backup tools

[Eduardo Morras]

At 02:37 23/06/2012, Chad Perrin wrote:
>On Fri, Jun 22, 2012 at 08:47:40PM +0200, Roland Smith wrote:
> > On Fri, Jun 22, 2012 at 10:09:03AM -0600, Chad Perrin wrote:
> > > I'm setting up a "new" backup server using FreeBSD.  It will be used for
> > > backing up laptops, which will not be connected to the network by any
> > > kind of schedule, so backups will be initiated manually rather than by
> > > cron or other scheduled procedures.
> >
> > What are the laptops running?
>
>FreeBSD, Debian, and/or Ubuntu.  There's at least one of each.  I
>apologize for not mentioning that sooner.  I had a feeling I'd overlook
>something.

If it must work with all OS and you have no restrictions on network you can:

a) activate PXE/WOL on bios

b) start the laptop via PXE using a freebsd/linux/whatever_os_you_want_to_use

c) use dd piped to rsync to make the backups

This way you don't need to install anything on your freebsd ubuntu debian.