I think I may have discovered one of the reasons why the rsync looks like it's failing. I have the process kicking off daily as an entry in the crontab. It appears that, for whatever reason, the rsync process isn't completing within 24 hours before it gets kicked off again.

This begs the question. Does rsync process the file set incrementally after the first full rsync completes? I ask because my next question is how would I recover from the rsync'ed fileset?

In other words, should my process be to do a full rsync to a separate location then continue to rsync just the changed, deleted or added files?

Sorry if this sounds confusing, but I'm just as confused, I guess. The whole purpose of this exercise is to backup a server to another server so I can restore from the second server.

Thanks for your continued interest.

Blaine

Not sure about RHEL, but with Fedora you just use the system-config-samba application in the System -> Administration menu. Add the directories you want to backup to the exports and make sure to configure a user for security purposes (all in the nice user friendly gui.) You should then be able to connect to the shares like a normal Windows machine would.

From what it sounds like you already have a backup system/software in place but I'm a big fan of amanda and/or zmanda. Zmanda being a paid for and supported version of amanda with a nice interface on top. While they can backup just about any computer system the server does run on only linux/solaris.

Actually, you're right about already having a backup solution in place. I'm trying to copy files and directories from the linux system to a windows system that is running cygwin. This way I can backup the windows system data directory that consists of all the copies of files and directories from all the various linux systems I need to back up.

I know this sounds a bit confusing, because I'm getting more confused by this too.

Also, I don't have the luxury of running the gui on all the RHEL systems. I'm shell based only there.

Thanks for the input though.

Still looking for assistance. Appreciate the continued interest.

Blaine

Question... Should I simply forget this process (scp and rsync between linux and windows systems using cygwin)?

Can anyone think of an easier way to move large numbers of files and directories from linux servers onto a windows server with a very large disk?

Thanks!

Blaine

I'm closing this thread as solved, even though it hasn't been solved. I think I have a much more basic problem with cygwin and it's port of rsync. I'm opening a new thread that hopefully addresses this issue more specifically...

Thanks to everyone that responded or viewed this thread.

Blaine Miller