Destroying "only" your home directory (was Re: Newbie question on permissions)

[Chanchao]

On Mon, 2006-04-03 at 20:35 +0800, Michael T. Richter wrote:

> > Nowhere.  Storage is cheap. :)  Tape is dead, and regular users don't
> > have it anyway. Just copy the lot over once a day, once a week,
> > whatever.  Then keep a monthly copy for a couple of months.  It's not
> > that hard?  It's not the ultimate backup solution, but it's good enough for
> > most people I think?
> 
> Let me explain (again) the world according to the end-user.  This time
> let me use my parents as the model.
> 
> My mother lost every photo she ever took (except, thankfully, the ones
> she had burned to CD from her trip to visit me in China) because of a
> typical end-user brain fart.  She had no current backups because the
> backup procedure was too much effort for her.  That would be the one I
> designed for her written in Python.  Why was it too much for her?  A
> whole variety of reasons, but the main problem was that she had to
> think about it and do it.

> Now she backs up religiously.  Why?  Because it's pretty much
> automated.  She bought a USB hard disk (250GB, I think) with a snazzy
> big red button on it.  She plugged it in.  She pressed the button.  Up
> popped some installation stuff.  She then went through a wizard that
> very patiently explained everything to her -- what a complete backup
> was, what a differential backup was, what an incremental backup was
> and asked some intelligent questions about her use.  Fifteen minutes
> after plugging the device in it was configured.  (Needless to say this
> is not a Linux solution given how end-user-hostile the Linux
> development community tends to be.)  

Hey, isn't that exactly what I said? :)  I argued against scripts,
against user interfaces that just try to be a front-end for tar, and in
FAVOUR of just connecting an external harddrive and in FAVOUR of a
wizard that explained stuff!   (As long as it didn't feature Harry
Potter).  Right? :)

Indeed I valued backing up 'at all' over the differential/incremental
stuff, but if there's user friendly software that can talk people
through it then that's obviously the best.

> THAT is what the end-user wants to see.  Something that simple and,
> yet, flexible.  

Yes, agree fully.  

> Not tar files where she has to go hunting for which particular version
> on what particular date.  Not complex command-line utilities that use
> the patented UNIX Mystic Incantations<tm>.  Not half-assed "burn
> yourself a DVD every week"-style solutions.  A full-featured backup
> system that is simultaneously easy to use.

Yes, agree fully. 

> It can be done.  It has been done.  Just not under UNIX.

I'm sure there's Gnomes working on it right now though?  It'll come.

Cheers,
Chanchao