Personal Backup Appliance Local Mode User Guide

This is user guide for using Local Mode in PBA, a new feature in version 1.1.0. Local Mode can backup and restore your hard disk without connecting to a PBA server. Instead, backups are stored on a locally mounted volume which could be another local partition or a network volume. The addition of Local Mode makes the PBA client a stand-alone tool.

Getting the client

Download the PBA Client CD ISO here. You can also download the client from a PBA Server.
Burn the PBA Client ISO to a CD.

Running the PBA Client

Boot up the PBA Client CD on the system or VM that you want to backup. You might need to go to your computer's BIOS screen and change the boot order to boot from CD first. It will also be helpful if your network uses DHCP to assign IP addresses. After the system boots up, you'll see a screen that looks like this:
To use Local Mode, type 'local' and press [Enter].


Local Mode Backup

Use the arrow keys to select 'Backup Hard Disk (local)' from the menu and press [Enter].

In this example, I will be backing up to a windows share on my network, but you can use another local partition, an NFS partition, or whatever else you can feed to the mount command.

There are some fields that need to be filled out.

Target Path:
The Target Path is the path where the file will be saved to. If it's another volume as in this example, the Target Path is also the mount point for the volume. If the directory doesn't exist, the script will create it. In my example, the Target Path is '/root/tmp.'

Backup Filename:
The Backup Filename is the name of your backup. In my example above, the Backup Filename is 'ntfs-test.'

Mount Command:
The Mount Command is the full mount command (including switches and arguments) to mount a certain volume, local or remote, to your mount point, your Target Path. The script will automatically mount using this command and run umount when it finishes. If the volume has already been mounted prior to running PBA, you can leave this field blank. In my example above, the Mount Command is:

mount -t smbfs -o username=vmware,password=vmware //192.168.0.131/data/backup /root/tmp

Now it's your turn. Enter in values in the fields that are appropriate for your configuration. When the backup is finished, you will get a message indicating the the backup was successfully completed.

Local Mode Restore

To restore the disk in Local Mode, at the main menu, use the arrow keys to select 'Restore Hard Disk (local)' from the menu and press [Enter]. You will see a screen like this.


You'll need to fill out some fields.


Target Path:
The Target Path is the path where the saved backup is located. In my example, the Target Path is '/root/tmp.'

Mount Command:
The Mount Command field is the same as the Mount Command field for backup. See above.

Now it's your turn. Enter in values in the fields that are appropriate for your configuration. When the restore is finished, you will get a message indicating the the restore was successfully completed.

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