[techtalk] backing up *ACK* a mac?

[Brian Sweeney]

Here's an interesting question in light of all of the backup conversation
that happened recently...

Does anyone know of a good way to backup a macintosh client via ANY of the
linux backup utilities?  Near as I can tell, there are three basic methods
of backing of clients with linux:

1) Get a commercial utility that has built-in client support
2) Mount the client filesystem, and back it up.
3) Have the client mount the linux filesystem, copy the files there, and
then have the linux system do its backup

The first doesn't really work, b/c I haven't found any backup utility for
linux that has a mac client, and I'm on a tight budget right now anyway.
The second doesn't look promising either; the only thing I saw that
suggested it could mount a mac remote filesystem was something like afps?
and it's still considered alpha (I quote, from the website "be afraid. Be
very afraid").  So that's out.  The third option is possible, but not pretty
for a number of reasons, not the least of which is I'd really like the
server to be responsible for doing all the work.

I'm thinking about going with AppleshareIP and having linux try and mount
the filesystems via TCP/IP, using the HFSutils package, but A) I don't want
to have to buy appleshareIP, and B) I'm not sure I trust the combination of
that and HFS utils, not to mention any problems the backup utility might
have with resource forks on mac files, or names with spaces...

Anyone have any suggestions?

-Brian

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Brian J. Sweeney
Systems Admin, imagedog.com
email: bsweeney at imagedog.com