TomS Words of Wisdom

While I was down visiting my parents, and attending the National Vaulting Championships at the end of July, I reconfigured one of their old computers, PopsHP, as a LAMP server similar my LampCat.

PopsHP started out as an HP Pavilion 6545c. A couple of years ago we replaced the internal hard drive with a new one (approximately 110 GB). On my recent trip I resized the Windows 98 2nd edition partition (hda1) and installed the LAMP server version of Ubuntu 6.06 [Dapper Drake]. I also installed a new USB-2 card and a 500GB external hard drive.

Next I got PopsHP and my parent's home network configured to allow me to connect to PopsHP via SSH from my home computers, LampCat and LinCat64 [my AMD 64 desktop]. The I then installed, setup and configured Samba to allow my parents to access PopsHP like a windows file server. I even setup drive mappings from their desktop and laptop computers to their /home/ directories located on PopsHP's new external HD, while instructing them to save anything they wanted to keep safe onto PopsHP using these mappings. I also booted their main desktop machine off a Live Ubuntu CD and rsync-ed a complete backup to shared directory in PopsHP's /home/ directory. The final task before I returned home was to make sure that whenever PopsHP reboots (like after a rolling blackout) it boots into linux and starts up the various services / daemons.

Since returning home from my parents condo, I've been using rsync to push copies of my main /home/ directory from from LinCat64 to LampCat and then to PopsHP. I'm using an exclude list on the first transfer to only back-up worth while files, but on the second [off-site] transfer I am doing a full mirror of the primary backup. To keep our [Comcast] cable modem usable for basic web browsing, e-mail, etc., and keep my housemates from complaining, I've had to limit the upstream bandwidth that rsync uses to only 35k/s, so the initial 31GB transfer is taking a long time. [67.7% in a little over a week so far with various stops and restarts.]

This afternoon, I've started the first rsync backup going the other way, from PopsHP to LampCat. My parents [SBC] ADLS line seems to have much better upstream bandwidth and as a result the initial 9.4GB transfer is going much faster, over 7% in just a few hours.

The next steps in the development of my Distributed Family / Home Backup Network will be to install passwordless certificates for the underlying ssh connections and setup chron jobs to automate the transfers. I also want to setup access to my Dad's home folder via shttp so that he can access his files while on his consulting assignments.

Longer term, I'll be looking to add a web based configuration and management application. I'd also like to get a server box set up for my brother and his family, to get offsite backups going for them too.

At Christmas time we might also set my Dad up with a MythTV backend in my parents condo and a portable front end that he can take with him on his assignments.

BTW -- If anyone wants me to set up a "Distributed Family / Home Backup Network" like this for their own private use, my normal consulting rate is $50USD/hr plus expenses and my time is subject to limited availability.