[DC LoCo] On vacation... Hoping for a "substitute teacher / troubleshooter"

[Greg Reagle]

On 08/05/2011 09:03 PM, Kevin Cole wrote:
> 2) Simple Backup (sbackup)... not simple enough.  According to Jerry,
> it now is leaving corrupt files around.  Also, there seems to be, at
> least occasionally, an issue with permissions where it backs up
> something he has ownership of, but then tells him he can't look at it.
>   It backs up to the external hard drive (connected via USB cable). Are
> there either (a) ways to tame it or (b) "simpler" backups?  I didn't
> want to get into constructing a cron / rsync script, particularly
> since it's not really a user-friendly solution, but if someone else
> knows of a good package or has the savvy to construct a user-friendly
> system and will make a house call, that would work.  DON'T try to send
> a solution via e-mail as you'll just end up frustrating both yourself
> and Jerry.  I'd also say that even over the phone, you're asking for a
> heap of trouble.

I don't have any experience with sbackup.  The only major experience with Linux backup solutions that I have is tar and rsync.  I've found that rsync works wonderfully.  I much prefer the command-line to GUIs.   One notable exception to this is that I love the GUI k3b for burning CDs.

I understand that writing rsync and cron scripts is not user-friendly.  I know that getting the crontab syntax (those darn columns) and shell script syntax right can be tricky.  However, I also know that once it is set up properly and tested, it works really really well--reliable, efficient, great.  I also know that this kind of solution creates a dependence on an expert (i.e. someone who knows his/her way around a cronjob and shell script) to initially set up, and to troubleshot, if the need arises.  I have mixed feelings about this.  On the one hand, I can understand that this can be interpreted as dis-empowering; letting the naive end user do as much as possible without help is a good thing.On the other hand, specialization is the way of modern civilization--we have doctors and car mechanics for good reason.

I know from experience using it in MS Windows, that Dropbox is a good user-friendly really easy to use backup GUI.  Would that work for Jerry?  Since it is Internet based, I don't recommend it for large amounts of data  (e.g. videos, music, photos).  I also don't trust it for private information (unless it is already encrypted of course).

-- 
Greg Reagle
System Administrator
Center for Economic and Policy Research
reagle at cepr.net
http://www.cepr.net/