Subject: Backup Software Question

From: Timm Benkula <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2001 09:42:53 -0500

I'm fairly new to Linux/netatalk. Does anyone have any recommendations for
backup software. 
-- 
Timm Benkula, CNE, MCSE
System Manager
The Galveston County Daily News

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From: Ryan McBeth <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2001 10:53:16 -0400

Timm,

	Humm, I have a SCSI OnStream drive.  It holds 15Bg and was 
priced fairly well.  I back up the server on a Mac through the 
network, but you can get onStream drive software for Linux.

	I haven't had any problems with it.

	Ryan

>I'm fairly new to Linux/netatalk. Does anyone have any recommendations for

__________________________________
Ryan McBeth
Systems Administrator, Mobius New Media
Voice: (302) 475-9880 x11
FAX: (302) 475-9894
www.mobiusnm.com
__________________________________
The only truly secure system is one that is
powered off, cast in a block of concrete and
sealed in a lead-lined room with armed
guards -- and even then I have my doubts.
-Gene Spafford

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From: R Cent <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2001 08:07:18 -0700 (PDT)

> I'm fairly new to Linux/netatalk. Does anyone have any
> recommendations for backup software.

Timm,

I have been using TapeWare from Yosemite Technologies, a
commercial product - it was bundled with my HP DAT24 tape drive.
TapeWare has a GUI interface, is full-featured, is very easy to
live with and there is tech support.

Hope you find what you are looking for.

_____________________________
Bob Cent
University of Washington
Box 357330
Seattle, WA  98195-7330

mailto: [email-masked]
voice:  206.543.1433
fax:    206.685.0305
_____________________________

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From: Christoph Sold <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2001 17:23:23 +0200

> I'm fairly new to Linux/netatalk. Does anyone have any recommendations for

Amanda (http://www.amanda.org/) backs up all of our Unix and Windows
Servers. Best of all, it's Open Source. Most backup hardware is
supported, an active mailing list helps in case of trouble.

YMMV
-Christoph Sold

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From: "Chris Herrmann" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2001 08:55:25 +1000

amanda. see:

http://www.amanda.org

a couple of notes:

- make sure you have a tape drive that can back up your largest partition
within one tape - amanda can't span partitions across tapes
- it can be a little tricky to get working, but there are many excellent
amanda mail lists, which are generally both responsive and accurate. You'll
find links to them on the page above.

Cheers,

Chris

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From: Lasse Lehtinen <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2001 09:47:04 +0300 (EET DST)

I was trying to recover some of our archives from a backup CD to a
netatalk share. When I try to copy entire folders at once, it hangs after
few secs with a error message:

"Could not copy files since the destination is locked"

The error message isn't probably exactly the accurate, since we use
finnish version of MacOS. It creates the folders but does not copy the
files. The weirdest thing is that when I copy separate files to the
created folder it works fine. I tried to copy the CD to my harddrive
first without any help. Normal files copied from the hd are working fine.

So is it a permission problem or not?)

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From: "Chris Herrmann" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 26 Jul 2001 11:44:19 +1000

when you copy files / directories on a pc from a cd to anywhere, it inherits
the read-only flag. is this the case with macs? if so, it may be preventing
you copying files because the directory is marked read only.

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From: Harald Wagener <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 26 Jul 2001 16:57:59 +0200

> find links to them on the page above.

For a larger network and/or more complex backup needs, arkeia, a commercial
program 
might be useful too.

It's at no cost to use for a simple system (i.e. backup of a single server without
a tape library).

H.

-- 
Harald Wagener      |                                Systemadministrator 
FCB/Wilkens GmbH    |                              Tel.:+49-40-2881-1252 
An der Alster 42    |                              Fax.:+49-40-2881-1263 
20099 Hamburg       |                         http://www.fcb-wilkens.com

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From: Ryan McBeth <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 26 Jul 2001 11:10:40 -0400

You know, another thing you can consider is something else we 
have running.  I call it a "poor man's RAID".  Just purchase 2 hard 
drives of the same size.  Use one hard drive as your working file 
server.  Back up the entire drive to the second hard drive every 
night.  That way, you have a complete backup of the system every day.

	It's simple, and it works for those "oh shoot, I just erased 
file X", and it's faster than searching for the correct tape.

	Ryan

__________________________________
Ryan McBeth
Systems Administrator, Mobius New Media
Voice: (302) 475-9880 x11
FAX: (302) 475-9894
www.mobiusnm.com
__________________________________
Winning is not everything, but wanting to win is.
-Vince Lombardi

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From: Christoph Sold <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 26 Jul 2001 18:02:13 +0200

> file X", and it's faster than searching for the correct tape.

Until the person asking for the backupo mentions "I had deleted this
file the day before..."

Backups to hard disks are no backups. If you want to have speedy acces
to document history, install your own CVS server. This one is much
better at getting at old version really fast. If you need security, do a
backup to removable media, and store it offsite.

>Just my EUR.02
-Christoph Sold

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From: Mac Conin <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 26 Jul 2001 18:33:56 +0200

Hmm,

running netatalk assumes that there is a Macintosh in the network.
What about retrospect from dantz? I've tried it here and it looks
good to me. I'm storing to a DAT-Drive at ~150MB/min.

I can use my mac - and in any circumstance Im not in the office,
someone else can handle a backup or restore, 'cause everybody can handle
the program.

-- 
--schnippe-di-schnipp-- 

mit freundlichen grüssen

-----------------------------------------------------------
Mac Conin                        EUC Online Service GmbH
Geschäftsführer                  Taubengasse 9
[email-masked]                    D 50676 Koeln
http://www.euc.de                HRB Köln 32038
tel : +49-221-923 27 33          fax : +49-221-239 651
-----------------------------------------------------------

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From: R Cent <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 26 Jul 2001 09:52:15 -0700 (PDT)

> running netatalk assumes that there is a Macintosh in the
> network. What about retrospect from dantz? I've tried it
> here and it looks good to me. I'm storing to a DAT-Drive at
> ~150MB/min.

This works, but it does not maintain the linux file ownership
information (owner & group) which may not be essential for your
setup.

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From: Ryan McBeth <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 26 Jul 2001 12:54:58 -0400

Christoph,

>Until the person asking for the backupo mentions "I had deleted this

	Oh, I agree.  Backing up to a second hard drive is not a 
substitute for of-site backups.  It's just an easy way to rectify any 
"oops, I deleted..." accidents that seem to happen most often.

	Ryan

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From: Mac Conin <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 26 Jul 2001 18:57:23 +0200

Yes, thats right - but :) there is an announcement from dantz
to support linux as well during this year.

-- 
--schnippe-di-schnipp-- 

mit freundlichen grüssen

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From: Danny Sauer <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 26 Jul 2001 14:06:39 -0500

Speaking of Retrospect:  we've got several mac and windows desktops and
a few linux servers.  Presently, our backup scheme is for the windows users
to use a samba home directory with their "my documents" on the network, 
and the mac users copy stuff to be backed up over to a G4 with a DVD-RAM.
The mac users are backed up using Retrospect, and the windows/linux
filesystems are manually copied over to a seperate DVD-RAM.

I was recently looking at MacOnLinux with LinuxPPC, and thought that it would
be great to be able to stick LinuxPPC on the G4 and use something like Arkeia
(or a script of my own doing, perhaps) to backup the linux machines (and thus
the windows machines), while running Retrospect under MOL for the mac people,
since the Mac is better at backing up the macs than netatalk is (for now).

Anyway, do any of you know if Retrospect will work OK under MOL, and how
well it works?  I know this is drifting off of netatalk by a wide margin,
but it's kinda part of this thread... :)

Thanks.
--Danny

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From: Vic Landi <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 26 Jul 2001 15:25:02 -0400

There is a Windows client for Retrospect which works pretty well...

> From: Danny Sauer <[email-masked]>
> Date: Thu, 26 Jul 2001 14:06:39 -0500
> Subject: Re: Backup Software Question
> Resent-From: [email-masked]
> Resent-Date: Thu, 26 Jul 2001 15:12:10 -0400 (EDT)
>

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From: "Chris Herrmann" <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 30 Jul 2001 09:06:59 +1000

Retrospect was one of the reasons why our mac users abandoned the macintosh
server and went linux - too much trouble with it, although I'm not convinced
that at least part of that wasn't a user problem...

-----Original Message-----
From: Mac Conin [mailto:[email-masked]]
Sent: Friday, 27 July 2001 02:34
To: [email-masked]
Subject: Re: Backup Software Question

Hmm,

--
--schnippe-di-schnipp--

mit freundlichen grüssen

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From: [email-masked] (Paul Sander)
Date: Sun, 29 Jul 2001 17:54:03 -0700

My experience with Retrospect has been very favorable.  You have to choose
carefully the policies you set up.  You can have it back up to an FTP archive,
or to a local device such as tape or removable disk.  The high-end package
also allows for remote configuration and administration, so that a server
machine can back up workstations to its local media.

Retrospect also backs up Windows workstations, if that's important to your
shop.

>--- Forwarded mail from [email-masked]

>--- End of forwarded message from [email-masked]

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From: Brian Reid <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 29 Jul 2001 18:04:59 -0700

I've used them all, and Retrospect is the best of the best. Nothing costing under $5000 even comes close.

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From: Sak Wathanasin <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 30 Jul 2001 09:45:00 +0100

In reply to Chris Herrmann's message of the 30/07/2001 at 09:06 +1000,

>that at least part of that wasn't a user problem...

You've got to be kidding: I set up my Retro backup scripts 4 or 5 yrs 
ago and apart from minor adjustments (replaced DAT with DLT, added 
new clients etc) I'm essentially running the same scripts. I've 
fought Amanda, straight dump/restore or tar/untar, Veritas and none 
of them comes close.

Currently I use Amanda to backup my Linux and Solaris and I have to 
tweak something every week or so. Its worst failing is that it 
doesn't append more than 1 backup session to a tape, so some days a 
backup tape will only contain a few 100 MBs of (incremental) backup. 
V expensive when the tape is a DLT cartridge. And of course, when you 
come round to reusing the tape, it just rewrites from the front, so 
you end up with what I call "answering machine tape syndrome": the 
first 10% of the tape is written over and over and gets worn out 
while the remaining 90% is virgin tape.

When it comes to restoring from the backup, Retro's snap-shots makes 
this really simple. And remember: your users don't thank you for 
backing up their files, only for restoring them.
-- 
Sak Wathanasin
Network Analysis Limited

Internet: [email-masked]
Phone: (+44) 24 76 41 99 96        Mobile: (+44) 79 70 75 19 12 
Fax: (+44) 24 76 69 06 90

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From: Matthew Geier <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 30 Jul 2001 18:57:18 +1000

> good to me. I'm storing to a DAT-Drive at ~150MB/min.

 I have have very negative experiences with Retrospect. It certainly
doesn't scale. My predessor tried to backup 500+ machines with it. It
took more time to manage than its worth. Probably works well in small
workgroups of Macs. I found the windows version pretty well useless.

 We are now moving to using a huge file server. (Which is backed up by
Legato networker)

-- 
Matthew Geier			[email-masked]
Arts IT Unit			+61 2 9351 4713
Sydney University

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From: "Chris Herrmann" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 31 Jul 2001 09:27:12 +1000

This is really a YMMV situation - amanda has worked really well for me at
several sites, and been the cause of many "thank god you restored that
file".

Telling me that Retrospect works for you doesn't change the fact that it
didn't work for us. If retrospect works for you, great. use it. amanda works
great for me, requires no attention, keeps me and my clients happy. i use
it.

If someone writes asking for recommendations on backup software, i'm
certainly not about to recommend something i've had bad experiences with.
i've had good experiences with amanda, and so recommended it.

I don't think that getting into a flame war was the point of the initial
request, it was a stab in the dark to find out what kinds of experiences
people out there have had with different backup systems, and not
suprisingly, the result is heterogeneous. it's up to them to decide what's
important for them given their situation / hardware / requirements /et al.
It's up to us, if we so choose, to offer our own experiences so that
hopefully someone else's admin-experience will be less painful.

Cheers all,

Chris