Bacula/Amanda Question

I have been researching Bacula looking for a backup system. Am I
correct in my understanding that each file/client needs to be open to
the network on port 9102 for the director to contact it and initiate
the backup? Is there anyway the client can initiate the backup? I
have a few computers that are behind a wireless router, the IP is
dynamic, and each computer uses DHCP assigned through the router. If
my understanding is correct about Bacula, I don't see how this could
work.

If Bacula does not work for this situation, what about Amanda?

(E-Mail Removed) wrote:

> I have been researching Bacula looking for a backup system. Am I
> correct in my understanding that each file/client needs to be open to
> the network on port 9102 for the director to contact it and initiate
> the backup? Is there anyway the client can initiate the backup? I
> have a few computers that are behind a wireless router, the IP is
> dynamic, and each computer uses DHCP assigned through the router.

> If Bacula does not work for this situation, what about Amanda?

Amanda relies on the xinetd for connections. Bacula will do the same.
You might want to use DynDNS and a ssh tunnel to contact the remote
machines. I would just do a local backup on these, probably with Amanda
just doing a backup of localhost on an external drive. Simpler and
safer as long as no other services are exposed by the router.

Günther

On Sep 15, 3:40*pm, Günther Schwarz <st...@gmx.de> wrote:
> gnosb...@gmail.com wrote:
> > I have been researching Bacula looking for a backup system. *Am I
> > correct in my understanding that each file/client needs to be open to
> > the network on port 9102 for the director to contact it and initiate
> > the backup? *Is there anyway the client can initiate the backup? *I
> > have a few computers that are behind a wireless router, the IP is
> > dynamic, and each computer uses DHCP assigned through the router.
> > If Bacula does not work for this situation, what about Amanda?
>
> Amanda relies on the xinetd for connections. Bacula will do the same.
> You might want to use DynDNS and a ssh tunnel to contact the remote
> machines. I would just do a local backup on these, probably with Amanda
> just doing a backup of localhost on an external drive. Simpler and
> safer as long as no other services are exposed by the router.
>
> Günther

I would like everything to be backed up to one remote server however
as I want everything to be automatic and offsite as I can't be at this
site very much.

(E-Mail Removed) wrote:

> On Sep 15, 3:40*pm, Günther Schwarz <st...@gmx.de> wrote:

>> Amanda relies on the xinetd for connections. Bacula will do the same.
>> You might want to use DynDNS and a ssh tunnel to contact the remote
>> machines. I would just do a local backup on these, probably with
>> Amanda just doing a backup of localhost on an external drive.

> I would like everything to be backed up to one remote server however
> as I want everything to be automatic and offsite as I can't be at this
> site very much.

You can still scp or rsync the backup archives to your server which will
probably have a fixed IP. This can be initiated automatically by the
clients.

Günther

On Mon, 15 Sep 2008 12:15:40 -0700 (PDT), (E-Mail Removed) wrote:
> I have been researching Bacula looking for a backup system. Am I
> correct in my understanding that each file/client needs to be open to
> the network on port 9102 for the director to contact it and initiate
> the backup? Is there anyway the client can initiate the backup? I
> have a few computers that are behind a wireless router, the IP is
> dynamic, and each computer uses DHCP assigned through the router. If
> my understanding is correct about Bacula, I don't see how this could
> work.
>
> If Bacula does not work for this situation, what about Amanda?

You could set a cron job on each client that, at 11:58PM, for example,
attempts to access http://your.backup.server/client1 On the server
side, grep and cut to look for http://your.backup.server/client1 and
then see what IP address it came from.

--
* John Oliver http://www.john-oliver.net/ *