fbackup to windows file server

[James Harrington]

We are having trouble with our dds2 backup device.

Does anyone have any experience of using fbackup to a Windows file server across the network? I have considered fbackup to disc then ftp to the file server, but the hp-ux box does not have enough disc space.

Any ideas?

hp9000 d380 running hp-ux 10.2

[Bill Hassell]

Can't be done. Windows knows nothing at all about fbackup. The only solutions would be to turn load the CIFS (SAMBA) software, configure it to share disks with the Windows server and have fbackup copy to the shared disk. Since 10.20 is so obsolete, it will be a challenge to find SAMBA/CIFS for this OS.

The alternative is probably mush easier: get a new drive. DDS drives (especially DDS2) wear out quite fast and are very cheap (no new ones have been made for years). Or get an external SCSI disk JBOD box.

[Steven Schweda]

No experience, but shoot to the end of this
thread for one (untested) idea:

http://forums1.itrc.hp.com/service/forums/questionanswer.do?threadId=1112854

I can't test it, but it looks plausible to
me, and while Mr. Hassel keeps claiming
impossibility, I'm still waiting for a good
counter-argument (like, for example, a good
counter-demonstration).

This method assumes that your Windows (or
other remote) system has an "rsh" ("remsh")
server, or, if you switch things to use it,
an "ssh" server.

It also assumes that an fbackup as old as
yours can do "-f -", as "man fbackup"
describes on a more current system.

As always, however, relying on an ad hoc
network backup scheme can leave you crippled
if your boot disk fails. Used tape drives
(even working ones) can be pretty cheap on
popular auction Web sites. (The same is true
for small- to medium-sized SCSI disks. Cheap
junk can offer affordable redundancy.)

[A. Clay Stephenson]

Another option is an NFS server implementation for your Windows box. You can then use 10.20's native NFS client to mount the remote filesystem. The downside is that the maximum filesize for 10.20's NFS is 2GiB. If this were me, I would search eBay for a drive because the one question I never want to ask is "Will my restore work?".

[Rasheed Tamton]

If you can get hold of samba it would be good. Otherwise, NFS (PCNFS) would be fine.

If you have another hp-ux box you can fbackup to remote hp-ux box's tape drive.

[Bill Hassell]

Let me clarify -- fbackup is designed to write to a remote HP-UX computer. So it's not possible to tell fbackup to use a non-HP-UX system using the built-in remote tape facility. However, it is quite possible to use -f - which sends fbackup data to stdout. At that point you can run a remote shell pipe to the windows box (or any Unix system like Linux). On the windows side, you'll need the equivalent of dd -- and a lot of testing. The other solution is to share a disk -- NFS is not native to most windows but CIFS is the SMB file sharing used by windows. Setting up disk sharing is not a trivial task.

One other note: you can't restore a dead system from your windows backup. Nor can the windows box provide an Ignite image for your HP-UX box.