How to create some virtual machines in linux?

how to setup a linux file server and backup solution for 10 windows xp machines

• Hello, I have a lab with 10 windows xp machines that are connected through the internet via the LAN of the company. To date we have no other backup solution than burning DVD's. I am planning to buy a Dell server with enough hard drive capacity to work as a fileserver and backup solution. I do not want to buy the windows server software because it is too expensive. Also I already have Suse Linux and am willing to give a try to linux. My questions: -How can I configure the server with Linux so that the windows xp machines can easily transfer files to/from the server? By easily I mean the xp machines should see some server directories in their 'file manager' window, in a similar way as they see their own directories. -Does linux has a built-in automatic backup software? where can i find one otherwise? -How can I guarantee the efficiency of such a solution? -How can I guarantee the security of such a solution (virus, intrusions)?

• Answer:

  Dear linuxserver, I shall address your questions in the order in which you posed them. Q: How can I configure the server with Linux so that the windows xp machines can easily transfer files to/from the server? By easily I mean the xp machines should see some server directories in their 'file manager' window, in a similar way as they see their own directories. You can use the open-source software package Samba to set up a network share in which your Linux machine, acting as the file server, appears as a Windows host on the client machines' desktops. This is a standard application of Samba, which is available for free. The procedure is extensively documented on the web, for instance in the O'Reilly handbook Using Samba, the full contents of which are available online. Samba is a suite of Unix applications that speak the Server Message Block (SMB) protocol. Microsoft Windows operating systems and the OS/2 operating system use SMB to perform client-server networking for file and printer sharing and associated operations. By supporting this protocol, Samba enables computers running Unix to get in on the action, communicating with the same networking protocol as Microsoft Windows and appearing as another Windows system on the network from the perspective of a Windows client. O'Reilly: Using Samba, 2nd Edition: Chapter 1 http://us1.samba.org/samba/docs/using_samba/ch01.html Configuring Windows to use your new Samba server is really quite simple. SMB is Microsoft's native language for resource sharing on a local area network, so much of the installation and setup on the Windows client side have been taken care of already. O'Reilly: Using Samba, 2nd Edition: Chapter 3 http://us1.samba.org/samba/docs/using_samba/ch03.html Before downloading the Samba suite, you should check to see whether it is installed already, for example by running 'man samba' from the command line. Most Linux distributions, including many flavors of Debian, bundle Samba into the standard installation. Samba.org: Download http://us1.samba.org/samba/download/ Q: Does linux has a built-in automatic backup software? where can I find one otherwise? Although Linux administrators tend to use general-purpose system tools such as crontab and tar to schedule automatic backups on their network, there are also a number of software packages that offer a specialized backup solution. Perhaps the most popular among these is AMANDA, the Advanced Maryland Automatic Network Disk Archiver, which is available without charge. You should run 'man amanda' before downloading and installing Amanda yourself, because AMANDA is included by default in many Linux installations. AMANDA works with tape backup drives as well as with plain hard-disk backup. AMANDA, the Advanced Maryland Automatic Network Disk Archiver, is a backup system that allows the administrator of a LAN to set up a single master backup server to back up multiple hosts to a single large capacity tape drive. AMANDA uses native dump and/or GNU tar facilities and can back up a large number of workstations running multiple versions of Unix. Recent versions can also use SAMBA to back up Microsoft Windows hosts. Amanda.org: Home http://www.amanda.org/ Amanda.org: Download http://www.amanda.org/download.php Q: How can I guarantee the efficiency of such a solution? By far the greatest cause of inefficiency in backup systems is the transfer of files that have not changed since the last backup. In order to preclude such gratuitous backup, you can use rsync, scheduled by crontab, to perform your backup. This would entail the installation of Cygwin, which is essentially a Windows-compatible Unix shell, on your Windows clients. The rsync tool and the crontab scheduling utility are bundled with Cygwin, so you can run them directly from the Cygwin shell. As an alternative to crontab, you might use the built-in Windows Task Scheduler to run a batch file that calls rsync. Rsync works by using short and long checksums to compare the files you are asking it to transfer against previously transferred files. If the checksums imply that a file is overwhelmingly unlikely to have changed since the last transfer, it is not transferred again. This economy, repeated over many files, saves you a great deal of time and bandwidth. rsync is an open source utility that provides fast incremental file transfer. rsync: Home http://samba.anu.edu.au/rsync/ Your crontab file is a list of tasks that are run on a regular schedule. For example, you might set up your crontab file so that it runs a task every night or midnight, or once a week during low-use hours. This task could perform regular maintenance chores, for example, backing up files or getting rid of unnecessary work files. MKS Software: man crontab http://www.mkssoftware.com/docs/man1/crontab.1.asp Cygwin is a Linux-like environment for Windows. It consists of two parts: # A DLL (cygwin1.dll) which acts as a Linux API emulation layer providing substantial Linux API functionality. # A collection of tools, which provide Linux look and feel. Cygwin: Home http://www.cygwin.com/ Q: How can I guarantee the security of such a solution (virus, intrusions)? You can safeguard your Linux server against intruders by ensuring that you use ssh (secure shell) communications instead of the standard telnet utility and by tunneling all of your file transfers through ssh. The ssh package is included with all Linux installations and with the full Cygwin installation, so you won't have any extra software to download. Furthermore, you can pass a command-line option to rsync to make it use ssh for file transfers. AMANDA can also be configured to use ssh. A further measure of protection is afforded by the iptables utility built into every Linux installation. This protects you against unauthorized access and network sweeps such as those conducted by many Internet worms. Amanda 2.5.0 provides ssh based authentication mechanism. To enable Amanda to use "ssh" for communication, "auth" parameter in amanda.conf should be set to "SSH" Amanda Wiki: Amanda and ssh tunnels http://wiki.zmanda.com/index.php/Amanda_and_ssh_tunnels University of Melbourne: Optics Research Group: Installing ssh and rsync on a Windows machine http://optics.ph.unimelb.edu.au/help/rsync/rsync_pc1.html jdmz.net: Using Rsync and SSH http://www.jdmz.net/ssh/ Linux Guruz: Linux iptables HOWTO http://www.linuxguruz.com/iptables/howto/iptables-HOWTO.html So there you have it. With the help of Samba and a few standard command-line utilities, you can readily turn your Linux machine into a fast, secure file server and backup box with transparent network access from your Windows machines. I have enjoyed answering your question. If you have any concerns about the accuracy of my research, please advise me through a Clarification Request and allow me the opportunity to fully meet your needs before you rate this answer. Regards, leapinglizard Search strategy: samba windows ://www.google.com/search?q=samba+windows&start=0&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official linux backup software ://www.google.com/search?hs=x04&hl=en&lr=&client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla%3Aen-US%3Aofficial&q=linux+backup+software&btnG=Search linux network security ://www.google.com/search?hs=JhP&hl=en&lr=&client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla%3Aen-US%3Aofficial&q=linux+network+security&btnG=Search