Re: Confused over CIFS

Preston Kutzner wrote:

On Jan 14, 2009, at 3:26 PM, Ted Hilts wrote:

Preston

You seem to have grasped most of what I said.

Once I get a universal backup set up which includes "backuppc" working I
will probably replace the NTFS disk which we have been talking about
(because it will be full) with a new one formatted as ext3. Several
months ago I was told by someone on the list that I had to install a
Windows version of ext3 on all the XP machines -- maybe I misunderstood
them. You seem to be saying that all I have to do is map the XP
machines to the Ubuntu share and SMB will look after everything else.
They are already so mapped. So that only leaves the issue of rsync. I
allready read that URL article on rsync. I have a print out "How to
regularly backup Windows XP to Ubuntu, using rsync". There are a lot of
configuration steps. Aside from that my worry is not the transfer
process of rsync but rather this is not so much a backup transfer of
data but an archive which gets put into physical place just once (and
added to) so it can be referenced and used from one single place. Every
machine collecting data has its own local system repository which I
destroy after a successful transfer of the data over to the "Ubuntu"
location. The scrapbook application has a export function that allows
me to move data directly from the XP Pro machine (also Linux machines
using same application) over to the mapped Ubuntu machine. HOWEVER (I'm
not yelling) the XP Home machine called "misty" cannot make the export
happen because it is XP Home and not XP Pro. This "misty" machine
cannot see the Ubuntu shares for the common workgroup. That's what led
to this whole discussion. I tried to get help from the list as well as
commercial help but no one seems to understand the irregularity that is
occuring. Oddly enough I do have one XP Home machine called "cic2ext"
that does not have this irregularity (it's much older) and it can see
and access the Ubuntu share on the NTFS disk we have been talking
about. The XP Home machine "misty" has all the MS updates and Service
Packs installed but this is not the case with the "cic2ext" machine.
That's why I do not update "cic2ext" because I think the problem is
inherent in the MS update. BTW the dual boot XP Home / Ubuntu machine
came into existence because that XP Home machine showed the same
irregularity as "misty". So that's the reason I dont' use it and
thought I would try Ubuntu on that machine. Also, the name of the XP
Home machine dual booted with "Ubuntu" has the name "back-up" because it
was supposed to be the final repository not "Ubuntu". But "Ubuntu" won
out as the dominant computing entity because I could not get "back-up"
to see the other machines in the LAN. The problem with "back-up" is the
exact same problem as with "misty" -- they are both XP Home based and
inherit this irregularity as I call it.

Alright, if I understand this, you have your worker machines map
share(s) that "Ubuntu" is offering on the network as local drives.
Each worker machine, when it's done with its task, takes its data and
copies it to the mapped shares. This is working fine for all of your
XP Pro machines, but your XP Home machine, "misty", can't see the
shares offered by "Ubuntu". Therefore, you're looking for a way to
efficiently transfer the data from "misty" to Ubuntu for storage
(which is currently stalling). Periodically, you're looking to take
what's on "Ubuntu" and back it up to some other media for archival
purposes.

Well, unfortunately, if this is truly how your set-up is configured,
you don't have too many options. Windows only recognizes cifs / smb
shares natively. So, you can't really export your shares from
"Ubuntu" any other way. You can possibly export your shares using
NFS, but I don't know if this works well with NTFS or not. Here's
where you can get more information on an NFS client for Windows:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/324055

Depending on how you're doing your housekeeping on the "Ubuntu" box,
you still could use rsync. Rsync does have a switch "-W" in linux, at
least which tells rsync to not use its normal rsync algorithm, but
instead just copy the whole file. It would still make use of the
compression, though.

You'd set-up rsync to run in daemon mode on "Ubuntu" (rsyncd), edit
the /etc/rsyncd.conf file to taste (more information by typing 'man 5
rsyncd.conf' at the command-line) and then using the windows rsync
client to copy files to the "Ubuntu" box. Actual command (with
switches and everything) would depend on your Windows implementation
of rsync. But, I would suggest perusing whatever included
documentation came with it.

Well, unfortunately, if this is truly how your set-up is configured, you
don't have too many options. Windows only recognizes cifs / smb shares
natively. So, you can't really export your shares from "Ubuntu" any
other way. You can possibly export your shares using NFS, but I don't
know if this works well with NTFS or not. Here's where you can get more
information on an NFS client for Windows:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/324055

Working backwards here as I think we use some terms differently. The
purpose of "Ubuntu" is to acquire in one single place (/media/sdg1
which is a "Ubuntu" share and currently a NTFS disk in the local system
associated with "Ubuntu". The main idea is to store in one place the
data collected by other machines in the LAN (both XP and Linux machines
all using the same application to acquire different portions of data).
So this is not a "backup" as the word is normally used and is why I call
it an archive because once the data is placed in this single physical
location it is never altered in any way and is used mostly by Ubuntu but
can be accessed by any of the machines. Yes, I think you understand the
purpose of these other machines is to temporarily store their data
collection on their own machines and at various convenient times move
this data (export it) over to the central repository or archive located
on "Ubuntu" after which their temporary data is destroyed. Also,
"Ubuntu" can easily access this data from the central location. But any
of the machines can do the same and this means that if one of the
machines is hosting an Apache web server that web server can make this
data available over the Internet.

I like that "-w" option because it addresses my main concern of "do not
tamper with the data in the central repository I call an archive"
located on the machine "Ubuntu".

So, I think your previous idea still stands: That is the use of rsync on
"Ubuntu" should suffice the purpose of these data transfers.

Now, when it comes to real backup operations that's another kettle of
fish that I have to work on. I don't know if the "Ubuntu" central
repository or archive can co-exist with normal types of backup
operations such as those that "backuppc" would engage in. If it cannot
then it simply gets left out of the overall backup scheme and is
separately handled. This backup scheme I want to set up (this other
kettle of fish) has to backup all machines both Windows and Linux
machines so they can be easily and quikly restored on the same disk or
on a new disk or on a bigger disk. So far I have one concern when using
"dd" to build an image of a partition or of a whole disk. Will it work
the same on Windows machines as it does on Linux machines and also I
read somewhere that "dd" won't automatically rebuild partitions when
doing a restore. Maybe I misunderstood what I was reading but it seemed
that the idea was when restoring a disk to first manually build the
partitions and file system and then using "dd" apply the data in the
file created by "dd" for restoration. So I am really confused on this
issue.

Thanks, Ted


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