Everyone who has a Sun computer account (e-mail account) at the Department is allowed to use this machine. Please contact Richard Vaughn for getting an account on this particular machine. Same username as your e-mail account will be used. Separate password will be issued (login authentication is not done via Sun system).
Access to the machine is by logging directly to it, ssh/scp to it from any computer on our Departmental network or mounting (Samba or NFS) its disk space from any computer on our Departmental network. There will be no access to this machine from outside of the Department for safety reasons.
Backup server is intended for backing up of personal laptops and workstations. Please avoid using it as a data storage space as such use will diminish the space available for other potential users. Total available space is 2.3TB. Estimating about 40-50 users one reaches estimate of 40-50GB available to each user. We will start without enforcing quotas on this machine, expecting users not to drastically exceed the suggested limit of 50GB. This is subject to change, depending on actual usage of the system.
This machine also has DVD burner available. Users are welcome to burn DVDs on this machine (both of their backups or other data).
Users are welcome to use any type of backing up software capable of doing backup of their own systems to a drive mounted over the network. Machine itself runs Linux (Fedora 3) but its drives are available to Samba mounting from any of three major PC operating systems (Windows, Mac, Linux). We will support one free software package for each OS. Please follow links below for instructions on how to use those. (As mentioned above, you do not need to use these programs. If you have backup software of your choice, it is OK to use it as long as it is capable of backing up to a networked drive).
It is our suggestion that if your backup software of choice is capable of automatic backups, you do use them if the machine in question is the workstation permanently installed at the Department. For laptops it is advisable to manually backup at intervals of your choice.
These backups are not as safe as tape backups. In the unlikely event of hard dries failing both on your machine and on the backup system at the same time, there is a chance of you losing your data and backup. However, this is really unlikely. Also, it is recommended that you at least once experiment by doing backup and than recovery in order to see if your software is performing properly, before making backing up a routine.
Additional information available: