Fwd: HomeUserBackup Feature Specification

[Sivan Green]

On 01:19, Sun 04 Dec 05, John Nilsson wrote:
> What I'm looking for in a backup solution is a way to
> export/import data
> from and to different systems.
> Migrating gconf settings from breezy to dapper f.ex. would
> let me see
> changes in system defaults so that I can minimize my
> personal
> customizations (reducing strange bugs by keeping close to
> the herd is my
> rationale)
>

Basically, when you backup your home directory, you get
exactly that. After a possible recovery of the base system
has been made, restoring from your home backup should
"reapply" all previous settings and gconf settings you had.
As those settings are usually stored as an xml configuration
files under you home dir, merely copying them back there by
the backup process should suffice.

> I also want applications neutral data such as contacts or
> bookmarks to
> be stored in a way so that I can import it in any
> application, not just
> the one it came from.
> Is this something to expect from a backup solution?

I am not sure this should be the responsibility of the
backup program itself. However I can think of the
possibility of having predefined set of programs that backup solution could know
about (evo, thunderbird, mutt, pine, firefox, epiphany ) and then additional to the "regular"
backup of data, ask those programs to export their settings
and stored bookmarks into a comma delimited (or some other
easy and universal storage format) to be stored aside the
backup data.

Then when restoring those, you could use another program
then the original to import those settings.

Sivan