Never saw the point to do a full backup of the system (/etc maybe) You can install and replace all the programs you might need in about 1/2 hour with decent Net speed. Probably take as long if not longer to do a backup restore.
On 2015-04-17 03:26, gogalthorp wrote:
>
> Never saw the point to do a full backup of the system (/etc maybe) You
> can install and replace all the programs you might need in about 1/2
> hour with decent Net speed. Probably take as long if not longer to do a
> backup restore.
Not that easy if you don’t have access to the computer, and have to do
it over the phone (to give instructions to some one that is not an
expert) and internet.
And about installing in half an hour… it would take me hours (even
days) to restore my machine. Install, update, and configure everything.
And work, effort. Compared to just start a command to copy back the
backup image. Boot the sequence, go out for a coffe or watch the TV,
come back, reboot, done.
–
Cheers / Saludos,
Carlos E. R.
(from 13.1 x86_64 “Bottle” (Minas Tirith))
I just use:
rsync -avz [sourcepath] [destinationpath]
in a cron job myself. The ‘-z’ parameter probably does nothing (I think
that’s for compression on client-server rsync, not used in a local sync,
but it’s just habit for me).
Jim
Jim Henderson
openSUSE Forums Administrator
Forum Use Terms & Conditions at http://tinyurl.com/openSUSE-T-C
nrickert wrote:
> One caution, though. Backup disks can also fail. So there might be an
> advantage in having two backup disks and alternating between them. I am
> currently liking those portable disks that are powered by the USB port,
> so are easy to connect.
>
I agree to the multiple drive thoughts. I have used that scheme “backing
up” a few generations of a corrupted file over the useable one. rsync also
allows one to select number of versions being kept which addresses that oops
- but you do need to devise a useable recovery check regardless of what
scheme you use. None of the backups solutions will protect you from yourself
–
Will Honea
more food for thoughts: remmina
So, I’m still exploring differences between VNC solutions vs nomachine/teaviewer ones, other then:
- open source model vs closes
- easy of configurability (router ports in primis)
I just found out that apparently X2Go has some desktop enviroment limitations (the target machine will run Gnome3):
http://wiki.x2go.org/doku.php/doc:de-compat
Hey oldcpu, please did you ever consider faster/xserver based solutions (nomachine/teaviewer) and if not, why?
Thanks 
PS
haven’t run any test yet, sorry
Did you say she has dual boot with Windows? If so, the quickest & easiest way would probably be to get her to boot to Windows, go remote to her Windows & install the free EaseUS ToDo Backup program, and you can run partition or whole disk backups from right within Windows. It is reliable, I have used it many times. In fact, before I start work on someone’s Windows machine, I make a backup with EaseUs and another with Clonezilla, both to my External HD.
You could use that in the meantime, until you get up to par with Dar, or whichever other backup app you finally decide to land on.
As for how much to backup: You will, of course, get conflicting opinions. If using Clonezilla, for example, I backup the whole drive periodically, since I can choose to either restore the entire drive, or just a partition, from that backup. If I remember correctly, you can do the same with EaseUS, but it now has been a little while since I used the latter.
Some backup programs, I recall, could not do that, so when I used them, I would backup the whole drive, then make separate backups of the partitions.
And, yes, backing up the System (er, in Linux, the / partition) is a good idea. You can get her back up & running in short order that way, less time than re-installing, and when working between continents time is important.
Quick off-topic note:
If you use KDE and take advantage of Baloo features then be sure backup tool has extended attributes ON - not OFF as I think default is. Is for Back In Time and rsync from a quick lookup. If I remember correctly fstab in Yast it is also not ticked? Anyway, cant count on it being on.
Why is explained here http://vhanda.in/blog/2014/07/tagging-your-files/ and here http://vhanda.in/blog/2014/08/extended-attributes-updates/ - see not so happy comments.
Not great to debate if a core feature might be stupidest idea ever but will “3rd party tools can kill your data” issue be crystal clear to all users? As if KDE need that type of advertising. Especially not if they finally make sane interfaces to actually use and search for all that data.
KDEs monstrosities are not dead just because they update here and there
http://www.lesbonscomptes.com/pages/extattrs.html potential yikes.
Trying to get back to topic:
Teamviewer is standard tool on Windows because it is way more reliable and much faster than anything with “VNC” in name. And so easy you can put a link on desktop and voila. Proprietary speed and optimized defaults Works on Linux. You can install the “Other systems (not officially supported)” version if you do not want a service running. Or you can go with “SUSE” version and disable/enable on the fly. Need to manually install 15 32bit libs. your self if you do manual install. Someone mentioned a “mobile” version with no services but I cant see it anywhere. If not mistaken I think you also need to make your self owner of “opt/teamviewer” folder but cant remember.
Test will show what works or not.
I’ve used both.
I could never configure nomachine such that my mother could see everything I was doing on her PC. So I stopped using it. I want her to be able to see everything to the maximum extent possible. Philosophically I dislike the idea of working on someone else’s computer if they can not see what I am doing.
I don’t care for the teamviewer graphics / keymapping. I found vnc superior. Teamviewer is handy if one struggles getting through a router/firewall. But thats not an issue for me, I have no problem accessing my mother’s PC nominally, so that teamviewer advantage is lost on me. In other aspects I think piping vnc through ssh (for security) is better.
.
Dual boot yes. Functional dual boot - no.
Her OEM HP windows-7 install is missing a few drivers that allow to configure the BIOS such that Windows-7 can Linux can boot run in a dual boot. So I have the BIOS configured so Linux will boot and hence Windows will not boot. The only way to boot windows is to go into the BIOS, and change the BIOS settings, then restart and select Windows in Grub. Of course this also means that Linux won’t boot. ( it appears there are different variants of the HP P6510F and the one my mother owns would not boot Windows 7 with the BIOS setting set to AHCI (Win7 will only boot with BIOS set to RAID on the HP P6510F implementation I ended up purchasing. And openSUSE does not support that RAID implementation. )) . For Windows7 its a driver issue. I actually called HP support and they said give them $100 and they could send me the software/driver to fix it for windows to boot with the AHCI setting. Needless to say I thanked them for their offer and then said no thankyou.
So a BIOS change is needed with each OS boot change. I leave it thus permanently configured with AHCI for Linux.
Changing BIOS on the fly is NOT something one can do remotely nor is it something my +89 year old mother can do.
Thus while there is a dual boot in place, I have the BIOS set for Linux and NOT windows. There is a long story about this dual boot hiccup (see post#124 here: https://forums.opensuse.org/showthread.php/444236-Planning-for-OS-update-to-my-84-year-old-mothers-PC?p=2254356#post2254356 ).
Not viable as a simple solution, then, obviously. Too bad.
Yes, that is where I find it most usefull. I cannot speak for current situation, because I have not been making the rounds in the past couple years, but a few years back, most of the major high speed internet providers in Canada started distributing partly-locked-down wireless router/modems to their customers, and not giving their customers administrative access to the routers’ settings. That is where Teamviewer came in very handy.
But thats not an issue for me, I have no problem accessing my mother’s PC nominally, so that teamviewer advantage is lost on me. In other aspects I think piping vnc through ssh (for security) is better.
Yes, much better, and the direction the OP would probably be best off to head towards.
Mmm… does she need to be already logged in when you do that?
As you can imagine all this configuring (vnc/ssh/port forwarding on the router and the firewall if enable on the computers) is making me lean towards a nomachine/teamviewer solution type… I wonder if remmina would semplify the things for me a little (gnome user).
Thanks
Yes, she needs to have per computer switched on with her desktop showing/running. I am not just accessing her PC. I am maintaining her desktop with her WATCHING. If having your parents watch is not a criteria, then simply go with nomachine where all they need is the computer powered and not logged in. Nomachine starts its own session on their PC.
From a wiki: ssh is also called Secure Shell and it is a cryptographic (encrypted) network protocol for initiating text-based shell sessions on remote machines in a secure way.
5900 is the nominal (default) port for vnc. Likely if I wanted to make it even more secure I could have setup a different port. But that would require changes to my router firewall and to my PC configuration. I simply went with the default there.
mothercpu is my mother’s user name on her openSUSE (actually it is something different, I am just using that as an example).
mothercpu.accessmyhome.net is the dyndns mapping of my mother’s IP address (again its actually something different - this is an example). I could also put her IP address there instead if I did not have the dyndns mapping. But she has a dynamic IP address assigned by her ISP provider and so her IP address changes all the time.
From a wiki: x11vnc is a Virtual Network Computing (VNC) server program. It allows remote access from a remote client to a computer hosting an X Window session and the x11vnc software, continuously polling the X server’s frame buffer for changes. This allows the user to control their X11 desktop (KDE, GNOME, XFCE, etc.) from a remote computer either on the user’s own network, or from over the Internet as if the user were sitting in front of it.
As far as the options … as I noted, user ‘yaloki’ (who also once went by the handle ‘guru’) gave the exact command to me (with the various options) and I simply followed those instuctions.
I have the exact two commands I noted copied in a text file that I have linked on my desktop. I simply click on the icon, open the file, and then paste the commands one at a time, each into a different konsole that I open. Yaloki also gave me a script I could use, but it required some tuning to work with my case, and I could not be bothered to tune the script, and I did not keep it.
nomachine also needs router tuning. Don’t confuse nomachine with teamviewer.
A BIG disadvantage of teamviewer when I looked at it, is the screen I would see (when using teamviewer) is NOT the EXACT same my mother would see (when I am using team viewer). There would be major and minor differences and those differences are enough to cause confusion when trying to explain things. I found it VERY IMPORTANT that I see the EXACT same as her. My view/requirement is this is not just a simply matter of taking over the desktop for occasional access. It is also for training, which is complicated significantly if the desktop is not 100% identical.
I can not comment on remmina. I don’t use it. I know nothing about it. Have any of those users recommending it used it continuously (used it every week or so with different openSUSE versions) for over 5-years of experience in maintaining an elderly parent’s PC ? That is the sort of experience I have using vnc. Hence I myself, given how well vnc works for me (when launching from terminal commands) , would not consider switching to a different method.
One thing I do thou, is install a pre-open SUSE release (typically 4 or 5 months before a new openSUSE release) and test those two commands to ensure they work still with the new release. If it does not work (there was once case in an openSUSE-12.x (or 11.x - I can’t recall exactly) when there was an early release problem and the command(s) did not work properly) I saw the need to raise a bug report on the release as an effort to have that functionality restore/fixed. A beauty of GNU/Linux is average users can do such, to slightly improve the possibility of retaining current functionalities.
.
Thanks oldcpu (and thanks all)!
your detailed answer (and experience) can only motivate me going the VNC way, and since you put so much effort in offering me a simple and effective explanation I have to give it a try even I feel already sorry because my trials will probably generate another thread
As you underlined in describing your scenario I also ideally would like the remote computer to visually show in real time to my parents what I’m doing during our “remote desktop” sessions so proabably there’s no other way other than VNC. By the way I was surprised to acknowledge that teamviewer/nomachine are not showing to the remote usera what’s happening while I’m adminning their machine…
Cheers!
I would not word it that way. Some clarifications wrt team viewer and nomachine.
My experience is teamview provided me a different presentation from what my mother saw. Plus the instant I ran team viewer on her desktop, her desktop appearance was changed a bit by team viewer. But she could still see me doing things. However she could not demonstration some puzzling aspects to her, because as soon as team viewer was launched her desktop look/feel changed enough to remove what she was trying to show. And as soon as I stopped using team viewer, it resorted back to the original look/feel. I did not want to use an app that changed the look/feel everytime I accessed my mother’s PC using it. That is not the same as saying my mother could not see what I was doing.
wrt nomachine, maybe there is a way to configure it such that my mother could see what I was doing, but I could not figure out how to get such to work. Just because I could not get nomachine to work the way I wanted does not mean it can’t be made to work.
On the other hand, vnc ‘just worked’ for me, so I adopted that approach.
Personally, I am looking forward to following that thread.
On 2015-04-19 17:36, oldcpu wrote:
> My experience is teamview provided me a different presentation from what
> my mother saw. Plus the instant I ran team viewer on her desktop, her
> desktop appearance was changed a bit by team viewer. But she could still
> see me doing things. However she could not demonstration some puzzling
> aspects to her, because as soon as team viewer was launched her desktop
> look/feel changed enough to remove what she was trying to show. And as
> soon as I stopped using team viewer, it resorted back to the original
> look/feel. I did not want to use an app that changed the look/feel
> everytime I accessed my mother’s PC using it. That is not the same as
> saying my mother could not see what I was doing.
That’s a very curious thing…
I have only used teamview in Windows, and either the desktop did not
change, or I didn’t look carefully enough, or I was not bothered by it.
I don’t remember.
But it is certainly something important.
I hope I’ll remember to check next time I use it.
–
Cheers / Saludos,
Carlos E. R.
(from 13.1 x86_64 “Bottle” (Minas Tirith))
bringing it up! sorry
so please what in your opinion in basing a solution on a computer with the Vpro technology?
There’s not much documentation out there about the risks (security) involved but enough for starting and…
- it should work with vnc linux clients too
- it’s able too boot/reboot the machine too
It sounds exciting… and there’s an i5 NUC outhere with Vpro.
Please any comment welcome
vPro is a buzz word and does real not mean that much vPro something or other has been coming out of Intel for years
Reference