I've just joined a company of about 25 employees, each with a laptop
(mostly Windows PCs, some Macs, two or three Linux PCs), and leased
access to an FTP server where we share work files in a primitive
fashion -- but no real administered network.

Only a few employees can be trusted to do a decent job of backing up
important files that they carry around on their laptops, so I'm
looking for software that does the following for them:

1. Performs scheduled backups of a list of critical directories/files
(not a full-blown disk image) on each laptop;

2. Automatically uploads backup files to password-protected
directories on the FTP server, overwriting earlier versions;

3. Runs in Windows XP and Apple OS X (Linux, too, would be a bonus --
but we could easily script a separate solution for them). Thus perhaps
a Java application?

Does anyone know of tools that meet my needs? Thanks!

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On 24 Jul 2004 14:18:42 -0700, semainedebonte@yahoo.com (Semaine
de Bonte) wrote:

>2. Automatically uploads backup files to password-protected
>directories on the FTP server, overwriting earlier versions;

That last thing is something you probably don't want :-)

Given the cost of storage, you could better keep the last 5 (or
so) backup versions and remove only the oldest one.

(No, I have no cross platform solution for you.
Just wondering what  would be the benefit of a single solution
for all platforms :-)

--
Kind regards,
Gerard Bok

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In article
<c69139ea.0407241318.4d6b495c@posting.google.com>,
semainedebonte@yahoo.com says...
> 1. Performs scheduled backups of a list of critical directories/files
> (not a full-blown disk image) on each laptop;
>
> 2. Automatically uploads backup files to password-protected
> directories on the FTP server, overwriting earlier versions;
>
> 3. Runs in Windows XP and Apple OS X (Linux, too, would be a bonus --
> but we could easily script a separate solution for them). Thus perhaps
> a Java application?
>
> Does anyone know of tools that meet my needs? Thanks!

Rsync over SSH to a central server.  FTP is problematic
for doing this (and insecure since passwords are passed
over the wire in plain text).

I'm not exactly sure how it works over ssh (I've only
used rsync in service/daemon mode over port 873 so far),
but in service mode on a Win2k server, all of the files
ended up being owned by the rsync service account and I
had to rely on rsync's built-in authentication system
(which is rudimentary).  I'm pretty sure that by using
ssh, the files end up owned by the person doing the
backup instead.  One of these days I'll finish puzzling
it out and know for sure.

Meanwhile, I've been using rsync in server mode and
using the following command lines.  The server has both
an "active" (latest copy) and "trash" folder so that
deleted copies are saved as well as one generation of
changes.  "foo@backupserver" doesn't matter for me since
I'm not using authentication in this particular instance
(limiting instead by host IP for the moment).

The following keeps a backup copy in the 'trash' folder:

C:\Dump>rsync -rtz --log-format='[%f] %l bytes (%b bytes
sent)' --delete-after --stats -b --backup-
dir=/mybackups/trash/c/dump/ /cygdrive/c/dump/
rsync://foo@backupserver:873/mybackups/active/c/dump/ >
C:\RSync.log

This one doesn't keep backup copies.  It's merely a log
file pusher to collect all of my weblogs onto a central
server.  I used sed to remove the common elements from
the log file lines and make the output shorter (the
transfer logs get e-mailed).

C:\BIN\CWRSYNC\rsync -rtz --log-format='[%%f] %%l bytes
(xmit %%b bytes)' --delete-after --stats -b --backup-
dir=/trash/ /cygdrive/d/logs/
rsync://foo@backupserver.example.com:873/logs_servername
/active/ | sed s/\[cygdrive\/d\/logs\//[/g >> %LOGFILE%

Alternatively, for the Windows boxes, you may find that
Second Copy 2000 works very well.  (Which is what we use
for our laptop users.)  Rsync has the advantage of being
less "bandwidth hungry" since it only transfers deltas
rather then entire files.  The big advantage of Second
Copy 2000 is that you can set it up to keep more then
just deleted files plus the most recent version.  (I
usually set it up so that it keeps the last 5 versions
of changed files).

I guess you could, if you wanted, point rsync at
different 'trash' folders based on the day of the week
by changing the --backup-dir argument on-the-fly.  Or
you can do something more complex such as using tar to
only backup files that have changed in the past 48
hours.

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