BackupPC Notes

Web Interface

The webpage that hold status messages for BackupPC is http://192.168.40.196/backuppc/ The address will change as the system goes live.

Config Files

Most of the configuration for BackupPC is in /etc/backuppc/config.pl Many of the options can be over-ridden with host-specific files, but the config.pl should be edited to give a good default for Windows machines. Most importantly $Conf{BackupFilesExclude} or $Conf{RsyncArgs} need to be configured to exclude the followng items:

• hiberfil.sys holds RAM contents during hibernation
• Temporary Internet Files IE cache
• Firefox Internet Cache
• RECYCLER Recyle Bin
• pagefile.sys Swap file
• System Volume Information System Restore files
• NTUSER.DAT Can cause problems with being in use??

Backup Method

Unless testing shows otherwise, the preferred method is rsync-over-ssh. This requires a minimal ssh and rsync install on the clients (probably a stripped-down cygwin). It has the advantage of being compressible and fully encrypted over the wire, and only transferring the changed parts of files. The downside is a higher CPU load on the server and clients for encryption and compression. The authentication method (shared password, generated passwords, host-based) still needs to be decided on.

Storage Setup on Vienna

Vienna has 8x500GB drives set up with an XFS filesystem on LVM over Linux md RAID6. The device is mounted to /data and has 2.8TB of usable space. The RAID6 configuration allows up to 2 drives to fail without loss of data, and the LVM allows the filesystem to be expanded as new drives are added in the future.

Things we need to think about

• ssh authentication method
• Open files (Outlook)
• Thousands of small files can take very long to index (Pulse Recording can accumulate >60k)
• Finding dhcp hosts reliably
• checksum seeding
• Parity Archive
• Database dumps from MySQL on webserver
• User notification policy??