Mounting Networked Volumes

I am a home user with 2 laptops and a 3rd older machine that runs 24/7 as a home server. I am currently using Retrospect and looking for a more modern, user friendly backup alternative.

Obviously, Qrecall has caught my eye; however, I haven't figured out whether it can perform in the same fashion as Retrospect with respect to automatically backing up the laptops when they are connected to our home network with out the need to manually mount the laptop volume on the server machine or vice versa manually mounting the server volume on each laptop.

Retrospect can find laptops when they appear on the network and then back them up (capture them) on a schedule with no user action or intervention needed whatsoever.

Is there a way to set up Qrecall to peform in a similar completely transparent fashion? My wife in particular is not one to fiddle with mounting volumes and I don't want the laptops continually looking for a non existent volume when we travel.

I hope the answer is yes! javascript:emoticon('

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Regards,
Eric Oshlo
oshloel at mail dot com

Eric Oshlo wrote:Obviously, Qrecall has caught my eye; however, I haven't figured out whether it can perform in the same fashion as Retrospect with respect to automatically backing up the laptops when they are connected to our home network with out the need to manually mount the laptop volume on the server machine or vice versa manually mounting the server volume on each laptop.

QRecall will automatically mount a network volume that contains the action's archive, as long as these conditions are met:

- The user is logged in when the action starts. (The operating system does not permit network volumes to be mounted when you are logged out)

- You've saved the user name and password for the volume on your keychain. If you haven't, QRecall will prompt for the network volume's user name and password when the action runs.

James,

Thanks. I gather then that Qrecall can do a push, but not a pull. In other words, I'll need to keep Qrecall running on all three machines (two laptops and a home server) so that Qrecall can automatically mount the Archive volume and "push" the data to it rather than run it on just the server and have Qrecall automatically mount and "pull" the data from the laptops as they connect to the network in order to back them all up.

Is this correct, or can it work either way? I presume if it were able run on just the server and pull the data, it would need a small client running on the laptops or some other way to know when the laptops were available to be backed up.

Thanks for helping walk me through this..

Eric Oshlo

Eric Oshlo wrote:I gather then that Qrecall can do a push, but not a pull. In other words, I'll need to keep Qrecall running on all three machines (two laptops and a home server) so that Qrecall can automatically mount the Archive volume and "push" the data to it rather than run it on just the server and have Qrecall automatically mount and "pull" the data from the laptops as they connect to the network in order to back them all up.

That's correct. But just so we're clear, you don't need to keep the QRecall application open. QRecall installs background tasks that will take care of running your capture actions independent of whether the QRecall application is running or not.

Is this correct, or can it work either way? I presume if it were able run on just the server and pull the data, it would need a small client running on the laptops or some other way to know when the laptops were available to be backed up.

What you're describing is a master/slave system where an agent runs on each computer and supplies that backup data to the master server on demand. This is how Retrospect works. Eventually QRecall will get network savvy too, but not today.

James Bucanek wrote:
- The user is logged in when the action starts. (The operating system does not permit network volumes to be mounted when you are logged out)

Question about this-- if the user logs out while the action is running, will the action continue to run? thx!

Alexandra Morgan wrote:if the user logs out while the action is running, will the action continue to run?

It depends. If the action was started by the scheduler, either by scheduling it to run automatically at a particular time or by using the Run Immediately or Run At commands, AND the scheduler is authorized to run while you are logged out, then the action should continue to run and the networked volume should stay connected.

However, if you start an action interactively or if your scheduler is NOT authorized to run when logged out (QRecall > Preferences > Authorization > Start and run actions while logged out), then logging out will stop the action.

It has to do with the "scope" of the process. Programs that you start yourself belong to your log-in session. When you log out, Mac OS X terminates all processes started by your log-in session.

James Bucanek wrote: QRecall will automatically mount a network volume that contains the action's archive, as long as these conditions are met: ...

Alternatively, could you have QRecall run on the machine to which the backup drive is attached, instead of the machine to be backed up? In other words, the archive is local, the item to be captured is a network volume. Can QRecall automatically mount a network drive to back it up?

Context: I'm dealing with a small workgroup, with about 10 to 13 desktops, and I have 3 large hard drives to back up onto, all between 500 and 750 GB each (because you get the most storage per $ in this size range). We use Retrospect Workgroup, which has no problem running on the one machine with attached hard drives and backing up clients as they appear; even though the network often has a hiccup and interrupts one client's backup, the backup set is, of course, undamaged.

I understand that QRecall is not yet as network-savvy as Retrospect. So I've been evaluating the possibility of running QRecall on multiple machines, each mounting the same network drive and waiting its turn to write to the same archive, as you suggested to Eric. Alas, it appears that a network hiccup on a client machine resulted in a very corrupted archive.

Got a "header file length invalid", almost 2 hours to run the repair, and the layer from that client trying to back up is marked "-Damaged-", and it doesn't even remember who owns that volume. (Are the older layers OK, do you think? I have deleted the damaged and recovered-items layers; without a known "owner" those layers are fairly useless.)

Irk, I so want to get away from Retrospect already!!!

Alexandra Morgan wrote:Alternatively, could you have QRecall run on the machine to which the backup drive is attached, instead of the machine to be backed up? In other words, the archive is local, the item to be captured is a network volume.

Yes, but with limits. The operating system doesn't have unfettered access to files on a remote volume. Everything accessed via a networked volume is constrained by the permission and security limits of the file server. Thus, it would be impossible to capture a user's operating system remotely — at least not in a form that would let you restore the volume and have it boot. If you just want to capture regular user documents, it shouldn't be a problem.

Can QRecall automatically mount a network drive to back it up?

QRecall won't automatically mount the volumes that contain items to be captured. However, you could probably hack something up without too much trouble: Create any kind of script that would cause the volume of the remote user to mount (just opening an alias to a folder on that volume would do the trick). Then schedule the capture to run after that, or even schedule the capture to run when that volume mounts (see event schedules).

Context: I'm dealing with a small workgroup, with about 10 to 13 desktops, and I have 3 large hard drives to back up onto, all between 500 and 750 GB each (because you get the most storage per $ in this size range).

I deal with this by having each client capture to its own archive. Not as much space savings, but all clients can capture simultaneously. The clients only have a single capture action. All merge, compact, and verify actions are set up to occur on the computer hosting the archive volumes.

... it appears that a network hiccup on a client machine resulted in a very corrupted archive.

Try the beta version. It has a new automatic repair and recovery feature that should instantly, and transparently, recover from 99% of problems that would result in a corrupted archive. This feature was added principally to deal with intermittent network communication failures.

Irk, I so want to get away from Retrospect already!!!

I'm right there with you.

>You've saved the user name and password for the volume on your keychain. If you haven't, QRecall will prompt for the network volume's user name and password when the action runs.

I'm finding this not to be the case. I de-authorized and yet when I mount the drive which I use for backups, it still launches Qrecall and wants to merge the layers. Any idea what I might be doing wrong? I'd really like it to only launch when I manually start it.