *execute exportfs -a
  • Mount read-only file system accessible to users (/etc/fstab)
    • 127.0.0.1:/root/snapshot/localhost/mnt/FranksDocs /snapshot/FranksDocs nfs ro,addr=127.0.0.1 0 0 o create mount point /snapshot/FranksDocs

  • Export using Samba so users can access their backups

    • Create /etc/samba/smb.conf

      + # Global Parameters
        [global]
        workgroup = YOURWORKGROUP
        security = SHARE
        server string =
        #printing = CUPS
        #printcap name = CUPS
        disable spoolss = Yes
        #show add printer wizard = No
        wins support = yes
      + [SaveFrank]
        comment = Recover old versions of Frank's files here
        path = /snapshot/FranksDocs
        read only = Yes
        force user = share
        force group = family
        guest ok = Yes
        nt acl support = No
      

• That’s it you’re done