Personal Backup Appliance 1.1.1-RC1

Download it here:

http://downloads.sourceforge.net/pba-vm/Personal-Backup-Appliance-1.1.1-vm-RC1.zip

It's a release candidate. I'd like people to test it before I make it a real release. There's a PXE server, and multicast is supported. Both are accessed through pba-server-console. By default the PXE server is not started.

The kernel served by the PXE server isn't the same as that served by the client CD. It doesn't support SCSI storage and you may have trouble with it on legacy-free systems. Other than that it works. I tested it using VMware machines with IDE storage.

If you have a lab of machines, as many as you can round up, then please help test the multicast feature with different filesystems (NTFS, ext3, LVM). I am uncertain of its robustness.

Good news...I have multicast working

Good news...I have multicast working now on my test version of PBA.

A few notes:

• I need to do lots of testing, and I could use some help. If you have a population of machines in a lab environment, say around ten or so, that you can dedicate to helping me test pxe and multicast, send me an email at rxhui at users dot sourceforge dot net. Please also let me know what operating systems/filesystems you can help test.
  
• For the time being, I'm dropping multicast support of zsplit/unzsplit archives. The only reason you may have zsplit/unzsplit archives is if you created the backup with version 1.0.2. Versions after 1.0.2 use dd for raw backup. I don't think this should be a problem for most people.
• Does anyone want to help with documentation? Not sure exactly what yet, but if someone is interested and motivated, I'm sure I can identify something relevant in PBA that needs better documentation.