tips for internet backup

[straz]

I learned a few things about Internet backup on my own and with some help (thanks natew), so I thought I'd just share with the rest of the class, and make a request (at the end).

 

I have two physically distant Macs, both behind firewalls. I'm backing up Mac A using Retrospect 5.1 to an Internet backup set (via ftp) on Mac B.

 

Here's the first tip (1) - if you need to manage a remote Mac, use a remote desktop tool like Timbuktu or vnc over ssh. Then you can launch and configure Retrospect on the faraway machine by grabbing its screen/mouse/kbd.

 

As previously described ( see posting ) the backup set is huge, so (2) I created the first backup locally on an external firewire drive, using Internet backup from Mac A to Mac A. (3) Although it's a local copy, do not use 127.0.0.1 or localhost as the server name. Use the machine's address (ie 192.168.0.5 or whatever).

 

This ended up being 14 GB. I'm glad I didn't try running this over my DSL. I figure it would take roughly 3 weeks to run a backup over broadband.

 

After moving the external firewire drive back to Mac B, I changed the backup set using Configure/Backup Set/Configure/Internet. At this point, it seemed to fail to connect. I knew that Mac B's firewall was open at port 21 (ftp) so I didn't think that would be the problem.

 

I tried running ftp from a shell on Mac A. I could log into Mac B fine, and sure enough Mac B's error logs (/var/log/ftp.log) showed no errors. Surely ftp was working fine. That is, until I tried 'ls' within ftp. You get something like this:

 

Code:

---

ftp> cd Desktop

250 CWD command successful.

ftp> ls

229 Entering Extended Passive Mode (|||50914|)

500 Illegal EPRT command rejected

200 PORT command successful.

 

421 Service not available, remote server timed out. Connection closed

---

 

(4) The solution: open up both port 20 and 21 on the firewall for the server (Mac .

 

An even better solution would be if Dantz offered sftp or scp for Internet backup.

ftp is very old, crufty, and insecure, and all this active/passive stuff is for the birds.

Dantz, would you please consider adding sftp or scp?

 

thanks!

[hesspaul]

Hi Straz,

 

I have the exact same problem ("extended passive mode") but opening up ports 20 and 21 didn't change anything. I'm wondering if the ISP (Cox Cable) is somehow doing additional blocking. Any thoughts?

 

- Paul

 

p.s. Searching the web I found I can bypass the problem from the command line with the two commands:

 

> epsv4

> passive

 

... but no way to get Retrospect to do that automatically.