8 Copyright (C) 2001-2010 Craig Barratt. All rights reserved.
10 This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or
11 modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License.
17 The latest version of BackupPC can be fetched from:
19 http://backuppc.sourceforge.net
21 If you will use SMB for WinXX clients, you will need smbclient and
22 nmblookup from the Samba distribution. Version >= 2.2.0 of Samba is
23 recommended (smbclient's tar feature in 2.0.7 has bugs for certain
24 path lengths). See www.samba.org for source and binaries.
26 If you use rsync you will need File::RsyncP on SourceForge or www.cpan.org,
27 plus rsync 2.5.6 on the client machines.
29 To install BackupPC run these commands as root:
31 tar zxf BackupPC-__VERSION__.tar.gz
32 cd BackupPC-__VERSION__
35 This will automatically determine some system information and prompt you
36 for install paths. Do "perldoc configure.pl" to see the various options
37 that configure.pl provides.
42 BackupPC is a high-performance, enterprise-grade system for backing
43 up Linux, WinXX, and MacOS PCs and laptops to a server's disk.
44 BackupPC is highly configurable and easy to install and maintain.
46 Given the ever decreasing cost of disks and raid systems, it is now
47 practical and cost effective to backup a large number of machines onto
48 a server's local disk or network storage. This is what BackupPC does.
49 For some sites, this might be the complete backup solution. For other
50 sites, additional permanent archives could be created by periodically
51 backing up the server to tape. A variety of Open Source systems are
52 available for doing backup to tape.
54 BackupPC is written in Perl and extracts backup data via SMB (using Samba),
55 rsync, or tar over ssh/rsh/nfs. It is robust, reliable, well documented
56 and freely available as Open Source on SourceForge.
61 - A clever pooling scheme minimizes disk storage and disk IO. Identical
62 files across multiple backups of the same or different PCs are stored
63 only once resulting in substantial savings in disk storage.
65 - One example of disk use: 95 latops with each full backup averaging
66 3.6GB each, and each incremental averaging about 0.3GB. Storing
67 three weekly full backups and six incremental backups per laptop
68 is around 1200GB of raw data, but because of pooling and compression
71 - No client-side software is needed. The standard smb protocol is used
72 to extract backup data on WinXX clients. On *nix clients, either rsync
73 or tar over ssh/rsh/nfs is used to backup the data. Various alternatives
74 are possible: rsync can also be used with WinXX by running rsyncd/cygwin.
75 Similarly, smb could be used to backup *nix file systems if they are
76 exported as smb shares.
78 - A powerful http/cgi user interface allows administrators to view log
79 files, configuration, current status and allows users to initiate and
80 cancel backups and browse and restore files from backups.
82 - Flexible restore options. Single files can be downloaded from
83 any backup directly from the CGI interface. Zip or Tar archives
84 for selected files or directories from any backup can also be
85 downloaded from the CGI interface. Finally, direct restore to
86 the client machine (using SMB, rsync or tar) for selected files
87 or directories is also supported from the CGI interface.
89 - Supports mobile environments where laptops are only intermittently
90 connected to the network and have dynamic IP addresses (DHCP).
92 - Flexible configuration parameters allow multiple backups to be performed
93 in parallel, specification of which shares to backup, which directories
94 to backup or not backup, various schedules for full and incremental
95 backups, schedules for email reminders to users and so on. Configuration
96 parameters can be set system-wide or also on a per-PC basis.
98 - Users are sent periodic email reminders if their PC has not
99 recently been backed up. Email content, timing and policies
102 - Tested on Linux and Solaris hosts, and Linux, Win95, Win98, Win2000
105 - Detailed documentation.
107 - Open Source hosted by SourceForge and freely available under GPL.
112 Complete documentation is available in this release in doc/BackupPC.pod
113 or doc/BackupPC.html. You can read doc/BackupPC.pod with perldoc and
114 doc/BackupPC.html with any browser. You can also see the documentation
115 and general information at:
117 http://backuppc.sourceforge.net
119 The SourceForge project resides at:
121 http://sourceforge.net/projects/backuppc
123 You are encouraged to subscribe to any of the mail lists available
126 http://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/backuppc-announce
127 http://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/backuppc-users
128 http://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/backuppc-devel
130 The backuppc-announce list is moderated and is used only for
131 important announcements (eg: new versions). It is low traffic.
132 You only need to subscribe to one of users and announce: backuppc-users
133 also receives any messages on backuppc-announce.
135 The backuppc-devel list is only for developers who are working on BackupPC.
136 Do not post questions or support requests there. But detailed technical
137 discussions should happen on this list.
139 To post a message to the backuppc-users list, send an email to
141 backuppc-users@lists.sourceforge.net
143 Do not send subscription requests to this address!