Automatic Backup software for ubuntu server?

[j.o.s.h.1408]

Hi, are there any good backup apps for running on a ubuntu server that can backup files across various different windows machines in my network and to back them up via a schedule that backs it up and gets the latest changes once a day and stores them in one my hdd's attached to my ubuntu server?

Thanks in advance. i am looking for the best and most reliable and easiest one i can configure where i can simply set the location where the files are on a particular windows pc, and backup its contents once a day to a location directory in my ubuntu server.

This app has to only get the latest changes from a windows machine, so first backup it should for instance retrieve all my music from say c:/music and then tomorrow, get only the latest music files i have added into c:/music instead of retrieving all of its content again. Like syncing a bit.

This has to be future proof a bit so that say if i change location of my music in c:/music to say c:/media/music. i still want it to retrieve latest files from their without wiping out the previous data backed up and stored in my ubuntu server. much like how itunes is used where if u sync with PC 1, and later connect it to PC 2. you can kiss goodbye all your music collects on your ipod.

[blueball]

Why not just use robocopy from the windows machines to a destination on the server?

[watercooled]

Yeah I think you'd be better with a Samba file server on the server box and push files to it, rather than trying to pull from each computer which would probably involve sharing all the computers' contents over the network. Just look for some backup software which meets your needs, most can backup fine to network drives once they're mapped in Explorer. Except for some backup software that charges a premium for this and thinks same-drive backups are viable for their entry level products.
Cobian backup is an excellent free piece of backup software, and FreeFileSync is an excellent sync program. Either may suit your needs but your last requirement may be hard to meet automatically with software, you'll generally find it backs up the new folder as if it were a new folder and remove the old one from the database, as you'd expect. However, since I can't see why you'd want to move your music folder daily, you could just ensure you change the backup target in the software if and when you do move it, and ensure files are backed up based on attributes which won't change e.g. size/modified time/hash. Based on this, FreeFileSync in a backup mode may be better as Cobian relies on the archive attribute for files.

[j.o.s.h.1408]

Its more for backup and syncing. i already have samba installed and running but i thought their was a app that does it automatically for me.

i know for a fact windows home server has a similar service in it that backs up files from different windows machines in your network periodically

[watercooled]

I'm not entirely sure how Home Server works but it would either need the PCs to have their files available over the network or have a service running which WHS could access. You can't just pull files from computers.

[j.o.s.h.1408]

yea i dont mind making my c:/music available.

[aidanjt]

Oops, I misread the problem, bit tired. Yeah, just smbmount each of the windows machines in say /clients/{machine1,machine2,...}, and a script like this will do the trick:

#!/bin/bash

for i in /clients/*; do
    rsync -a --delete /directory/to/sync ${i}/
done

you can add that script to a periodical cron job which will keep the client machines in sync with the server's files.

[kingpotnoodle]

http://backuppc.sourceforge.net/info.html

How about that?

[j.o.s.h.1408]

Oops, I misread the problem, bit tired. Yeah, just smbmount each of the windows machines in say /clients/{machine1,machine2,...}, and a script like this will do the trick:

#!/bin/bash

for i in /clients/*; do
    rsync -a --delete /directory/to/sync ${i}/
done

you can add that script to a periodical cron job which will keep the client machines in sync with the server's files.

umm i thought i can only smbmount directories that are on the ubuntu server itself? so its possible to smbmount a directory thats shared on a seperate windows machine i.e my main pc called i7 with directory/folder C:/music enabled to be shared to anyone via right clicking that folder and going to its properties and followed by the share tab.

[aidanjt]

Yes, exactly. Well it's called mount.cifs now, it's literally a mount helper for mounting SMB shares on Linux's virtual filesystem.

There's also a package called fusesmb which will automatically update a chosen directory with a list of machines currently advertising itself on your Windows network, and list shares you have access to using the SMB username and password you supplied when starting it.

Plenty of options available.

[j.o.s.h.1408]

Ok so with the given example above.

to start it off, i can mount this directory:

//MyI7WindowsPC/music which is the c:/music in my i7 windows pc?

And then after mounting that and giving it an appropriate smb name that represents it, i then write a script that syncs the data from this newly mounted directory and store/backup this directories contents from another directory located on my ubuntu server such as /user/me/i7Music ?

[aidanjt]

Yup. That's it.

[j.o.s.h.1408]

i never tried a smbmount before. what i did to had smb shares is that i edited one of the smb config files which allowed me to add a smb share from there and specifying the local directory path.

Is this smbmount a different kettle of fish?

is smbmount similar to mounting a ntfs hdd connected to my ubuntu server using this:

sudo mount -t ntfs-3g /dev/sdb1 /media/external

By using smbmount, it does exact same sort of thing by mounting a directory shared from a different machine so i can access it as if that directory is part of my ubuntu server?

if so, quality. ubuntu is awsome. im very new to it and only setup this server over a month ago.

[j.o.s.h.1408]

edit: is there a command or something on ubuntu that returns a list of shared directories that are shared across all pc's in the LAN?

[aidanjt]

Yeah, just `sudo mount.cifs -o user=windowsuser,pass=password //YourI7Machine/Music /clients/YourI7Machine/Music` for e.g..

Or if you go the fusesmb route, then all you need is `fusesmb /clients`, wait awhile for fusesmb to populate the directory, and if you `cd /clients/YourI7Machine/Music`, you'll see everything that's on the network without having to individually mount each share for each machine, so you can pretty much think of your chosen directory as Windows Exporer's Network Neighbourhood, which would simplify things.

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/FuseSmb

And you can sync in either direction, or both (dropping the --delete from above and doing rsync -a twice, only flipping the source and destination arguments will effectively merge the two directories).

Use smbtree to get a list of what's on there, now.

[blueball]

This all seems cart before the horse. Why not create a share on the server and point the PCs at that on login rather than the other way around?