GUI backup tools (was Re: Destroying "only" your home directory)

[Clive Menzies]

On (05/04/06 22:28), Michael T. Richter wrote:
> OK, seriously, here's the real summary:
> 1.  It doesn't seem to be specced out with anything like
> full/differential/incremental/et al backups.
> 2.  It seems to require a whole lot of user intervention for what should
> be mostly automated.
> 3.  It doesn't seem to have browsing the backups for restoration so that
> users don't have to fumble around with potentially dozens of disks to
> find the right version of their files.  (Ideally the browser should
> integrate with Nautilus so that you can seamlessly browse your backups
> and pick just the version you want -- which would imply keeping track of
> disks, file versions and a whole lot of other sophisticated operations.)
> 4.  It doesn't seem to support anything resembling system backups (or at
> the very least system configuration backups).  While the former isn't
> absolutely necessary, the latter pretty much is.
> 
> In short, it's a typical geek's view of what an end-user wants.  This
> despite the proliferation of sophisticated, end user-oriented backup
> applications that could be looked at as a model.
> 
> 
> > Nobody from the Ubuntu team denied that it would be awesome, in fact
> > they think it is so important that a solution is being coded for Dapper.
> 
> 
> A wholly inadequate "solution" that isn't much better than what
> currently exists.
> 
> 
> > Why is this thread than still continuing as if all this hadn't happened?
> > I don't try to be a prick, it's a serious question.
> 
> 
> Perhaps because people--myself included--don't think this "solution" is
> even acceptable, not to mention good?
> 
> What's particularly annoying is that there are some very strong backup
> "back-ends" out there that I can see.  But they're absolutely not suited
> to end-users in the slightest.  A decent GUI written for unsophisticated
> end-users with good "wizards" to get through the most common settings
> issues would really be all that's needed to make them suitable for
> end-users as well.  Instead we get what appears to be a brain-dead
> wrapper around tar/gzip/mkisofs.

I've come in late on this and may be way off target.  I found some
useful links when trying to set up automated, incremental backups using
rsync.  I adapted the various ideas and put some notes up in the
Automatic data backup section:

http://www.clivemenzies.co.uk/selfhelp/FileServer_Install_manual.php

We've been using this for ourselves and clients for over a year and it's
been faultless.

It's not a GUI solution but once it's set up, apart from checking the
log files now and again, it's set and forget.

HTH

Regards

Clive

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