Ok, I’ve finally decided to get off my butt and do something about making backups of all the precious family data. Up until now it has just been waiting to fall into a digital black hole.

Ingredients

• one linux server
• enough hard disk space to make backups
• family PCs running Windows that have precious data on them
• a home network
• General information about using snapshot/rsync backup method
• snapback2 backup software

From here on, I’ll suppose that the server, windows PCs and network are already installed.

To get a working backup system, do the following

• Install Config::ApacheFormat from CPAN

      perl -MCPAN -e shell
      cpan> install Config::ApacheFormat
  

• Install snapback2

• Create /etc/snapback2.conf containing something like this with a Directory directive for each PC

      Hourlies 4
      Dailies 7
      Weeklies 4
      Monthlies 12
      #AutoTime Yes
      AutoTime No
      Compress No
      Debug 4
  
      #AdminEmail backups@yourdomain.org
      AdminEmail you@yourdomain
      AlwaysEmail Yes
  
      LogFile /var/log/snapback.log
      ChargeFile /var/log/snapback.charges
  
      Exclude core.*
  
      SnapbackRoot /etc/snapback
  
      #DestinationList /mnt/backup1 /mnt/backup2
      DestinationList /root/snapshot
  
      RsyncShell none
      Directory /mnt/FranksDocs/
      Directory /mnt/JonsDocs/
      Directory /home/share/
  

• Run snapback2 from cron every hour

    0 * * * * /usr/bin/snapback2
  

• Configure PCs to share documents read only

• Use automount and Samba to access the documents on the PC hard disks

  • Put the following into /etc/auto.master

    /mnt file:/etc/auto.mnt
    

    • For each PC add something like this into /etc/auto.mnt

      • FranksDocs -fstype=smbfs,username=guest,password=,ro,fmask=755,dmask=755 ://192.168.0.4/FranksDocs
  • make sure automount is started at boot time (symbolic link in /etc/rc5.d)
  • Export backups locally read-only through NFS (/etc/exports)
    • /root/snapshot/localhost/mnt/FranksDocs 127.0.0.1(secure,ro,norootsquash) *execute exportfs -a
  • Mount read-only file system accessible to users (/etc/fstab)
    • 127.0.0.1:/root/snapshot/localhost/mnt/FranksDocs /snapshot/FranksDocs nfs ro,addr=127.0.0.1 0 0 o create mount point /snapshot/FranksDocs

  • Export using Samba so users can access their backups

    • Create /etc/samba/smb.conf

      + # Global Parameters
        [global]
        workgroup = YOURWORKGROUP
        security = SHARE
        server string =
        #printing = CUPS
        #printcap name = CUPS
        disable spoolss = Yes
        #show add printer wizard = No
        wins support = yes
      + [SaveFrank]
        comment = Recover old versions of Frank's files here
        path = /snapshot/FranksDocs
        read only = Yes
        force user = share
        force group = family
        guest ok = Yes
        nt acl support = No
      

• That’s it you’re done