Re: [PLUG] Backing up Windows to Linux

The user data goes in Documents and Settings on Windows and it is rare that there would be an open file when making a backup because this directory mostly has documents which can be open but you can get around this by doing something as simple as starting a reboot before you run your backup. This is ugly but super simple to script. You can use the task scheduler to schedule this command "shutdown /r now." This forces a reboot without bringing up the services that were running at the time, it is a fresh reboot to the default state which is fine for a workstation. You can use the task scheduler to run the command to copy the files to your NFS share after the reboot, a lag time of 45 minutes seems long but this would be optimal because windows updates can take up to 40 minutes, I have seen it happen.

Cheers,

Michael Lazin

.. τὸ γὰρ αὐτὸ νοεῖν ἐστίν τε καὶ εἶναι.

On Fri, May 26, 2023 at 7:38 AM Rich Freeman <r-plug@thefreemanclan.net> wrote:

On Fri, May 26, 2023 at 7:16 AM Michael Lazin via plug
<plug@lists.phillylinux.org> wrote:
>
> https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-server/administration/windows-commands/mount
>
> This is Microsoft's documentation on mounting and NFS share. You can set up a secure NFS share on a Linux box, it has traditionally been viewed as insecure but you can password protect on the Linux server. Once you have the NFS share mounted it will appear as a drive volume on the Windows machine and you can use the command line utility of your choice to move the data from WIndows to Linux. In the past I had an old NAS that had a SPARC processor that could share NFS and I used it for this purpose but you can easily set up NFS on any Linux device you would like to use as a backup server.

This fails to address requirement 3.
3. Needs to use VSS or otherwise back up in-use files.

Random command line utilities on windows are not able to copy files
that are open. Windows is different from linux in this regard.

Aside from this, I'd basically have to write my own backup client
(ugh), on windows (double ugh).

--
Rich

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