[K12OSN] Server Backups

[Jim Kronebusch]

I am finally starting to mess with backing up my new servers.  What I am
doing is setting up a backup server for all servers to send to.  I have
exported an NFS of /backup to the network for the other servers to
backup to.  I have issued a "mount xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx:/backup mnt/backup"
to mount the NFS Export from the remote server on all other servers.  I
am using the Webmin module for creating backups and have created nightly
schedules for each server to do a full backup (at staggered times to not
flood the backup server).  I plan on adding the mount of the NFS to
/etc/fstab to mount the filesystem automatically on startup.

Now for the questions.  

1. How do I create these as full backups every 7 days but incremental in
the interim?  I want to have daily backups for a 7 day period mostly for
user stupidity and have them backup incrementally after the first time.
I have set the backup option to 9 instead of 0 (Full Backup) and I still
get errors saying there is no previous backup so it defaults to a full.
What is the best way to do this?

2. Is this the easiest way to restore a crashed system?  I am hoping to
boot from a floppy or CD and just mount the NFS and run some simple
restore command.  If so what commands would need to be issued.  I plan
on crashing a test server and restoring it to prove that this works.

3. I am sure I can find this from another post in the archive, I saw it
a while ago, but is there a list of files necessary to restore when
moving to a new system?  If my server dies completely and has no hope of
coming to life any time soon, and I find a new box and load WBEL on it,
I need to restore /home and a handfull of other files to load the users
and modules and say the appletalk and samba conf's.  Is there good area
of reference to know what to restore for each service, or is that where
experience comes in?

4. Security, I want to be sure some other linux user with a handfull of
knowledge can't just jump on the network and start restoring files, how
is this controlled.

5. Windows (forgive the profanity), are Windows systems able to mount
NFS and backup to them as well?  This would be handy for some of our
Windows servers to use that are not on the local network and thus have
to access to Samba.

6. I am sure someone has a better way to do this, I am open to
suggestions (as long as it doesn’t involve an overpriced and ancient
technology like tapes).

Thanks


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