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I'm not a windows guy by any stretch. What I thought would work nearly has but I've run into a hiccup so large that I'm thinking I should just rethink the whole approach entirely. Make things more simple. And I guess before I invest in some spaghetti patching together windows, linux, cygwin, I suppose I might as well ask some people who do Windows how they get this kind of thing done.

I'll tell you what I've done for now.

I have a local linux server with good up time that I've stuck a very large external drive to. I first started working in windows as the client but after some trouble switched over to linux for proof of concept and it worked. I'm using bup to do backups but I've replaced the .bup directory with a symlink to a folder inside of an sshfs mount which on the server is a symlink to a folder on the external drive. I'm able to do an incremental backup this way completely fine.

Now on windows bup doesn't like to run on windows so people suggest using cygwin. Great. It's already installed on one desktop. I also used winfsp and sshfs-win to map a network drive to Z:. It's working well as a file share. I'm able to navigate to it from cygwin and manipulate files just fine. But if I run bup init with a symbolic link going to a folder in the Z: drive it says permission denied. If I do bup init without that symbolic link and copy it over and link it, that seems to be ok but then bup save just fails silently.

I don't know that I'm asking for help figuring out bup cygwin and sshfs on windows. I guess I'm really asking for a fresh perspective on what software you would use. I'm more of a linux person meaning jerry-rigging something on the linux side to fit what's on windows is easier for me and I'd prefer to do that than have the jerry-rigging done on the windows side.

I'm curious what you guys like using on windows.

I'm not a windows guy by any stretch. What I thought would work nearly has but I've run into a hiccup so large that I'm thinking I should just rethink the whole approach entirely. Make things more simple. And I guess before I invest in some spaghetti patching together windows, linux, cygwin, I suppose I might as well ask some people who do Windows how they get this kind of thing done. I'll tell you what I've done for now. I have a local linux server with good up time that I've stuck a very large external drive to. I first started working in windows as the client but after some trouble switched over to linux for proof of concept and it worked. I'm using bup to do backups but I've replaced the .bup directory with a symlink to a folder inside of an sshfs mount which on the server is a symlink to a folder on the external drive. I'm able to do an incremental backup this way completely fine. Now on windows bup doesn't like to run on windows so people suggest using cygwin. Great. It's already installed on one desktop. I also used winfsp and sshfs-win to map a network drive to Z:\. It's working well as a file share. I'm able to navigate to it from cygwin and manipulate files just fine. But if I run bup init with a symbolic link going to a folder in the Z: drive it says permission denied. If I do bup init without that symbolic link and copy it over and link it, that seems to be ok but then bup save just fails silently. I don't know that I'm asking for help figuring out bup cygwin and sshfs on windows. I guess I'm really asking for a fresh perspective on what software you would use. I'm more of a linux person meaning jerry-rigging something on the linux side to fit what's on windows is easier for me and I'd prefer to do that than have the jerry-rigging done on the windows side. I'm curious what you guys like using on windows.

(post is archived)

i dont think you can do this anymore it reads your shit so it knows

i would just dual boot, but thats just my opinion, keeping you data on another drive

[–] 0 pt

Need a 2nd machine. With windows on it.

[–] 0 pt

If you can copy to the Z:, why not just backup to the share using either Windows Backup or something free/cheap? I don't like what they've done with Windows Backup, so I use FBackup.

Windows doesn't require as much as what you are trying to do. Map the shared drive and see if you can back up to it. The hard part is getting Windows and Linux to talk to each other consistently.

Is there a reason you are trying to add layers to what you are trying to do?

[–] 0 pt (edited )

The main reason why there are layers is because I was trying to use bup, which is what I'm familiar with, and because I can set up a fuse from it on linux and make the whole history available on the share.

The downside of using something windows specific is that linux likely won't be able to read it (piece together the data from incremental backups which track diffs), if it's some proprietary format.

[–] 0 pt

It makes sense to stick with something you know. So I can't fault you with that. I don't know if you'll be able to do that though, Windows is all about compromises so that it works with Windows.

[–] 0 pt

But yeah, I'm giving the FBackup a try.