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[Madison Kelly]

Fraser Campbell wrote:
> On Thursday 06 May 2004 14:27, Madison Kelly wrote:
> 
> 
>>Fraser Campbell wrote:
>>
>>>On Tuesday 04 May 2004 19:40, Madison Kelly wrote:
>>>
>>>>  Does anyone either know of a similar script that does this that I can
>>>>hack up and study or does anyone have any helpful advice they think
>>>>might help me if I do end up having to write this from the ground up?
>>>>Thanks!!
>>>
>>>I am wondering why you're choosing to do this through a web interface?
>>>
>>>What is the actual required goal?
>>>
>>>A web interface may be the most appropriate way to do this but I don't
>>>enough information to know this for sure, there are many ways to skin a
>>>cat.
>>
>>Humm, I'll probably catch flak for this but my personal philosophy is
>>that making everything accessible via a web front end is both the best
>>way to go and the future trend of program interface. Add to that the
>>fact that a user will likely feel less apprehention is the feel of the
>>program is similar to a web page, something even novice users use daily.
>>Also the ability to make something available remotely and independant of
>>the client OS is very, very attractive.
>>
>>I realize that right now it probably isn't the easiest possible root but
>>there are also practical benefits, too. Some of the client machines are
>>Linux, some are Windows and some are Mac. This allows me to roll out a
>>Linux-based solution without forcing the user to switch OS or even learn
>>how to use Linux, for that matter (though I would love for them to learn
>>anyway I don't want to push the issue). If they do switch later then
>>there is absolutely no learning curve for them on this program.
>>
>>Maybe my logic is flawed but it's what I have to work with ;).
> 
> 
> Your logic might be flawed but since you didn't answer my questions how can I 
> tell ;-) ;-)

Sheesh, tough crowd!

   Okay, in essence I am writting a program that used an external hard 
drive chassis connected via USB2.0 and supporting removable drive 
carriers. I've pretty much finish building in sanity checks, safety 
measures and the hardware scanning code so that I can find my 
partitions. This allows the user to select which partition will be a 
source (thus only ever used read-only) and destination (used read/write).

   Once the source and destinations are defined I want the user to then 
be able to list the files and folders on the source to be backed up and 
then when ready copy said files to an available destination partition 
(and clearing space on the destination when needed). Conversly I want 
the user to be able to search for backed-up files while media is on or 
offline and report what matches are stored where and their particulars. 
Then from either the search results or from a manual browse of the files 
and directories on the destination media build a list of files to recover.

   Now, the immidiate user has a Linux server (Samba PDC, etc) but they 
themselves don't have a lot of Linux experience (or technical experience 
on any OS for that matter). So, My plan in using the web front end was 
to provide a familiar (and therefor comfortable) front end that can also 
be accessed from the workstation of the person who will be responsible 
for the backups without them needed to physically go to the server 
(which is in an ackward place) except to swap media. This would also 
make it easy to help the client remotely when needed by opening a 
temporary port into Apache through the firewall and then loggin in myself.

Madison



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