Hi all,

I've just got a few questions about the last steps of my backup server.

I've got ubuntu server 10.10
The 2 machines I want to backup are a xp desktop and win7 laptop.
All connected via router.

I have sshd, samba server and rsync packages installed on the server.

I don't want all 3 mirrored so should each comp have it's own partition on the server or could it be setup as /media/desktop and /media/laptop?

Currently the server firewall is setup with ufw as deny all incoming allow all outgoing.
I want to use ssh with rsync and samba so do I only need to leave port 22 open and allow a max of 2 connections at at time as fire wall rules?

Also what do I need to do with permissions on windows? Do I just enable sharing on the files I want backed up? Can I only allow sharing with the server and no other computers?

Last question for now I think, I will be backing up from the server as local and the windows machines as remote, what software do I need to install on the windows machines to allow backing up with rsync and file sharing with samba.

Thanks for any help/feedback.

Generally using Samba on windows make backup via rsync much easier. With samba you can mount the remote file system into a local path and then simply rsync like it was a local directory. If the hosts are on the same local LAN, this is the way I would go. Yes, you simply tell Windows to share the directory. You will need to give it write permissions from a user that will be performing the operation. This the user that will be performing the mount. What the error logs from rsync very carefully. Windows doesn't support permissions like Linux and this can cause warnings.

If the hosts are across a public network, or one where you are concerned about prying eyes on your data, you can tunnel an rsync connection over SSH. The recommened way I have seen to do this is to use cwrsync on the Windows side, which is an adaptation of Cygwin. If you only need the windows machines SSH clients, you may be able to do this with putty. In this instance, I would look for some of the many how-to documents on rsync with ssh. Personally, I tried getting this to work between a Linux and Windows system and gave up and went the Samba approach.

You might also be able to use SSH to create a VPN tunnel and mount the samba volume over that. I have never tried it, but it should work. There is lots of documentation on VPN with SSH, which is where I would start.