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Concerns about the Authentication server. |
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Droopy ![]() Buddy ![]() Joined: 08/September/2014 Status: Offline Points: 5 |
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Hi,
I love this program and the way it works. But there's 1 thing that concerns me very much, and that's the authentication server. I'll make backups to at least 3 friends to make sure I have redundancy, but there is still only 1 authentication server. So my concern is that this could be a single point of failure. So the big question is; What happens if the main authentication server is down? Can we still find/connect/backup/restore to friends? Is the authentication server also required for making backups/restore from a local device? Is there a way to run my own authentication server for my own private group? I hope someone is able to answer these questions. Regards, Droopy.
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Droopy ![]() Buddy ![]() Joined: 08/September/2014 Status: Offline Points: 5 |
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Bummer Bump...
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mberickson54 ![]() Pro Buddy ![]() ![]() Joined: 14/March/2015 Location: Seattle, WA Status: Offline Points: 14 |
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I am not an expert, but I presume once the authentication server shuts down, no one can connect anymore. I suspect the backups will continue until BB has to restart and authenticate again.
If you know a buddy and you need to restore, I believe a buddy can restore your files onto a USB drive by going to "Tools->Import/Export", then select "I'm helping a Buddy backup/restore", press "Next", then select "My Buddy is restoring their data..." and then press "Next". For this reason I have two BB accounts and run BB on two separate machines. At the very least I have the other machine to restore from. I hope this helps. |
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bobgrosh99 ![]() Buddy ![]() ![]() Joined: 05/May/2015 Location: dixie Status: Offline Points: 9 |
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Yes, this is a worry for me too. My buddies are in Florida, Alabama, Texas and somewhere on the other side of the world. By concern is tornados and hurricanes, which could wipe out neighbors or even an entire town.
Seems like adding a way to use Google, Microsoft, Skype, twitter or Facebook for account authentication might be a good idea. Having a single vendor for authentication is what got a lot of people using cloud backup solutions into a heap of trouble when four of the ten most popular startup cloud backup solutions folded in the last 5 years. |
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bobgrosh99 ![]() Buddy ![]() ![]() Joined: 05/May/2015 Location: dixie Status: Offline Points: 9 |
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I just spent three weeks testing backup buddy.
EVERY FEATURE I intentionally tried to break it. I couldn't I backed up to USB HDD's as buddy. IT WORKED! I swapped the USB's. IT WORKED! I backed up to 6 remote buddy's with two copies and four copies. IT WORKED! I backed up the music on a radio station, two copies to 6 buddies. IT WORKED! I backed us the photos and articles from a local weekly news mag. IT WORKED! I backed up person collection of 1,300 digitized 35mm slides. IT WORKED! I tested recovery from every backup, including a complete recovery to a guest account onto a removable USB. IT WORKED! I tested backing up live data from a web server, while the data was being edited and on-line. IT WORKED! ( More importantly, it did not interfere with the web server or the editing. ) I tested it on a live radio station that streams audio on the web and has an automation system that was transmitting the files on AM and FM. IT WORKED! I tested it on a 12 year old very slow Dell single core computer I saved from a trip to the dumpster and a brand new quad core, on both of them, IT WORKED! I tested it on XP, Vista, Win7 Ultra, windows 8.0, Windows 8.1 (tablet, laptop and dual monitor desktop). IT WORKED! I tested it on Windows 10 technical preview all the way up to build 10122 on Intel and AMD (64bit) CPUs both as a hardware install and in a virtual machine. IT WORKED! One of the most amazing observations was that, even with the BuddyBackup bandwidth limit options raised or turned off, and BuddyBackup uploading at 2.5mbps, on a single core CPU, the program did not cause any lag or audio/video glitches while the CPU usage was at 95% usage streaming windows media audio to 5 listeners AND encoding/up-streaming live flash video from a webcam, and, I did that test remotely using Teamviewer. I should mention that the PC under test, normally encodes and serves windows media audio streams, and at the same time stream video and audio to livestream.com. The computer is old, overloaded and normally stutters on the audio or video if you simply open a text file while streaming. Yet! Backup buddy was monitoring and backing up a shared local network folder and we watched in amazement as it backed up every change we made on the networked folder. It took only a few seconds to make two off-site backups each time we added a new file. We kept expecting to hear a stutter, pause or glitch in the audio stream. We never did. We repeated the test over and over and couldn't stop giggling we were so surprised. I've tested the top 7 backup programs from a list of 25 most commonly recommended backup programs. NONE of them passed my tests. Currently the only backup solutions I recommend are the ones included with Microsoft and Apple OS's. Backupbuddy was not even on my top 25 list, but a friend mentioned it. The unusual feature of baking up to friends computers, instead of a cloud server peaked my interest. I had to test it. It seems the only stumbling block is the possibility that url for the authentication might go away. I'd like to promote Backup Buddy, but there needs to be a business plan and multiple servers for authentication. How can we make that happen? |
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mberickson54 ![]() Pro Buddy ![]() ![]() Joined: 14/March/2015 Location: Seattle, WA Status: Offline Points: 14 |
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I am at a disadvantage because I use BuddyBackup with my home office server and network. Right now I am at a client's location and cannot respond. Also I am only a user of BuddyBackup and do not know anything about the software providers or system.
Your testing is awesome and highly appreciated. I believe the authentication server is actually tied in to some social networking system like Reddit, which is widely available throughout the Internet and not dependent on the software providers. When I have a chance I will check on your postings and do more research. Unfortunately I am currently in a software development crunch and may not get to it until Sunday. |
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Droopy ![]() Buddy ![]() Joined: 08/September/2014 Status: Offline Points: 5 |
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In the next few days i'll spent some time trying to find out how the authentication process works.
We need to know what happens when the AU server is unavailable, and hopefully i'll find a way to make sure BB keeps working without the "official" authentication server(s). I'll keep you informed. PS: I know the source (or program, or whatever you name it) of BB is SOLD !!! I have contacted the new company and they confirmed this! So if you wonder why the original creator has left us without support, this is your answer. The "new company" told me they have plans making a free and payed version, but to be honest, these plans are >1 year old and it seems like a dead project. |
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Tomdebomb ![]() Pro Buddy ![]() ![]() Joined: 01/August/2012 Status: Offline Points: 11 |
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its a shame about the development as I would probably pay for a white labelled edition of this program.
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Drew1 ![]() Buddy ![]() Joined: 14/July/2011 Location: Canada Status: Offline Points: 3 |
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Who was the buyer of the source code? If the project is dead then maybe we can get them to release it as open source.
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mberickson54 ![]() Pro Buddy ![]() ![]() Joined: 14/March/2015 Location: Seattle, WA Status: Offline Points: 14 |
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I sent this very question to the support contact at the BuddyBackup website. I actually got a response from James Watts at james.watts@databarracks.com the next day on November 7, 2016.
My original question: --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Dear Sirs, Your form at "http://www.buddybackup.com/forum/" is not working. Is there plans to fix this? I started using your software, it works great as advertised. I could become and advent fan. The major concern is that I know you have to have is a central server somewhere that you are maintaining to manage accounts and direct connections between machines. Since you do not charge anything for the service, there is nothing to pay for the operation of the server, therefore like your form it could become inoperable at any time and buddy backup will stop working. How can we be assured that will not happen? What is our recourse if it does? I would be more than happy to pay a modest amount to maintain the server or maintain a server myself. Thanks. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Response from James Watts: --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Hi Michael, Thank you for your email and for alerting us to the issue with the forum. That is now fixed and running again. Thank you also for your kind words about the service. The central server is required to handle the connections between Buddies. BuddyBackup is owned by Databarracks and since we acquired it, we took on the responsibility to make sure the service stays available. We have thousands of users all over the world, so would certainly not want to remove the service or stop it’s availability. We are exploring options for future development of the service and offering an option for users to host their own Supernode server is something we are considering. I have made a note of your interest and we will keep you posted via email about any future developments. Many thanks, --------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
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