[nycbug-talk] Setting up a FreeBSD "backup" box

[Steven Kreuzer]

On Dec 8, 2008, at 7:34 PM, Matt Juszczak wrote:

> Hiya,
>
> If you were given the task of setting up a FreeBSD box with 1 TB disk
> space (mirrored RAID 1) for use by multiple clients for backing up  
> their
> data (mostly via rsync and sftp), how would you set it up?  Yes, its a
> given that one would use a minimalist install, create home dirs for  
> each
> client, enable quotas to keep file storage under control, but what  
> else?
> Is there a shell out there that ONLY allows the use of rsync and  
> perhaps
> sftp?  I've seen rbash and people also set the shell to sftp-server.
>
> Just wondering how others would set this up.  Thanks!
>
> -Matt

Have you considered installing rsyncd on each of the clients machines
and then having your backup server pull from the clients?

This eliminates all the issues with having to setup logins for everyone.

On top of that, if the number of clients grow to the point where a  
single
server can't keep up, it becomes easier to spread the job among multiple
servers.

--
Steven Kreuzer
http://www.exit2shell.com/~skreuzer