Topic: Cannot Backup

[olddog11]

Can someone please help me to carry out a backup to workstation.
I have spent hours trying this and cannot see where I am going wrong.
Current details below:

Backup is Enabled.
Backup is made on LAN workstation 192.168.2.248 via nfs
Destination backup share folder is home/administrator/smebackup
Number of rotating backup sets is 1
Number of daily backups contained in each set is 1
Compression level (0-9) of backup is 6
Daily backup occurs at 19:23
Each daily backup session is cleanly timed out after 8 hours.
Full backup sessions (new backup set) are allowed everyday

Should I use nfs or cifs? When I use cifs I get the following error but nfs does not backup either.

Oct 27 16:05:02 galahad kernel:  CIFS VFS: cifs_mount failed w/return code = -6

What is the login name and password? Do I enter the username and password of the workstation being backed up to or is it something else entirely?

[janet]

olddog11

Use cifs
Change or share your workstation backup location as
//workstationname/backup folder, in your case I'd assume that is
home/smebackup
Note that a full backup across a network may take longer than 8 hours depending on how much data you have on the server
You may be better off attaching a USB drive to the server & swapping that at regular intervals (eg daily), these are cheap.

When I use cifs I get the following error but nfs does not backup either.
Oct 27 16:05:02 galahad kernel:  CIFS VFS: cifs_mount failed w/return code = -6

You need to resolve why this is happening rather than ignoring it.
A guess would be that the sme server cannot access the share on the workstation, either due to it being specified incorrectly, or not shared in Windows networking (assuming a Windows workstation), or wrong credentials ie user & password

What is the login name and password? Do I enter the username and password of the workstation being backed up to or is it something else entirely?

It would be the username & password for a valid user who has access permitted to the backup share location on the workstation in question.

You can test access to the share at the sme server command prompt by manually issuing a mount command on that workstation share. Search the forums & wiki (try Backup with dar contrib wiki) for a suitable command.
ie
umount /mnt/smb
/bin/mount -t cifs //stationXX/bkp1 /mnt/smb -o username=XXXXXX,password=XXXXXXXXXXXXX
ls -al /mnt/smb/servername.yourdomain.com
umount /mnt/smb
(change names to suit your location, & note the directory listing (ls) of the backup subfolder will only be displayed if you have made a successful backup)

Also look in the messages log file (in server manager) around the time you schedule a cifs backup, and see what command is issued, and what error messages are received.

[olddog11]

Mary

Many thanks for your help.
I have not yet managed to perform a backup to workstation but have followed your advice and attached a USB drive to the server.

I have tried this in the past and been unsuccessful but I have now managed a backup from both the server manager and the console therefore this now gives me a suitable backup solution.

I found though, that if I mount the USB drive then the backup from both server manager and console says that it cannot detect a removable device (or something to that effect) yet when I unmount it the device IS detected and the backup goes through! It seems illogical to me although I guess there must be a logical explanation somewhere. I have made an entry in fstab therefore that may explain it but I am not that clever with linux to understand what is going on.

Anyway, thanks again for your help, it's really appreciated.

[janet]

olddog11

The logical answer is that a mounted drive means it is in use, so the backup will not use it.
The backup performs the mounting & unmounting, so any USB drive you want to use should be connected to the server but unmounted.

PS There is no reason a backup to workstation should not work, as long as you have the correct parameters & settings etc. These you can determine by experimenting with manually issued mount & umount commands.

[olddog11]

Mary

Thank you again - you've explained it perfectly, I knew there had to be a sensible reason for it somewhere!

I'm able to backup now but I will still have another go at the backup to workstation when I have some free time. I'll follow your suggestions so that I can understand where I have been going wrong.