Topic: If Affa could ...

[Brave Dave]

Affa - If I Understand it correctly is designed to pull data from Servers

I can set affa to use a NAS - I'm using a ReadyNAS

But if you do this hard Links do not work, and you can't mod the file ACL's

I can enable ssh on the ReadyNAS, pass keys and add rsyncOptions of -e ssh to my Affa Job, now my ReadyNAS has a scheduled.running all cool over there - ACL's and Hard Links ...

It gets to here without any mod to Affa ...

But then Affa then checks the local path for scheduled.running and makes it's next decision .. i.e. the Job has not run because it doesn't exist

So my question is .. is it worth pushing down this path for backups - I like the option of using these devices - cheap, reliable, low power etc. ...

[mmccarn]

How are you mounting the ReadyNAS?

My sense (unsubstantiated, based on years-old research) is that this might work if you're mounting the ReadyNAS share using NFS, but is unlikely to work over any other mount method.

I couldn't find an unambiguous 'support' link for affa, now that it's moved from SME to sourceforge (http://sourceforge.net/projects/affa/).

[CharlieBrady]

But if you do this hard Links do not work, and you can't mod the file ACL's

AFAIK, SME server does not use hard links (in the files which you would back up) nor ACLs.

[Stefano]

affa does use hard links

[nicolatiana]

Hi David
 
I'm currently using Affa in several scenarios, all of them having success:
- the standard one with both Sme Servers, a backup one and a backed-up one;
- Affa server backing up itself over a local folder mounted on NFS (the Nfs represented by various flavours of Qnap: TS210-TS239Pro-TS439ProII);
- Affa server backing up a Netware Server whose volumes are exported on NFS and mounted on SME; Affa writes on local disks;
- the same as above using a Centos 5.7 as Affa Server and manual configuration of Affa;
- Affa server backing up a Netware Server whose volumes are exported on NFS and mounted on SME; Affa writes on another Nfs folder mounted over a Qnap (about 2 hours for the first backup of 42 Gb - accettable performance).
- Affa server backing up a Nas (Ready Nas Duo) whit a few shares exported on NFS and mounted on SME; Affa writes on local disk.
 
Affa uses hard-links to reduce disk-usage: so if a file is saved with the very first backup and then never modified Affa creates as many hard links as the number of backups performed (minus one). I may suspect that hard-links can be created only on Nfs filesystems and not on Smb filesystems (never tested). So Nfs is the right way both as source and as destination.
 
I do not understand in your post if you want to "save" hardlinks, i.e. hl already present in the filesystem you are going to save. This is a scenario that I've never tested.
 
The only problem I experienced was using a Kraun Nas, maybe due to a poor Nfs implementation on it. As a result there were rsync timeout errors and write error; the device was (and is) actually working without issues but rsync disliked it.
 
Another thing to pay attention when using NFS as source is filenames: << brachets, € and £ symbols and in general everything going out the standard ASCII table is not welcomed and as a result You'll find rsync errors in Your Affa logs (the entire folder and subfolders are not backed up).
 
Apart from contribs site other interesting information on author's site: http://affa.sourceforge.net/
 
Hope this may be useful.
 
Nicola

[Brave Dave]

Hi Nicola

I know affa works great server to server .. yeah yeah .. got it..

this one:
- Affa server backing up a Nas (Ready Nas Duo) whit a few shares exported on NFS and mounted on SME; Affa writes on local disk.

Are you 100% that Hard Links are being successfully created ?
* I turn on Debug here and see errors Attemtping  ... --numeric-ids .. operation not permitted (not sure on error now)

This is exactly what I use - and I'm only exploring this because I don't think hard links can be created when writing through a file system layer (NFS or SSHFS) .. I don't think that works

I think the thing you lose is ACL's (--numeric-ids) and hard links (--hard-links)

[nicolatiana]

Quite sure HL it's working; in all listed scenarios:
- listing files backed up on a NAS (ll o ls -l) I can see in the second column the expected number of files having the same name (e.g. 3 for 3 backup executed by Affa and so on) when usually you get one;
- browsing via Samba the folders containing backups (Samba share enabled in Affa Cfg) I can open the same (unmodified) file resulting in each backup folder (daily.0, daily.1 etc . .. ); consider that this is working also with a Samba Share created within a NFS mount (!);
- there's no abnormal space wasting as a simpton of HL not working.

- Affa server backing up a Nas (Ready Nas Duo) whit a few shares exported on NFS and mounted on SME; Affa writes on local disk.

- this is not the most critical scenario: Affa reads on the NAS via NFS and writes locally;

Once again, i do not understand if you are trying to backup a SME server where you've created ACL and HL: as stated by Charlie SME does not create ACL or HL during install.
If the scenario is that you created HL/ACL in SME's volumes I don't know how and if they can backep up by Affa.

Maybe take a look at Your ReadyNasDuo firmware release and disk (cache and others) settings.
 
Nicola

[Brave Dave]

I get it - you are backing up stuff (a readyNAS Duo) to the SME Server

I'm using a ReadNAS to backup a SME Server, two devices; one is a SME Server - that is what I want to backup, to the ReadyNAS - to the NAS via NFS

Maybe I've got the Terminoly wrong - I'm thinking an ACL is an Access Control List as in what rsync tries to do with --numeric-ids - i.e. preserve the ownership & rights

When you attempt to write to a remote file system, you lose some of the functionality