Confused over CIFS

[Ted Hilts]

Preston Kutzner wrote:
> On Jan 15, 2009, at 12:18 AM, Ted Hilts wrote:
>
>> Now, when it comes to real backup operations that's another kettle of
>> fish that I have to work on.  I don't know if the "Ubuntu" central
>> repository or archive can co-exist with normal types of backup
>> operations such as those that "backuppc" would  engage in. If it cannot
>> then it simply gets left out of the overall backup scheme and is
>> separately handled.  This backup scheme I want to set up (this other
>> kettle of fish) has to backup all machines both Windows and Linux
>> machines so they can be easily and quikly restored on the same disk or
>> on a new disk or on a bigger disk.  So far I have one concern when using
>> "dd" to build an image of a partition or of a whole disk. Will it work
>> the same on Windows machines as it does on Linux machines and also I
>> read somewhere that "dd" won't automatically rebuild partitions when
>> doing a restore.  Maybe I misunderstood what I was reading but it seemed
>> that the idea was when restoring a disk to first manually build the
>> partitions and file system and then using "dd" apply the data in the
>> file created by "dd" for restoration.  So I am really confused on this
>> issue.
>
> With regards to dd, there is a port available for Windows.  Again, 
> 'dd' does a
> bit-for-bit copy of what is on a drive.  So, yes, partitions will be 
> restored, etc.
> What you were probably referring to is that it only really works to 
> restore to a drive that is the same size and geometry.  So, maybe not 
> your best option unless you have some spare drives that are the same 
> as the ones you have in that box.
>
> I would suggest researching options as far as software backup 
> solutions go.  If you're just looking to gather your files in to 
> compressed packages, then dumping them off to other media 
> (CD/DVD/External HDD, etc.) you might be able to get away with tar and 
> gzip or bzip2.  I assume most of your news files are just text, so you 
> should be able to get pretty good compression on them.  You wouldn't 
> be able to do a bare-metal restore with them, but at least the data 
> would be backed-up.
>>
>>
>> Thanks, Ted
>>
>>
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>
Preston:

Thanks very much for your ideas, references, and solutions. I'll have to 
do some downloading and other things.  Once I've made some progress I'll 
let you know.  BTW, I don't mind restoring a disk onto a larger one 
because I can use the extra space with a data  partition and/or try out 
things for which I currently don't have enough disk space.  One thing 
that would be neat would be to have a place on the LAN for just ISO 
images for both live distributions as well as a normal install.  I have 
a Centos 5.2 (DVD from a recent Linux magazine) but it is an install 
disk and I have no place to install it to try it.  It is supposed to be 
very close to a full Red Hat system (Enterprise -- open and free part). 
Thought it might be a good host for the generation of virtual machines 
using Virtual Box.  Thanks again -- Ted