Rob_DOHC

iTrader: (4)

Hi guys,

After a bit of advice regarding the setup of a home network.

My girlfriend is starting a college course soon, and I am going to buy her a new laptop, probably a macbook of some description. I have three laptops and a desktop which I use for various separate things.

The problem is that she manages to destroy laptops with multiple viruses, trojans etc within mins regardless of what firewall I install. Her last laptop died when she fell asleep doing some work with the cooling vent blocked by the bed covers, it got so hot that various components fell off the mother board... she is an it animal.

Ideally I would like some way to do automatic backups of all our computers and perhaps phones too, I had concidered a NAS but would prefer to setup up something using an HP microserver with 4 RAID drives for some security if one or more fails and perhaps in the future allow for a VPN connection so I can access work remotely.

So my question is, how would you guys do it? Could I set her up a user account so when at home she had to log on to the server and force a sync between laptop and server?

Or would you suggest having some backup utility which sorted everything in the background with out needing a user account?

Ideally long term it would be a nice way for us to store pictures and films too.

Rob,

matthart

If you are going to get a macbook *HUERGH throwing up in my mouth*

then it's unix underneath.

Setup a cronjob which polls for your server every half hour or so, and when it can see it, does an rsync of her user folder.

matthart

I have a home server which is also my internet gateway, it runs debian (of course), has 12TB+ in raid5 for all my totally legal movies/tv, does a pile of other secret work stuff, and has a permanent VPN connection to my workplace so I can sit at my desktop and view internal servers without having to think about it. Pretty nifty.

Rob_DOHC

iTrader: (4)

Ahh good stuff thanks Matt. Im sure you will be getting a few PM's!

So far I've managed to avoid mac all together (other than phone) as I pretty much just use Altium and Solidworks for work which is windows only. My personal laptop which is just for surfing etc is Ubuntu so a Debian based server sounds like it could be the way forward.

Although I do quite like some of the features of Windows sever like the folder history incase she deletes something *she will delete something if she has any sort of access to it.

Ultimately I would like to use the sever for work back ups (secure) so won't see the internet at all other than VPN in the future... and for personal back ups and media streaming.

How much of a ball ache is a debian based server to setup compared with win server?

matthart

Well to me it's comically easy as I'm on my way to become a Debian Maintainer
Installing the base system is stupid easy, then depends what you want to do with it, each extra package has it's own config so there is learning to be done.

I've never even used Windows Server so...no idea

Thrush

iTrader: (1)

Why? All Macs have Time Machine built in as part of the OS, that incrementally backs up the computer every hour anyway. All you have to specify is a remote (i.e. network) drive space to do it to. This can be a NAS, or a DAS attached to a router. Apple even make an all in one solution for it in the form of a Time Capsule (early ones were 500gb, later models range from 1TB to 3TB), but I can understand if the OP doesn't want to start changing his network point/router set up. And if you don't want it backing up hourly, like I don't, then you can use TimeMachineEditor to schedule backups as you wish.

I would point out though, MacBooks do generally run pretty hot and the vents are around the screen hinge. So I wouldn't advise falling asleep with it in bed. That being said, when I'm really taxing mine and the fans are going crazy expelling the hot air, I've never encountered any thermal problems. But it's not to say it can't happen.