Here’s the new design for those of you who don’t have the new version yet (specially Linux users, as myself… Oh I just realized the Skype version I have in this laptop at home running Linux is Skype 2.0).

For the record:

• 24/06/2009 => 3 votes for Skype 2.0, one for Skype 4.0. New version not looking very good…

Related post(s)

• Too much success and popularity? (0)
• I can’t stop smiling… we got an Asus Eee PC! (2)
• Automatic backup of Windows computers using Linux (3)
• Setting up UPS on CentOS 5.2 with SELinux, part 2 (1)
• Setting up UPS on CentOS 5.2 with SELinux, part 1 (0)

Step one: Define the policy module

To define the policy module for nut CGI create a text file nutcgi.te with the following content:

module nutcgi 1.0.8;

require {
type unlabeled_t;
type xend_var_log_t;
type httpd_sys_script_exec_t;
type default_t;
type procmail_t;
type ping_t;
type httpd_t;
type httpd_sys_script_t;
type port_t;
class tcp_socket { write name_connect connect shutdown read create };
class lnk_file { read getattr };
class file append;
class dir search;
class packet { recv send };
}

#============= httpd_sys_script_t ==============
# src="httpd_sys_script_t" tgt="port_t" class="tcp_socket", perms="name_connect"
# comm="upsstats.cgi" exe="" path=""
allow httpd_sys_script_t port_t:tcp_socket name_connect;
# src="httpd_sys_script_t" tgt="httpd_sys_script_t" class="tcp_socket", perms="{ write read create connect shutdown }"
# comm="upsstats.cgi" exe="" path=""
allow httpd_sys_script_t self:tcp_socket { write read create connect shutdown };
# src="httpd_sys_script_t" tgt="unlabeled_t" class="packet", perms="{ recv send }"
# comm="upsstats.cgi" exe="" path=""
allow httpd_sys_script_t unlabeled_t:packet { recv send };

#============= httpd_t ==============
# src="httpd_t" tgt="httpd_sys_script_exec_t" class="lnk_file", perms="{ read getattr }"
# comm="httpd" exe="" path=""
allow httpd_t httpd_sys_script_exec_t:lnk_file { read getattr };

Save the file somewhere.

Step two : Compile the policy module

Execute the command:

checkmodule -M -m nutcgi.te -o nutcgi.mod

This will generate a binary file representing the policy module.

Step three: Create a SELinux policy module package

Execute the command:

semodule_package -o nutcgi.pp -m nutcgi.mod

This will create a SELinux policy module package which can then be installed.

Step four: Install the SELinux policy module package

Execute the command:

semodule -i nutcgi.pp

Now the policy module is installed. You can refresh the web page with UPS status in your web browser http://localhost/cgi-bin/upsstats.cgi

You can also verify that access to this web page from other machines works as intended. SELinux policy module installation is persistent – you don’t have to do it again if the system reboots.

Related post(s)

• Setting up UPS on CentOS 5.2 with SELinux, part 1 (0)
• Skype 4.0 for Windows is out: Pros and cons (compared with Linux Skype 2.0) (1)
• Eee PC 901 – aka Big Eee (0)
• What files did I change? (2)
• Too much success and popularity? (0)

Let’s start with the installation.

First things first – make sure the UPS is running and connected to the computer. Both power and a serial cable of some kind should be connected. The serial connection can be either via RS-232 or USB.

To install the software execute the following command:

# yum install nut nut-client nut-cgi

or if you’re running a 64 bit OS and don’t want 32-bit packages to be installed:

# yum install nut nut-client.x86_64 nut-cgi

Next step: Basic configuration

After the software is installed we need to configure it. Fire up your favourite text editor and open these files:

• /etc/ups/ups.conf
• /etc/ups/upsd.users
• /etc/ups/upsmon.conf
• /etc/ups/hosts.conf (only if you have installed nut-cgi)

In /etc/ups/ups.conf add at the end the following section:

user = nut            # execute the UPS driver as user nut - otherwise the upsd program won't be able to connect to the device

[pw3105]              # name of the UPS device
driver = bcmxcp_usb   # driver used to access the UPS device
port = auto           # serial port where the UPS is connected, bcmxcp_usb driver allows to enter 'auto' here
shutdown_delay = 0    # additional parameter supported by bcmxcp_usb driver, see 'man bcmxcp_usb'

The comments explain what is the purpose of each line. More details can be found in man page for ups.conf. The actual name of the UPS device and parameters for it depend on the UPS model you’re using. I have Powerware 3105 UPS which uses the bcmxcp_usb driver.

Second file to edit is /etc/ups/upsd.users where you should append these lines:

[server]                   # create a user 'server'
password = ups             # with password 'ups'
allowfrom = localhost      # allowing access only from this machine
instcmds = ALL             # user can execute all instant commands
upsmon master              # add actions necessary for a 'upsmon' process to work

Again the purpose of each line is explained in the comments. More information as usual in man page for upsd.users.

If you use different values in /etc/ups/upsd.users you have to make sure that you’ll use the same values also in the next file we’re going to edit, which is /etc/ups/upsmon.conf. Here add these lines at the end:

FINALDELAY 0                                     # don't wait before shutting down, allowed values depend on the UPS model
RUN_AS_USER nut                                  # don't run as root to avoid security issues
MONITOR pw3105@localhost 1 server ups master     # which UPS to monitor

The last line requires a bit of explanation:

• pw3105@localhost is the identifier of the UPS we want to monitor. pw3105 is the same name we have used before in /etc/ups/ups.conf so make sure it matches. @localhost indicates that we’re monitoring a UPS connected directly to the machine on which upsmon program is running. upsmon can also monitor UPSes connected to other machines on the network.
• 1 indicates that this particular UPS feeds 1 power supply on this system. That’s the usual value for this parameter.
• server and ups are the user name and password we have defined previously in /etc/ups/upsd.users
• master indicates relationship with upsd daemon and again must match what is defined in /etc/ups/upsd.users

More explanations can be found in man page for upsmon.conf.

After these modifications verify the permissions and ownership of the configuration files matches this:

# ll /etc/ups/ups.conf /etc/ups/upsd.users /etc/ups/upsmon.conf
-rw-r----- 1 root nut 3735 Jan 22 00:33 /etc/ups/ups.conf
-rw-r----- 1 root nut 2307 Jan 22 00:08 /etc/ups/upsd.users
-rw-r----- 1 root nut 11194 Jan 22 00:09 /etc/ups/upsmon.conf

and then you can start the software:

# service ups start

You should see this output:

Starting UPS driver controller: [ OK ]
Starting upsd: [ OK ]
Starting UPS monitor (master): [ OK ]

And make sure that UPS software will start automatically after system reboots:

# chkconfig nut on

Verify that the UPS is accessible by executing:

# upsc pw3105@localhost

which should print something like this:

driver.name: bcmxcp_usb
driver.parameter.pollinterval: 2
driver.parameter.port: auto
driver.parameter.shutdown_delay: 0
driver.version: 2.2.0-
driver.version.internal: 0.11
output.phases: 1
ups.alarm:
ups.firmware: Cont:00.80 Inve:00.60
ups.model: POWERWARE UPS 500VA
ups.power.nominal: 500
ups.serial:
ups.status: OL
ups.voltage.nominal: 230

The actual values depend on the UPS model.

At this point the system is configured to automatically shut down when the UPS will indicate that the battery is low on power. You should test this scenario on your system to make sure that it will work when you really need it.

Last step: Configure web access to upsmon

The last step is to configure monitoring of UPS status via a web browser. We have already installed nut-cgi package which contains the necessary CGI scripts. This package includes a file /var/www/nut-cgi-bin/upsstats.cgi which you should copy to /var/www/cgi-bin/ directory:

# cp /var/www/nut-cgi-bin/upsstats.cgi /var/www/cgi-bin/

After that modify file /etc/ups/hosts.conf by appending this line:

MONITOR pw3105@localhost "Local UPS"

As before pw3105@localhost is the name of UPS to monitor. “Local UPS” defines the name which will appear in the web page.

Now start your web server if it’s not running yet and (optionally) configure the firewall to allow access to port 80 from other machines.

You can now check status of the UPS via a web browser by typing the following in the address bar http://localhost/cgi-bin/upsstats.cgi

Unfortunately if you’re running with SELinux enabled then you won’t see much:

The reason for this is a missing SELinux policy module. Because of that you’ll see errors in /var/log/audit/audit.log and the web page won’t provide any useful information. How to install the missing SELinux policy module? This will be described in the follow up post coming soon.

Related post(s)

• Setting up UPS on CentOS 5.2 with SELinux, part 2 (1)
• Skype 4.0 for Windows is out: Pros and cons (compared with Linux Skype 2.0) (1)
• Eee PC 901 – aka Big Eee (0)
• What files did I change? (2)
• Too much success and popularity? (0)

I wanted my netbook to come with an English keyboard layout. The netbook of course had to run Linux It turns out the models with the English keyboard layout are a bit difficult to find in Germany. One can order a “custom” version but that delays the order by a few weeks.

Not satisfied with these extra delays I decided to expand my search and to look for distributors in UK and Ireland which would ship to Germany. After a bit of googling I found Laptops Direct website which had exactly what I was looking for (Here’s the link for those who prefer prices in pounds.) They ship anywhere within the Europe without charging you ridiculous postage charges. I ordered Eee PC 901 on their website and after a few days got it delivered.

As usual with other Eee models my netbook was ready to run straight out of the box with lots of programs already installed. Eee PC 901 comes with a bit newer version of the operating system and a different set of applications. Not much different from the 4G model so you can find the usual set of:

• web browser – Firefox
• VoIP software – Skype
• instant messaging client – Pidgin
• PDF reader – Adobe Acrobat Reader 7.0
• email client – Thunderbird
• office suite – Star Office 8 (based on OpenOffice.org)
• multimedia programs
• games
• other utilities

If you want to add more programs the easiest way to do it is use the “Eee Download” link which takes you to Asus website where you can find additional applications which have been prepackaged so they can be very easily installed on your Eee 901. At the moment there is over 3000 programs to choose from!

The hardware features of Eee PC 901 are:

• Intel Atom 1.6 GHz CPU
  
• 1 GB RAM
• 20 GB Solid State Drive
• 8.9′ TFT with resolution 1024 x 600
• Bluetooth
• 1.3 Megapixel webcam
• 1.1 kg weight
  

As you can see the improvements from Eee PC 4G are mainly faster CPU, more RAM, more storage and bigger screen. In the normal operation you’re going to notice primarily the bigger screen – about 60% increase of the screen area than Eee PC 4G. The dimensions of the netbook are exactly the same as for Eee PC 4G, increased screen size is possible because 4G had quite a wide frame around the screen which has been significantly reduced in the 901 model.

The slightly bigger weight is a bit of disadvantage although at 1.1 kg Eee PC 901 is still very light and easy to carry.

After using Eee PC 901for a few months I must say that I get less use of it than originally expected. At home and in the office I already have other computers with full size keyboards I can use and when I travel I usually take a laptop with me anyway. That means I don’t really make use of the high portability which is the main advantage of netbooks. Big Eee gets used mostly when I want to check something quickly online (my other PCs can’t beat the 15 seconds boot time) or when I need to take a computer to sofa but that’s about it. I guess I need to travel more to get more use out of a netbook…

Related post(s)

• I can’t stop smiling… we got an Asus Eee PC! (2)
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• Too much success and popularity? (0)

Version 1.0 of Wine has been published today as well. Wine is a compatibility layer for running Windows programs directly in many Unixes, including Linux, FreeBSD, Mac OS X and Solaris.

Firefox team had announced the release date in advance and for some time the website from where you can download the new version of the web browser has been unavailable. Wine website was also down temporarily.

At this moment both websites seem to be up again but one wonders if this was the case of a bigger success than expected…

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What do you need:

1. Linux, any distribution will do. Linux can be installed on the physical hardware or in a virtual machine (like for example VMware, Xen, VirtualBox or Virtual PC). It is important that you have access to a DVD drive. Otherwise you’ll have to first create an .iso image of the video DVD you want to convert. mplayer is also available for Windows so you could try the same process using Windows if you prefer.
2. mplayer. Installation of mplayer depends on the Linux distribution, some have it preinstalled, others require you to install it yourself. For most users the easiest option will be to find pre-built binaries in .rpm, .deb or other appropriate format and install them. I’m not going to go into details here, if you need directions drop me a comment.
3. DVD with the videos you want to convert. If your Linux installation can access a DVD drive you just need to insert the DVD disc, otherwise you need to create an .iso image.
4. Some program to convert .wav files into .mp3. Anything you use to convert CDs to mp3 can usually convert .wav files also.

Preparations:

1. Decide whether you want to convert the whole video or only some specific fragments.
2. Decide whether you want to convert the video into one audio file or maybe you prefer separate file for each chapter.
3. If you decided to do the conversion from an .iso image you need to create it.
4. Make sure you have enough disk space for the audio files. You need about 6 MB per one minute.

Conversion:

1. Create .wav files from your video using mplayer. The command to execute is:
   mplayer dvd://1 -chapter [first chapter]-[last chapter] -vc null -vo null -alang [language code] -ao pcm:waveheader:fast:file=[output file] -dvd-device [path to .iso file] -ss [start time in seconds] -endpos [duration in seconds]
   where:
   • dvd://1 usually is the correct option although sometimes (depends on the DVD) it will have to be another number instead of 1. The number corresponds to the DVD title on the disc; usually 1 is the main video.
   • [first chapter] – is the first video chapter to start the conversion from.
   • [last chapter] – is the last video chapter to finish the conversion with; in case your video has no chapters or you want to convert the whole video into a single audio file you should skip the whole -chapter [first chapter]-[last chapter] fragment of the command; in case you’re converting each chapter of the DVD to a separate audio file the [last chapter] must be the same as [first chapter] and you need to run this command for each chapter (with a different output file each time).
   • [language code] – code of the audio language, this is important if the video has audio track in multiple languages; for example English is en, Spanish is es, Hungarian is hu.
   • [output file] – the path to the output audio file including the .wav extension.
   • [path to .iso file] – the path to the source .iso file of the video; in case you are converting without first creating the .iso file you should skip the whole -dvd-device [path to .iso file] fragment of the command.
   • [start time in seconds] – this option can be used to specify how many seconds at the beginning of the video should be skipped; you should not use this option if you want to convert the whole video.
   • [duration in seconds] – this option can be used to specify how many seconds of the video to convert; you should not use this option if you want to convert the whole video. This option together with -ss is useful when you want to do a trial run and convert just a short fragment first to see if it works or if you need to skip some fragments at the beginning or at the end.
   Some examples:
   • Save audio of chapter 4 of the DVD disk as file chapter4.wav:
     mplayer dvd://1 -chapter 4-4 -vc null -vo null -alang en -ao pcm:waveheader:fast:file=chapter4.wav
   • The same but from an ISO image:
     mplayer dvd://1 -chapter 4-4 -vc null -vo null -alang en -ao pcm:waveheader:fast:file=chapter4.wav -dvd-device image.iso
   • Save audio of chapters 2 to 14 of the DVD disk as file chapters2-14.wav:
     mplayer dvd://1 -chapter 2-14 -vc null -vo null -alang en -ao pcm:waveheader:fast:file=chapters2-14.wav
   • Save the last 10 seconds of the first minute of chapter 3 from the DVD disk as file chapter3.wav, this time we want the Spanish soundtrack:
     mplayer dvd://1 -chapter 3-3 -vc null -vo null -alang es -ao pcm:waveheader:fast:file=chapter3.wav -ss 50 -endpos 10
2. Convert .wav files to mp3 format or any other you prefer using a program you like.

That’s it. Enjoy the new mp3s!

Related post(s)

• Skype 4.0 for Windows is out: Pros and cons (compared with Linux Skype 2.0) (1)
• Setting up UPS on CentOS 5.2 with SELinux, part 2 (1)
• Setting up UPS on CentOS 5.2 with SELinux, part 1 (0)
• Eee PC 901 – aka Big Eee (0)
• Too much success and popularity? (0)

Right, what a girlie comment to say. I mean, it is a laptop, woman, not a puppy!

Yeah, so it has another positive thing besides being cute, it does not lick you!

This is a post about the tiny Asus laptops for all audiences. Check what is the first question that pops in your head when you hear someone say “I just bought myself an EEE” and you will know the group you belong to:

1. eee… eeeh… what?
2. wow! so, is it as cool as they say it is?
3. I see, so which one did you get? what are the full specs? Anything else I should know about that model?

The answers for the eee… eeeh… what? people:

This is an Asus Eee laptop.

Well, not any Eee laptop, but our own Eee PC Yup, the pen is also mine and it shows you how tiny the Eee is And it weighs less than a kilo and a minute after taking it out of the box, you can already start working (with OpenOffice.org or GoogleDocs or Paint…), surfing the net (Firefox is there, Skype, Pidgin -the Linux MSN equivalent-, and Thunderbird as well) or even playing solitaire or with a Mr. Potato. And why did we buy it you ask? Well, it will be a better traveling companion than my 3 kg laptop which makes me walk around airports worse than the Hunchback of Notre-Dame did. Oh and the first answer I gave my mother when she asked the same question is also true: because… they had it in the shop…

The answers for the wow! so, is it as cool as they say it is? people:

Yup! So far… Do you want the pros and the cons? Ok:

Pros:

1. Yes, it weighs less than 1 kg.
2. The 7′ screen although small, actually displays a lot more/better than I expected.

   

3. Setting it up is like no time. Seriously, I think it took us about 2 minutes to be at the screen where you can open Firefox already.
4. The kiddo-laptop connected to wireless without a glitch and we were able to download and install the newer version of skype (to be able to use the built-in camera) within a minute.
5. If yous mess up the system, you can restore the whole laptop back to factory settings in under two minutes. In jkOnTheRun they even have a video showing you how quick it is!
6. It boots in 30 seconds and powers off in 12! Yes, I timed both processes.

Cons:

1. The keyboard IS small. I have problems most of all with pressing the Shift button. Look at the following image:

   

   You can see how small the keyboard is, compared to a “normal-size” one. I have placed a 1 cent coin on the letter D on both keyboards so you can see the relative sizes better. Oh, the mouse is a small-mouse as well (which did not come with the Eee).

2. ZoltarStark thinks the display organization with the buttons in the main screen to open Firefox, Spreadsheets, etc is not very efficient if you’re a power user since you need to point and click instead of selecting items from a menu.

   

3. The laptop seems to be designed with Windows users in mind and it has the same folder architecture as Windows Explorer with My documents folder and so on set up by default. Even worse, though, is that it asks you to reboot the laptop after every software update, like Microsoft does. Then again, with a total of 40 seconds required per reboot, it’s not as bad as it could be.

The answers for the I see, so which one did you get? what are the full specs? Anything else I should know about that model? people:

We bought the Asus Eee PC 4G. For those of you that don’t know the difference between the Eee versions, check out this table. As a summary, all four models have a 7′ display and Linux pre-installed (with the number of software applications varying depending on the disk size), Ethernet, WLAN, built-in speaker and microphone, and weigh 0.92 kg. They all have three USB 2.0 ports and a MMC/SD (HC) card reader slot. Furthermore:

Update (17th April 2008): A review just came out on the “big” brother of the Asus Eee 7″ laptop, the Asus Eee PC 900 (as in 8.9″ ~ 9 inch screen). It seems it has the same CPU, but 1GB of RAM to start with, and 20GB of storage if you buy the version running Linux (there is Eee 900 version running Windows XP, for the same price, that has 12 GB of space instead). I am starting to save to get my ASUS 700 Eee a big brother

Related post(s)

• Skype 4.0 for Windows is out: Pros and cons (compared with Linux Skype 2.0) (1)
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What can you do now? One suggested approach is to use some kind of USB over IP solution. That does involve spending some money though. USB over IP devices are about €300, a well known example are products from Digi International. Unfortunately I didn’t find any device of this type which would work with Linux clients so this looks like a bad direction to go even if it was cheaper. Another solution mentioned is using a software version of USB over IP. Again, they mostly support Windows clients. I was able to find only one that includes a Linux client – USB Server. At this point it’s in beta so it could be unstable – better test it before you use it on a production system. It includes a kernel driver (released under GPL 2) and binary only programs for the client and the server. It’s not a perfect solution since you still don’t know what’s inside of these binaries.

There are also people working on a similar solution in USB/IP Project. According to them “It is still at a *very* early development stage.” and is not stable.

I’ll try out these options and report here my findings. In the meantime if someone has experiences with any of these two solutions please comment and let us know.

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I think I should start with a redundant file system to be free from depending on the 100% availability of a file server. The redundant file system should possibly be clustered so extra redundancy can be provided for the services and load balancing where necessary.

I’m not sure how to go about it in an efficient way. I’d like to hear from anybody who’s done something like this before and is willing to share their experiences.

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To find out how many inodes are there in a folder or web hosting account, there are three ways. Whether one or another are possible, or all three, will depend on your web hosting provider.

Option 1. Submit a ticket

This one is easy and only takes as long as your provider’s support takes. Just ask them for an inode report on your account. Hostgator complied within 4 hours, and that was for three different accounts.

Advantage of this method: little effort and you don’t have to learn any commands.
Disadvantage of this method: if you haven’t been warned of being above the inode limit, you might be calling their attention to your account unnecessarily. Furthermore, you depend on others to know the number of inodes.

Option 2. Via ssh

If your provider allows you to ssh to your account, then once you are connected, all you have to do is type the following:

find . -printf "%i\n" | sort -u | wc -l

Advantage: quick (it can take 20 seconds to count 10,000 inodes).
Disadvantage: not all web hosting providers allow you ssh access. In Hostgator, for example, you can ask for ssh access but you need to give them a copy of your photo id.

Option 3. Via ftp

This can’t be done using FileZilla or similar. From a Linux machine you must open a terminal and:

1. First make sure you have the curlftpfs package installed. Depending on your Linux distribution it can be as simple as running (as super-user)
   yum install curlftpfs
2. Then you have to create the directory where you want to mount the ftp connection to your hosting account.
   mkdir ftp-domain-folder
   where ftp-domain-folder is the name of the directory you chose.
3. After that you connect to your account.
   curlftpfs -o user=xxxx:yyyy ftp://domain-name.zzz/ ftp-domain-folder/
   where xxxx = user name and yyyy = password.
4. And you run this command to count the inodes.
   find ftp-domain-folder/ | sort -u | wc -l
5. Finally, unmount the folder (requires super-user priviledges):
   umount ftp-domain-folder/

Advantage: you can do it from your computer, quite easy, no need for ssh,…
Disadvantage: it takes quite a bit (over an hour to count 10,000 inodes) and you need to run the commands from a Linux computer.

To check the total number of inodes, if you don’t have ssh access, I would suggest using option 1. Once you know the total number, you can use option 3 to find out the inode count in folders within your hosting account. Each individual folder will not have as many inodes as the whole account so the command will take less time. For example:

find ftp-domain-folder/mail/ | sort -u | wc -l

where mail is the folder where all your email accounts and emails are, or:

find ftp-domain-folder/public_html/folder-name/ | sort -u | wc -l

to check the inodes inside a folder in your account. This way you can check if you have erased enough files if you were reaching the limit.

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Usually the Windows PCs store the user profiles on the server. Backing the user profiles can then be done as part of backing up the whole server. You might have some other files though which are not part of the user profile. Backing up these files can be easily done using rsnapshot and autofs.

We’ll use autofs to setup file sharing between the Windows PCs and the Linux server. This is especially useful for computers which are not always connected to the network like laptops, although people do turn off their desktops as well from time to time. What autofs allows us to do is to activate file sharing only when it’s needed for the purpose of doing a backup.

Performing the actual backup will be done using rsnapshot. This tool, which I already mentioned in a previous post, allows space efficient backups which are stored incrementally while offering ease of access usually associated with full backups.

Before setting up autofs we need to create a network share on the Windows PC. Remember the user and the password since we’ll need them later on. In this article I’m going to assume the user name is backup and the password is secret but you should use something more difficult to guess depending on your security requirements. I’m also assuming the Windows domain is called company. On the Linux server you then need to make sure you’ve got autofs installed. Installation of autofs is not covered here but usually it’s as simple as executing yum install autofs. You need to edit /etc/auto.master file and add this line

/smb /etc/auto.windows --timeout=60

Then you create the file /etc/auto.windows containing the following, in a single line:

<share> -fstype=smbfs,
credentials=/etc/auto.windows.<credentials file>,
uid=<user>,gid=<group>,
fmask=0755,dmask=0755 ://<windows PC>/<network share>

This must be written on a single line, with no separating spaces starting from -fstype to dmask=0755

<share> is the name of directory where you want to mount the network share from Windows PC.

/etc/auto.windows.<credentials file> is the name of file where you store the user name and password needed to access the network share on Windows PC. In our case it will look like this:

username = backup
password = secret
domain = company


After these preparations it’s time to tell the autofs daemon about these changes by executing service autofs reload or a corresponding command. You should be able now to see that the network share gets automatically mounted when you execute ls /smb/<share>. After 60 seconds the share will be unmounted.

Now the last part – setting up rsnapshot. Just follow the instructions for rsnapshot as if the directory /smb/<share> was local. Thanks to autofs, rsnapshot doesn’t need to know that it’s really on a different computer running Windows. Remember to set up a cron job if this is your first time you’re using rsnapshot.

That’s it. You’ve configured an automatic backup of a Windows computer using Linux. You can repeat this procedure on further Windows clients.

P.S. Another approach is described here but it has the drawback that it requires installing additional software on the Windows PCs.

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