Hello,
I have a lab with 10 windows xp machines that are connected through
the internet via the LAN of the company. To date we have no other
backup solution than burning DVD's. I am planning to buy a Dell server
with enough hard drive capacity to work as a fileserver and backup
solution. I do not want to buy the windows server software because it
is too expensive. Also I already have Suse Linux and am willing to
give a try to linux.

My questions:
-How can I configure the server with Linux so that the windows xp
machines can easily transfer files to/from the server? By easily I
mean the xp machines should see some server directories in their 'file
manager' window, in a similar way as they see their own directories.
-Does linux has a built-in automatic backup software? where can i find
one otherwise?
-How can I guarantee the efficiency of such a solution?
-How can I guarantee the security of such a solution (virus, intrusions)?

---

Request for Question Clarification by maniac-ga on 11 Apr 2006 18:08 PDT

Hello Linuxserver,

A few quick answers first, but I expect you want some more details.
After reading the quick answers, could you please clarify your needs
so we can produce a complete answer.

[1] How can I configure the server... easily transfer files to/from the server?

As several have said, Samba is an excellent solution. Do you need step
by step instructions or will a reference to general explanations /
sample configurations be sufficient?

[2] Does Linux have a built-in automatic backup software?

As mentioned in a comment, rsync can be leveraged to backup your data.
However, rsync is not strictly "backup software" - it is more a method
to quickly duplicate files / directories on a single system or across
the network. If you have used backup / restore software in the past,
you won't have a simple interface to set up the backups and restore
files.

There are other utilities on Linux such as "tar" and "dump" which are
more like typical backup utilities. In brief:
 - tar (short for "tape archive") allows you to copy files to a tape
(or single file on a disk) or other media. Tar is also used to extract
files from such a "tar file".
 - dump (and restore) is a typical file system backup program,
allowing full or partial backups, understands switching media, etc.
Note that both of these utilities should be used ONLY on an idle file
system (no activity).

All of these are included in the SUSE Linux distribution. If one of
these is suitable, do you need an explanation of how to use these
utilities to perform the backups?

[3] Where can I find one otherwise?

There are several good backup applications available for Linux. For example:

Arkiea Software - http://www.arkeia.com/welcome.php
A set of comprehensive backup utilities for small to large networks.
I've seen Arkiea used on over 150 systems from a single server so it
is capable of handling growth in your network. Arkiea has modules you
can use to backup on line databases safely. You can also "test drive"
the system for 30 days prior to purchase.

TOLIS Group - http://www.tolisgroup.com/
Sells "bru", a step up from tar and available in several versions. A
25 user version may be the best for your current situation. Its not as
comprehensive as Arkiea, but may be acceptable. This is also available
from several vendors.

Bacula - http://www.bacula.org/
"It comes in the night and sucks the essence from your computers." A
free application that performs comprehensive backups. See
  http://www.bacula.org/dev-manual/What_is_Bacula.html
for an explanation of the basic capabilities and comparisons to other
backup utilities.

[4] How can I guarantee the efficiency of such a solution?

All of these will be quite "efficient" in terms of network use, CPU,
and storage media. Generally the time will be directly related to how
much data you back up. Is there some factor you are most concerned
about to produce a more complete answer?

[5] How can I guarantee the security of such a solution?

Are you concerned about the security of
 - the server (e.g., preserving Windows security on the server)
 - the backup system (e.g., absolutely, positively can restore files
or a whole client system)
 - preventing the spread of viruses between clients
 - preventing outsiders from accessing files on your network
or all of the above?

  --Maniac

Dear linuxserver,


I shall address your questions in the order in which you posed them.


Q:  How can I configure the server with Linux so that the windows xp
    machines can easily transfer files to/from the server? By easily
    I mean the xp machines should see some server directories in
    their 'file manager' window, in a similar way as they see their
    own directories.

You can use the open-source software package Samba to set up a network
share in which your Linux machine, acting as the file server, appears
as a Windows host on the client machines' desktops. This is a standard
application of Samba, which is available for free. The procedure is
extensively documented on the web, for instance in the O'Reilly handbook
Using Samba, the full contents of which are available online.


    Samba is a suite of Unix applications that speak the Server
    Message Block (SMB) protocol. Microsoft Windows operating
    systems and the OS/2 operating system use SMB to perform
    client-server networking for file and printer sharing and
    associated operations. By supporting this protocol, Samba enables
    computers running Unix to get in on the action, communicating with
    the same networking protocol as Microsoft Windows and appearing
    as another Windows system on the network from the perspective
    of a Windows client.

O'Reilly: Using Samba, 2nd Edition: Chapter 1
http://us1.samba.org/samba/docs/using_samba/ch01.html


    Configuring Windows to use your new Samba server is really quite
    simple. SMB is Microsoft's native language for resource sharing
    on a local area network, so much of the installation and setup
    on the Windows client side have been taken care of already.

O'Reilly: Using Samba, 2nd Edition: Chapter 3
http://us1.samba.org/samba/docs/using_samba/ch03.html


Before downloading the Samba suite, you should check to see whether it
is installed already, for example by running 'man samba' from the command
line. Most Linux distributions, including many flavors of Debian, bundle
Samba into the standard installation.

Samba.org: Download
http://us1.samba.org/samba/download/


Q:  Does linux has a built-in automatic backup software? where can
    I find one otherwise?

Although Linux administrators tend to use general-purpose system tools
such as crontab and tar to schedule automatic backups on their network,
there are also a number of software packages that offer a specialized
backup solution. Perhaps the most popular among these is AMANDA, the
Advanced Maryland Automatic Network Disk Archiver, which is available
without charge. You should run 'man amanda' before downloading and
installing Amanda yourself, because AMANDA is included by default in
many Linux installations. AMANDA works with tape backup drives as well
as with plain hard-disk backup.

    AMANDA, the Advanced Maryland Automatic Network Disk Archiver,
    is a backup system that allows the administrator of a LAN to set
    up a single master backup server to back up multiple hosts to a
    single large capacity tape drive. AMANDA uses native dump and/or
    GNU tar facilities and can back up a large number of workstations
    running multiple versions of Unix. Recent versions can also use
    SAMBA to back up Microsoft Windows hosts.

Amanda.org: Home
http://www.amanda.org/

Amanda.org: Download
http://www.amanda.org/download.php


Q:  How can I guarantee the efficiency of such a solution?

By far the greatest cause of inefficiency in backup systems is the
transfer of files that have not changed since the last backup. In order to
preclude such gratuitous backup, you can use rsync, scheduled by crontab,
to perform your backup. This would entail the installation of Cygwin,
which is essentially a Windows-compatible Unix shell, on your Windows
clients. The rsync tool and the crontab scheduling utility are bundled
with Cygwin, so you can run them directly from the Cygwin shell. As an
alternative to crontab, you might use the built-in Windows Task Scheduler
to run a batch file that calls rsync.

Rsync works by using short and long checksums to compare the files you
are asking it to transfer against previously transferred files. If the
checksums imply that a file is overwhelmingly unlikely to have changed
since the last transfer, it is not transferred again. This economy,
repeated over many files, saves you a great deal of time and bandwidth.


    rsync is an open source utility that provides fast incremental
    file transfer.

rsync: Home
http://samba.anu.edu.au/rsync/


    Your crontab file is a list of tasks that are run on a regular
    schedule. For example, you might set up your crontab file so that
    it runs a task every night or midnight, or once a week during
    low-use hours. This task could perform regular maintenance chores,
    for example, backing up files or getting rid of unnecessary
    work files.

MKS Software: man crontab
http://www.mkssoftware.com/docs/man1/crontab.1.asp


    Cygwin is a Linux-like environment for Windows. It consists
    of two parts:

        # A DLL (cygwin1.dll) which acts as a Linux API emulation
        layer providing substantial Linux API functionality.

        # A collection of tools, which provide Linux look
        and feel.

Cygwin: Home
http://www.cygwin.com/


Q:  How can I guarantee the security of such a solution (virus, intrusions)?

You can safeguard your Linux server against intruders by ensuring that
you use ssh (secure shell) communications instead of the standard
telnet utility and by tunneling all of your file transfers through
ssh. The ssh package is included with all Linux installations and with
the full Cygwin installation, so you won't have any extra software to
download. Furthermore, you can pass a command-line option to rsync to make
it use ssh for file transfers. AMANDA can also be configured to use ssh.
    
A further measure of protection is afforded by the iptables utility built
into every Linux installation. This protects you against unauthorized
access and network sweeps such as those conducted by many Internet worms.


    Amanda 2.5.0 provides ssh based authentication mechanism. To
    enable Amanda to use "ssh" for communication, "auth" parameter
    in amanda.conf should be set to "SSH"

Amanda Wiki: Amanda and ssh tunnels
http://wiki.zmanda.com/index.php/Amanda_and_ssh_tunnels

University of Melbourne: Optics Research Group: Installing ssh and rsync
on a Windows machine
http://optics.ph.unimelb.edu.au/help/rsync/rsync_pc1.html

jdmz.net: Using Rsync and SSH
http://www.jdmz.net/ssh/

Linux Guruz: Linux iptables HOWTO
http://www.linuxguruz.com/iptables/howto/iptables-HOWTO.html 


So there you have it. With the help of Samba and a few standard
command-line utilities, you can readily turn your Linux machine into a
fast, secure file server and backup box with transparent network access
from your Windows machines.

    

I have enjoyed answering your question. If you have any concerns about
the accuracy of my research, please advise me through a Clarification
Request and allow me the opportunity to fully meet your needs before
you rate this answer.

Regards,
    
leapinglizard
    
    
Search strategy:

samba windows
://www.google.com/search?q=samba+windows&start=0&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official

linux backup software
://www.google.com/search?hs=x04&hl=en&lr=&client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla%3Aen-US%3Aofficial&q=linux+backup+software&btnG=Search

linux network security
://www.google.com/search?hs=JhP&hl=en&lr=&client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla%3Aen-US%3Aofficial&q=linux+network+security&btnG=Search

http://www.samba.org

This will make your linux machine a server to which you can save all
of your files from the XP clients.

Then take a look at 'tar'.

Hey,

I agree with the previous comment, Samba is definitely the way to go,
it's what we use within our company and we LOVE it.

Backup: The easiest way we have found at work is to use a program
called rsync in linux. It copies files from one server to another
flawlessly. There is also a windows version of it that can be
scheduled to run on your XP machines nightly to copy all of the
directories you would like. That is the current setup we have for our
windows servers, we copy the data directories to our backup server,
and from there we back it up to tape but in your case you could have a
crontab command that automatically compresses all of your files into
one tar (compressed) file nightly. Rsync also outputs to a log incase
of any network troubles at the time.

File server: Samba is extremely documented and has a fairly easy to
setup configuration file. You can even configure it to be a WINS
server as to save your network some banwidth ;)

If I've left things out (as im sure I have, I'm at work and am in a
bit of a hurry, just found this site and thought I would drop an
answer if it could help at all) just post back or email me.

I just re-read your comment, if you do not have a virus scanning
solution already implemented on your windows machines, you could
perform a nightly scan on the linux server once the files have been
copied over, and if there are no virus' found then continue to the
archiving process by compressing and storing them away.

we substituted gentoo linux for our windows server boxes also.  we use
a low cost commercial backup package on the windows client side
(novabackup - see http://www.novastor.com) for ease of setup and use. 
each client does nightly unattended backups to the file shares on the
linux server.  from a file sharing perspective, all the same
functionality that windows server provides, is available from samba. 
the clients can't tell the difference.

rsync is great, but on a lan you don't have to worry too much about
bandwidth, like you would if backing up to a remote host across the
internet, and the rsync clients on windows are problematic.  so a
normal backup app works great.  windows backup would be fine, but we
wanted a bit more functionality and friendliness, so went for
novabackup.