I have a small home network running three Win95 pcs with a Samba/Linux server (thanks, Andrew and Linus!!!). All works well. The question now is what I can do to make a full system backup (including hidden and system files) from the Win95 boxes to the 8mm tape drive on the Linux box. I know I could use smbmount to mount the Win95 drive, and then do a tar or cpio backup, but I'm not nearly so sure about restoring that backup, if necessary onto a fresh hard disk. I do have a single-floppy network boot disk so I could bring the PC up and connect it to the network using that floppy, but then how would I do the restore process to get everything back with the same system/hidden/RO attributes set? Thanks for any pointers. John Ackermann N8UR jra@febo.com - --A4597.880141296=_/samba.anu.edu.au-- ------- End of Forwarded Message
> I have a small home network running three Win95 pcs with a Samba/Linux > server (thanks, Andrew and Linus!!!). All works well. > The question now is what I can do to make a full system backup (including > hidden and system files) from the Win95 boxes to the 8mm tape drive on > the Linux box. > I know I could use smbmount to mount the Win95 drive, and then do a taror> cpio backup, but I'm not nearly so sure about restoring that backup, if > necessary onto a fresh hard disk. > I do have a single-floppy network boot disk so I could bring the PC upand> connect it to the network using that floppy, but then how would I do the > restore process to get everything back with the same system/hidden/RO > attributes set?I do something similar with several UNIX systems (HP-UX, AIX, Solaris, SunOS and AT&T) and PC Systems (WinNT 3.51 & 4.0 and Win95). I've been using rdump for the UNIX systems and smbtar for the PC's. Most of the recoveries I've had to do is a partial restore (several files). I tried a fire drill once on a NT4.0 system (a full restore) and this is how I had to recover it: 0) Make sure you have a system repair diskette from that system. 1) Install NT in a small secondary partition (i.e. 100Mb at the end of your hard drive). This includes full network support. I didn't find any way of getting a diskette bootable network capable NT system, although if I had a few more weeks I suppose I could probably hack a way. (Anyone done this?) 2) I used SMBTAR to restore all the files to the primary file system. 3) Use the NT install diskettes and the system repair diskette to "repair" the /WINNT/system32/config files on the primary file system. 4) You should be able to boot the primary file system since the "repair" will fix the boot record and boot.ini files. How this will translate to a Win95 environment, I'm not sure. Good luck.
Hmmm. That's a possibility (at least for my NT full system restores). Is it possible to create a DOS bootable diskette with MSLAN, such that the LAN can bee seen by the network? I've never worked with MSLAN on DOS, other than via WfW. Is MSLAN downloadable from someplace or do you have to buy it from Microsoft?
[Forgive me if this is not attributed, but lotus notes dosn't make it easy...]>However you might want to go for windows for workgroups for dos, thiswould>enable you to share disks from a DOS machine, if I recall correctly thatis>simply a client. Sharing disks would enable you to use smbtar on a Unix >system for a remote restore. I suppose you could get hold of a DOS copy of >a tar and try sharing your reading remotely from the tape device, shared >over SMB. However neither of these would get around the long file names >problem, I suppose you could force creation of a LFN backup by setting up >an RSHD on the PC (there's a free one around), rsh'ing to it to run a >doslfnbk (this is a freeware(old versions)/shareware(most up to date >versions) utility which will store and restore mangled name -> normal name >backups, it will also backup attribs of files) and then run the backup. >Although quite how you would force smbtar to use the mangled names the PC >supplies I don't know.Quite correct. I was looking at a way of creating a diskless WfW but I forgot about the mangleing problem. Looks like the only to properly restore a WinNT/Win95 system is to install it. Is there a way to create a diskless Win95 (i.e. a Win95 that boots and runs from a diskette, and supports a Server function? As another topic, I have been getting these errors from our backups of WinNT systems: tar file \Microsoft Office\Templates\Presentations\Presenting A Technical Report - Dale Carnegie Training (R).pot name length exceeds NAMSIZ It appears that there is a limit of 100 characters for a file in the tar format file. As I was looking at the tar format, I noticed that it was extensible (i.e., you can enlarge the file header). What would happen if we tacked an extension on the end of the header? Would most systems ignore the additional data? We might tuck the full Win32 file path and attributes in this extension. As long as it didn't exceed the 512 byte record size at least. Then we mangle the path to get a 100 character 'tar name'. Any comments anyone?