Hi All, We have an ftp server setup at the office. We are trying to a daily backup of a single file to that server using a 3g dongle. I was using cobian backup but it seems to be intermittent. If I run the task manually it works. On the schedule, it works sometimes. Is there a more reliable automated method? If it matters, I have firewall rules on the client side blocking all ports incoming and all ports outgoing except port 21 for FTP. This is because windows services are eating the data on the dongle. Thanks Betty
What are you uploading the file from? If it's Windows or Linux you could write a script that would keep trying to upload until it worked, and run that as a scheduled job.
Its from Windows FTP server (also windows). I've thought about using a script with scheduler, but the thing that bugs me is WHY its failing. All the usernames and passwords are correct. Its passive, if that makes a difference. I read somewhere that filezilla server has random errors from time to time. Not sure if thats true.
Afraid not - it was a short-term thing for work that was eventually binned altogether and I think resulted in a proprietary solution.
The problem with FTP is that it is an all-or-nothing protocol. If the transfer of a large file is interrupted, the whole file needs to be re-transferred, not just the bits that weren't copied successfully. I'd use rsync instead, since it can do exactly that - it only transfers the changes made to a file rather than the whole file. It also means your backup will use less bandwidth.
Its a database file, so its increasing steadily in size. At the moment its 4MB. I'll look into that thanks!
I was considering that this morning, but the client doing the uploading of said 4mb file only has 150MB of data per month. I'm trying to figure out a way to limit dropbox data usage. The problem is if someone edits the file on the other end, then it gets synced again and again.
They could easily disabe the dropbox service and start it when needed. Once it's uploaded the backup just disable it again. For each backup they could just create a new folder with the date as the name. Pretty simple I think.
Simple for us, yes. But we are dealing with complete laymen who can barely use a computer. I'm automating as much as possible. It took a week to teach them how to copy a file to a usb stick. Strangely, I increased the timeout periods in Cobian backup so that it wouldn't timeout due to slow 3g connection and it seems to be working, at least on one of the computers. Its done 8 backups in a row without failing. With my luck, as soon as I take it back to site its going to fail. Will update the thread after seeing how it performs.