Hello Everyone,

I am running Linode Debian 4.0

Would it be possible to "map" to my VPS through Microsoft Windows or a Linux workstation? I would imagine this could be done by creating a VPN to my VPS.

If so, what steps would I have to take to accomplish this and what risks would I be taking?

Please keep in mind I am by no means a Linux expert.

if you were using a linux desktop, you could use SSHFS, which is part of the Fuse project <http://fuse.sourceforge.net/sshfs.html>, and wouldn't require anything extra on your linode (it would require fuse and sshfs on your desktop).

Very interesting. I'll set that up on my Linux workstation immediately. Anyone else know how to do something like this on XP for my M$ workstations?

SFTPDrive: http://www.sftpdrive.com/

OverlordQ,

Now that is what I am talking about. Great resource, thanks!

Or just use WinSCP: http://www.winscp.org

--deckert

Anyone know of a free alternative to this? I use WinSCP at the moment, but it doesn't map drives (so it's an extra couple of clicks and a different kind of window).

This may not address your particular needs but it might be worth considering.

I have been using Mercurial (a distributed revision control system) to:

1. backup user-entered data on my linode to my home PC

2. allow for revision control on system configuration files on the linode

3. allow for revision control on various programs I am developing on my linode and allow for simultaneous development and merging with versions of these that I am working with on my PC at home.

what I do is to place a directory tree under mercurial for revision control on the linode and add the files into revision control that I want to track with commands like:

hg init dirname
cd dirname
hg add filenames
hg commit -m "some message"

then on my PC I can clone the data from the linode with a command like:

hg clone ssh://username@linode.ip.address//full/dir/path/dirname

You only need to do the clone once to get the initial copy happening. Once the clone is done you can modify, add, delete files on either your PC or your linode and then on the PC you can:

hg pull

to "pull" changes that have been commited on the linode into the PC's copy, and:

hg push

to "push" changes that have been made and committed on the PC back to the linode.

All of the communications happen over SSH (on the PC mercurial will use putty to do the actual SSH stuff). And if you make changes to the same files in both places mercurial (i.e. hg) will provide you with a merge tool to help sort out any conflicts.

If you only make changes at one end (such as user entry of data into a web site on your linode) then you will never hit a change conflict and you can just keep "hg pull" ing the data back to your PC to back it up.

In theory, if you ever need to blow away your linode and reinstall it, the process of restoring all this data should be pretty straight forward, just do a set of "hg clone" commands on your PC (where the backups are) and set the target as being the directory on your linode you want to recreate.

See http://www.selenic.com/mercurial/wiki/ for more information on Mercurial, to get this installed on your debian linode its just:

apt-get install mercurial

The installation of mercurial on the PC is pretty easy too.


Regards,

Stephen

Interesting method.