[Fwd: Home User Backup Beta version available for testing from universe.]

[Lukas Sabota]

Hello Sivan!
    Nice work on your backup program!  It's good to see a program like
this being contributed.  But, at your request, here are a few
suggestions.
    First of all, my external hard drive was not detected by the backup
device probe.  In a backup program I would expect external hard drives
to be detected.
    Another important addition would be to allow backup to a particular
path, rather than being limited to the "backup media".  Allowing the gtk
file chooser to choose a path would even allow functionality for network
backup, or undetected media.
    Some users will want to backup other folders besides the home folder
(for example:  /var/www).  Perhaps a two-paned interface of directories
could be added to the backup, with $HOME included by default.
    Your program does allow functionality for including/excluding media
files, which is good, but it gives no indication of what type a file is
a media file (Video?  Audio?  Pictures?  What formats are included?).
Perhaps including a tool-tip providing this information.  Even better, a
more powerful tool that would allow a user to specify what extensions
(or mime-types) to be excluded.
    It really looks like you have put a lot of time and effort in to
this piece of software, and it really shows.  I hope you take my above
remarks into consideration, and please reply with your remarks!  Thanks
again for all your work; it will really be appreciated by the ubuntu
user base!

God bless,
Lukas
    



In reply to:
On Sat, 2006-05-06 at 21:13 +0300, Sivan Green wrote:
> > -------- Forwarded Message --------
> > From: Sivan Green <sivan at ubuntu.com>
> > To: ubuntu-devel at lists.ubuntu.com, ubuntu-users at lists.ubuntu.com
> > Subject: Home User Backup Beta version available for testing from
> > universe.
> > Date: Sat, 06 May 2006 21:02:28 +0300
> > 
> > Hello all,
> > 
> >  As some of you might have noticed, I have been working on [1] for the
> > last couple of months. What was thought to be something that's going to
> > be quick to complete and release, turned out to be a little bit more
> > difficult and challanging then I had originally expected. 
> > 
> >  During the first cycle of development I have bumped into intersting
> > problems, some of which were controlling subprocesses neatly from python
> > - while still wrapped by an interface for client frontends that would
> > protect them from all the gory details using co-routines, thinking up a
> > simple and concise backup approach for users to follow and understand
> > (thanks for Kinnison for his help ont this), and building something that
> > would allow me to replace the underlying implementation easily with none
> > or very few changes to the already existing front end infrastructure.
> > 
> >  The result of this first iteration of development is now available by
> > installing 'hubackup'[2] from universe. I would like to ask anybody who
> > is interested in this to give it a try, reports bugs against the product
> > in LP and let me know if for some reason this does not fit his needs so
> > I can see where more improvements can be done. I'd also like to
> > ecnourage people who are keen to help or interested in development, to
> > take part and send patches if they see fit.
> > 
> >  I would like to get as much testing as I can, then start massive bug
> > fixing. bringing this product to better quality. After having a well
> > tested and proven code base, I would then see further to improving this
> > solution in the following ways:
> > 
> > 1) Use native python bindings at the BackupEngine.py level.
> > 2) Trap all erros, and respond accordignly. Offer retired where
> > applicable.
> > 3) Implement desktop notification support, as was intended for usage in
> > [1].
> > 4) Add support for complete disaster recovery system, from a
> > partitionless system to a backed up snapshto up and running.
> > 
> > This is are the high level goals. A detailed HomeUserBackupNG
> > specification will follow. I'd welcome any comments, feedback and
> > suggestions! (as well as treating some of the untreated already
> > available in the old HomeUserBackup wiki page)
> > 
> > Cheers, and thanks in advance.
> > 
> > Sivan
> > 
> > [1]: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/HomeUserBackup
> > [2]: https://launchpad.net/distros/ubuntu/dapper/+source/hubackup