I'm trying to figure out a real backup solution for a small home server. Until now I've simply connected to it via ftp from within the network, downloaded everything, and burned a cd. Takes a little while.

If anyone is familiar with webmin (www.webmin.com), I tried using the "Filesystem backup" module that they provide, but it didn't work. For whatever reason I can't backup the tar files to another directory - it has to be another device. Does anyone else use that?

I also read something about making an iso of everything using mkisofs, then I could download it to my workstation and burn it right to a cd - would that be a good solution? Also, does that binary come standard in most distros, because I don't have it...? I have a Trustix Linux 2 distrobution (http://www.trustix.net/)

Thanks

use rsync

rsync -a -e ssh mike@remote_machine:/my/dir/to/backup /dir/to/backup/ur/machine

prompt in password, then, voila!!!

I can't use rsync (I don't think) - all of the other computers run on Windows XP.

Well, hard drives are fairly cheap now. Probably be cheaper then burning a cd daily.

I use a python script that backs up the majority of my partitions nightly through a cron job. It just backs it up to the second hard drive.

I just found a great service on the internet and had to come and tell the good folks at LQ about it. I don't know if it solves your problem though....

For $5 per month, the people at BQ Internet will host your rsync backups. So if you've got a good WAN connection, just tell your Linux server to bundle everything off to them! I was blown away by this offer. Rsync, btw, can run from Windows under cygwin although I've never tried it; it may be just the ticket. Perhaps you should do a search for it.

One way would be to have the Windows machines rsync to your server, and then have the server rsync to BQ; they also provide NFS access to your backups.

R.