Backup Central

Hey all, I have a strange question/scenario that I'm not sure is even possible.

Is it possible to have the data directory point to a windows server mount point?
What about rights/permissions?
I'm using the Debian package right now, so how would I create the link to move the
data store?

The reason I ask is because I have a windows server with a fiber channel array and
shloads of free space. Moving the array to linux is not an option as it is already
a backup store for our windows backup solution. I would really like to keep all my
backup stores in one place because of fault tolerance and because of the available
HD space.

Has anyone tried this? Any ideas/suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks in advance,

Jerry Norton
broadGap Technologies | www.broadgap.com
D (801) 763-8056x21 | F (801) 763-8095 | C (801) 368-6159

On Fri, 30 Jul 2004 10:56:31 -0600, Jerry Norton <jnorton < at > broadgap.com> wrote:
Hey all, I have a strange question/scenario that I'm not sure is even possible.

Is it possible to have the data directory point to a windows server mount point?
What about rights/permissions?
I'm using the Debian package right now, so how would I create the link to move the
data store?

This would not work purely over SMB since the pooling mechanism uses
hardlinks, which are not supported over SMB/NTFS. However I suppose
you could mount a disk image file, formatted with ext3 or whatever,
through a loopback interface on the SMB share, but I'm guessing this
would be too slow. (client->linux box->windows box for every
operation, including the hashing and such)

--
Justin Guenther
IT Analyst
CrownAg International Inc.
250 Henderson Drive
Regina, SK, Canada S4N 5P7
Tel: (306) 522-8111
Email: justin.guenther < at > crownag.ca


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From: Tony Nelson <tnelson < at > starpoint.com>
Won't work.. search the lists.. Windows doesn't support hard links which is
necessary for the BackupPC pool.

Well actually I believe you CAN do hard links on NTFS, but yes it
would be hard to port this beast to Windows.

-Wayne


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On Fri, 2004-07-30 at 13:54, Tony Nelson wrote:
Won't work.. search the lists.. Windows doesn't support hard links which is
necessary for the BackupPC pool.

NTFS actually does support hard links - windows just lacks a command to
create them and smbmount may not pass them through in any case. There
would be some chance of getting it to work if you can install
windows "services for unix" which is currently a free download and
NFS export the directory to use for storage. I haven't tried this
but it would be pretty lame if they didn't handle hard links through
the NFS server.

If that fails you might create a huge file in a directory accessed
via smbmount, then make an ext3 or reiser filesystem on it and mount
it via the loopback interface (-o loop). I'd test pretty carefully
to be sure you don't hit any lingering 2Gb size limits in smbmount,
though.

---
Les Mikesell
les < at > futuresource.com




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-----Original Message-----
From: Les Mikesell [mailto:les < at > futuresource.com]
Sent: Friday, July 30, 2004 2:23 PM
To: Tony Nelson
Cc: Jerry Norton; backuppc-users < at > lists.sourceforge.net
Subject: Re: [BackupPC-users] Data directory on Windows mount point?
=20
On Fri, 2004-07-30 at 13:54, Tony Nelson wrote:
Won't work.. search the lists.. Windows doesn't support hard links
which
is
necessary for the BackupPC pool.
=20
NTFS actually does support hard links - windows just lacks a command
to
create them and smbmount may not pass them through in any case. There
would be some chance of getting it to work if you can install
windows "services for unix" which is currently a free download and
NFS export the directory to use for storage. I haven't tried this
but it would be pretty lame if they didn't handle hard links through
the NFS server.
[Kelly F. Hickel] You can also use junction from
http://www.sysinternals.com/ntw2k/source/misc.shtml#junction , this is
probably lighter weight than downloading all of SFU if linkd is all you
need.

-Kelly
=20
If that fails you might create a huge file in a directory accessed
via smbmount, then make an ext3 or reiser filesystem on it and mount
it via the loopback interface (-o loop). I'd test pretty carefully
to be sure you don't hit any lingering 2Gb size limits in smbmount,
though.
=20
---
Les Mikesell
les < at > futuresource.com
=20
=20
=20
=20
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On Fri, 2004-07-30 at 14:31, Kelly F. Hickel wrote:
[Kelly F. Hickel] You can also use junction from
http://www.sysinternals.com/ntw2k/source/misc.shtml#junction , this is
probably lighter weight than downloading all of SFU if linkd is all you
need.

That makes something more symlinks but backuppc needs hard links. The
SFU also includes a version of perl - if it knows how to make
hard links on ntfs it should be possible to port backuppc to run
on it.

---
Les Mikesell
les < at > futuresource.com




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Hi,

Les Mikesell wrote:
On Fri, 2004-07-30 at 13:54, Tony Nelson wrote:

Won't work.. search the lists.. Windows doesn't support hard links which is
necessary for the BackupPC pool.


NTFS actually does support hard links - windows just lacks a command to
create them and smbmount may not pass them through in any case. There
would be some chance of getting it to work if you can install
windows "services for unix" which is currently a free download and
NFS export the directory to use for storage. I haven't tried this
but it would be pretty lame if they didn't handle hard links through
the NFS server.

Well, I tried the NFS client from Services for Unix a few months ago and
I wasn't happy with it to say the least. I have a very small NFS setup
at home. My linux firewall (the nfs server, v3) has some diskspace I use
on my linux/windows workstation. When I run linux on my workstation (99%
of the time), nfs works without a flaw. Throughput is ok, no hiccups,
just works. When I boot into windows en and use the nfs client from SFU,
mounting the exported directory works ok, but transferring files behaves
very weird. Sometimes it works ok for a few minutes, then it just
stalles, nothing happens and after a few minutes trabsfer starts again
and it works again ok for a few minutes, then stalles again and so on
and so on. For instance burning a cd from content on the nfs server just
isn't possible in windows, but works flawlessly if I boot my workstation
in linux. I was very disappointed with it. I tried udp mounting instead
of tcp and other options of the nfs client, made no difference. Maybe
I'm doing something wrong, but the whole feel of the nfs client from SFU
was to me something like emergency use only.

Regards,

--
Guus Houtzager Email: guus < at > houtzager.net
PGP fingerprint = 5E E6 96 35 F0 64 34 14 CC 03 2B 36 71 FB 4B 5D
"A)bort, R)etry, I)nfluence with large hammer."


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On Mon, 2004-08-02 at 03:15, Guus Houtzager wrote:
I tried udp mounting instead
of tcp and other options of the nfs client, made no difference. Maybe
I'm doing something wrong, but the whole feel of the nfs client from SFU
was to me something like emergency use only.

For BackupPC's use it would be the server performance that
matters. I'd expect the biggest difference difference to
be in setting a fairly large r/w block size, although years
ago I saw problems with some PC network cards dealing with
big UDP packets back-to-back. . Also, the blurb for the
current 3.5 version of sfu claims much better NFS performance.
Were you using that or the earlier one? It generally makes
more sense to run samba on Linux than an NFS client on
Windows but I thought (and no one has confirmed yet) that
the server from sfu might handle hardlinks as needed by
backuppc.

---
Les Mikesell
les < at > futuresource.com




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Les Mikesell wrote:

On Mon, 2004-08-02 at 03:15, Guus Houtzager wrote:

I tried udp mounting instead
of tcp and other options of the nfs client, made no difference. Maybe
I'm doing something wrong, but the whole feel of the nfs client from SFU
was to me something like emergency use only.


For BackupPC's use it would be the server performance that
matters. I'd expect the biggest difference difference to
be in setting a fairly large r/w block size, although years
ago I saw problems with some PC network cards dealing with
big UDP packets back-to-back. . Also, the blurb for the
current 3.5 version of sfu claims much better NFS performance.
Were you using that or the earlier one? It generally makes
more sense to run samba on Linux than an NFS client on
Windows but I thought (and no one has confirmed yet) that
the server from sfu might handle hardlinks as needed by
backuppc.

Yes, I used the 3.5 version. No idea if that would support hardlinks or
not. I wasn't testing this for backuppc purposes
I don't think it's the nics in my case, because they are the same
regardless if I boot in windows or linux Maybe the windowsdriver is
shabby.
I'll probably go the samba route for my home setup.

---
Les Mikesell
les < at > futuresource.com

Regards,

--
Guus Houtzager Email: guus < at > houtzager.net
PGP fingerprint = 5E E6 96 35 F0 64 34 14 CC 03 2B 36 71 FB 4B 5D
"A)bort, R)etry, I)nfluence with large hammer."


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On Mon, 2004-08-02 at 07:19, Guus Houtzager wrote:

Yes, I used the 3.5 version. No idea if that would support hardlinks or
not. I wasn't testing this for backuppc purposes

OK, I downloaded a copy of sfu and a few minutes testing confirms that
mounting a windows NFS export onto Linux does support hard links.
At least 'ln oldfile newname' works and 'ls -l' shows the link
counts go up. The documentation mentioned something about a max
of 1024 links that could be changed with an environment setting and
another setting that would optimize performance if all access
is through NFS instead of having to keep local access in sync.
It also has case-sensitivity, so in theory it should work for
BackupPC. I don't think I'll try it myself anytime soon, though.
I'm having enough trouble fighting a new virus on the windows boxes
this week that I don't want to put anything else there.

---
Les Mikesell
les < at > futuresource.com




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