[lug] network drives as backup?

[Bear Giles]

NSLU2 is Linux on top of an ext3 filesystem. You're right that it 
exports the disk via samba. You can either 'unsling' it (and run 
standard binaries built for the original linksys environment) or blow 
its mind entirely and run Debian like me.

I have mine set up to provide both NFS and samba (for my work laptop). 
If you can set up DHCP and PXE on your desktop you can set it up on the 
slug. I have CFS installed but I haven't put it through its paces. I 
can't run OpenVPN until I rebuild the kernel, something I don't know how 
to do in this environment. (More precisely I can build the kernel, but I 
haven't figured out how to tune it for my preferences.)

I tried running a backup daemon (whose name escapes me at the moment), 
but it keeps too much in memory so the nightly sync took seven hours.

Amanda hadn't supported CD/DVD media the last time I checked, but it's 
been at least a year. Amanda can only back up full partitions.

D. Stimits wrote:

> I find myself possibly in need of a cheap backup device, and options 
> like tape drives are way out of my price range. One possibility that I 
> find interesting are network drives, not the expensive RAID stuff, but 
> simple things like the LinkSys EFG120/EFG250 or NSLU2.
>
> I hesitate though, as I suspect there are lots of gotchas. For 
> example, the specs seem to indicate that they run a windows 
> filesystem, and probably require SAMBA or some such nonsense. It'd 
> also be nice if such a device had the option of doing DHCP and 
> bootp/PXE, but probably not many can do this. Any suggestions in this 
> area?
>
> I'm not wild about the idea of using CD's or DVD's as a backup medium, 
> but if I did, is there a simple way to restore from these, e.g., maybe 
> amanda software works with this?
>
> I'm actually tempted to just add a removable bay hard drive in such a 
> way that I could back up data but not do a real restore from it (the 
> advantage of being able to plug it in to any machine and copy over).
>
> D. Stimits, stimits AT comcast DOT net
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