Backing up.

[Knapp]

On Sat, Nov 15, 2008 at 9:52 PM, Paul Lemmons <paul at lemmons.name> wrote:
> Paul Lemmons wrote:
>>
>> Knapp wrote:
>>>
>>> Hello, I have been dumb for years and gotten away with it. Now I want
>>> to start backing up my system.
>>> What is the best software for this? Is there a system that backs up
>>> only what you say and then every week or day or whatever does an
>>> incremental backup perhaps linked to cron, so I don't have to think
>>> about it? What is the best software?
>>> Thanks from the backup stupid me.
>>>
>>
>> Looking for something myself I did a little poking around in Google and
>> found a couple helpful pages:
>>
>> Lists options with descriptions:
>> http://linux.about.com/od/softbackup/Linux_Software_Backup_Solutions.htm
>> http://www.foogazi.com/2008/02/25/free-linux-backup-solutions/
>>
>> On the recommendation of the second link above I tried the "Simple Backup
>> Suite"
>>
>> https://help.ubuntu.com/community/BackupYourSystem/SimpleBackupSuite
>>
>> Simple GUI for setup, backup and restore. Scheduled backups. Incremental
>> as well as full. So far it looks OK. I installed it, configured it and
>> started my first backup in about 10 minutes.
>>
>> That said, the backup has not finished and I have not tried to restore
>> yet. I will report back tomorrow.
>
>
> The OP asked for something that was simple and GUI. I thought those were
> simple and reasonable requests. I live in the CLI world. It is what I do for
> a living.  But I really do like it when someone has made something difficult
> easier for me. I would rather spend time with my wife than my computer.
>
> To that end I started looking for something that met that requirement. I
> found a number of options that were partially GUI or were designed for a
> network of computers or were setup to use tapes or DVD's but precious few
> that were simple to setup, execute and restore. These seem like no-brainers
> but I guess us *nix folks are supposed to love spending time with machines
> instead of having a life :)
>
> So, as my original post described, I installed sbackup. So far it has worked
> well. It was a breeze to setup and just as simple to restore files.
> Everything was GUI with a simple to use interface. A simple solution for a
> simple problem.
>
> Pluses:
> - Simplicity
> - Targeted for single user backup
> - Uses disk for backup media
> - Simple Scheduled backups
> - Incremental as well as full backups
> - Backup Files are compressed (tar'ed and gzipped)
> - Backup drive is a USB drive. If it is not mounted it will not try to back
> up.
> - Restores work
> - Can restore to alternate location
>
>
> Minuses:
> - No notification of failure/success
> - No "Unified view" of backup
>  - You must search each backup, full or incremental for your file
>  - Versions exist but not displayed together
> - If there is a problem it dies quietly
> - Does not handle failed permission problems
>  - Runs with root access but even root can not always get to files on a
> network
>  - Program actually crashes when this happens
> - Restores are kinda slow from full backups
> - Backup archive can exceed 4GB so will not work with fat32 drives
>
> Conclusion:
> I am going to keep it and quit looking for now. The simplicity and the fact
> that it directly addresses my need outweighs the minuses.

OP here, thanks for that.

A couple of your Minuses sound a bit scary. I mean, if the drive is
failing and the backup starts failing quietly, does that not kill the
whole reason for having a backup? Knowing me, I could use the failing
disk for a month before I saw the problem and loose a months worth of
data. :-)

What do you mean by, versions exist . . . ?

Slow restore I can live with and hope I never need it anyway.

What do you mean you must search each backup for your file? I though
that you only restored your system when it crashes and then you do the
whole system.

Man, for a programmer, I sure am backup stupid. I live the same world
as the guy that said his drive had not failed in 11 years. Last time I
had a true disk failure was with windows xp (LONG time ago).

-- 
Douglas E Knapp

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