Linux and Windows backup server

[cuog]

So I have seen that a bunch of my friends have been having issues with their Harddives dieing and taking long papers with them :( and because of this I want to setup my old computer to be a backup server for my different computers to both help keep things centralized and backed up.

What I have now:
4 computers

1 desktop running xp pro
1 desktop running xp home
1 desktop running ubuntu(and is the one that will act as a server)
1 laptop dual booting xp and ubuntu

they are on a simple network using a router and a 5 port switch.

Are there any programs out there that I could run on all of the computers to back up specific folders onto the server nightly? Most importantly are there any that will work across OSes?

I also would like to consolidate my music collection onto the server as it is getting to be a pain trying to figure out which computer has the song I want to listen to.

Any opinions on software for any of the things that I need to do would be greatly appreciated.(also freeware/opensource stuff is preferred as I have little money)

Thanks everyone.

[pam123]

This has come up before on PCMech so you might want to check out this do it yourself guide to building your own server : http://www.pcmech.com/byos/index.htm

Recent information on using Linux for a server is here : http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/8590

[mojo]

As I understand it, he already has his server built and configured, he's just looking for some automated backup software to run on the clients to push files to the server to be backed up. Does anyone have personal experience with software of this type that works well?

[kilgoretrout]

There are some sophisticated linux network backup solutions, both free and for pay. However, this is really overkill if you just want to backup a few directories nightly. For that type of task, most sysadmins would create a bash script using tar to back up the directories they want and run the script as a cron job nightly.

There may be some gui front ends available that will do all this for you. I specifically remember one in the Mandriva configuration tools contained in their Mandriva Control Center. There's a kde app called "kdar"(kde disk archiver) that can set up that type of backup. I believe that ubuntu includes another backup utility called "sbackup" that can be configured to do what you want assuming you have your network all setup with the network shares available at backup time:

http://www.debianadmin.com/backup-and-restore-your-ubuntu-system-using-sbackup.html

I haven't used either so I can't comment on them. Most experienced linux users would just create a backup script using either tar or rsync and run it as a cron job. I don't know how familiar you are with bash scripting and cron so it's hard to give advice.

[mojo]

You should also be able to pull this off in windows with scheduled tasks if your backup needs are not too complex.