HomeUserBackup Feature Specification

[Tristan Wibberley]

Brad Pitcher wrote:
> On 12/1/05, Ian Jackson <ian at davenant.greenend.org.uk> wrote:
> 
>>sbackup doesn't back up to removeable media, which makes it pretty
>>useless for a naive home user.
> 
> 
> 
> I was under the impression that the naive user would like it to save to the
> same hard disk by default, then he wouldn't need to specify the location of
> the removeable media.  I guess I thought he would be more concerned with
> software failure than hardware failure.

My parents are naive users, they couldn't cope with msbackup so I wrote
a script and put it on a DVD (UDF) so they could just double-click it,
and it would wipe out the oldest of the two backups on the disk and make
a new backup (so there is always at least one full backup on the disk).

They immediately noticed the fact that the backup was stored in the same
*room* as the computer, and if there was a fire in the office the backup
would be destroyed. "Shouldn't we keep the backup over the other side of
the house, so we're more likely to have one copy of our files if there
is a fire?" they said.

Keeping a backup on another disk is the smart thing to do, so that
should be made the easiest and most obvious to acheive.



I always thought it would be great to have a backup button on the gdm
login screen (as well as a CD player and DVD player). So a user could
just click on backup and choose a scheme (ie, user1, user2, system,
saved profiles, advanced), give the appropriate password and (if LVM has
made a snapshot for the backup to run from) login and carry on. Backup
is sooo important that user's should see it as a really prominent task
so they really consider it.

-- 
Tristan Wibberley