Backup Solution from XP Destops to Linux Server
 

Hello All,

Me and a couple of friends want to provide a backup system for all of our desktops, in which it will provide a weekly full backup and a daily incremental backup. I have my own linux server, so I was trying to do it for free. I know linux but I couldn't figure out a way to backup windows desktops automatically without us continuously having to ftp the files to the server.
Does anybody know any type of answer to this problem?

You can try to use cygwin + rsync.

I use rsync for doing backups at work and it works great. You could set up rsnapshot on your Linux server that you are backing up to then just get the rsync daemon up on the Windows machines, a google search shows a few different options, including using cygwin. Then all you have to do is set up the config for rsnapshot, set the crontab up for the jobs, and set up passwordless ssh logins.

http://rsnapshot.org/.
www.cygwin.com
http://www.samba.org/rsync/
http://linuxproblem.org/art_9.html

Ok, thanks for all the information. I will now go out and see the configuration for the protocols you are speaking of.

I use Karen's Replicator (Google it, it's quite popular) on the desktops and Samba on the server for this. It's not as ideal as rsync (moving whole files rather than just changes), but it's a lot easier to get going than Cygwin + rsync, and the difference is mostly negligible on my network.

If you are moving alot of files rsync would probably be the way to go. If for some reason the connection is lost during a backup then you will not be left with partial files on either end due to the two systems being synced, and you won't be using up as much bandwidth as it is an incremental backup, not complete.