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

[Sivan Green]

On Sun, 2006-05-07 at 20:17 -0400, Lukas Sabota wrote:
> 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.

I greatly appreciate the time you've taken to send this feedback.

>     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.

That is for sure, please let me know - what method of connectivity is
this external hard drive using? does it connect straight to the IDE bus?
if so , that's actually expected limitation, as hubackup currently will
only list removable devices as seen from HAL, if your device directly
connects to the IDE bus, then it won't get listed. This is very easy to
tweak the code to display those devices as well, however trying to make
it bullet proof for the unwary - we need to think how hubackup can do
so, and avoid the accident in which someone uses it to backup to his
local drive, and this drive breaks.

>     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.

Yes, this makes a lot of sense and you're not the only one who has
requested this. Together maybe with a warning dialog "Please make sure
this is external backup target to your PC" style this could cater as
sort of a workaround for the first issue you've mentioned.

>     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.

Agreed and noted. Please take a loot at some new UI mockup glatztor had
done for hubackup, as we are thinking up how to improve for the dapper+1
version [1]. For any other issues that you have wonderfully brought up,
please kindly file them as separate bugs in malone [2] ? They deserve
logging and treatment as full fledged bug reports :) 

>     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!

Nothing could reward me more then your kind and warm words - it really
makes you happy to see someone enjoying a piece of work you have put
thought and effort into, to make it enjoyable by others. The least I
could is approach with serious and thorough consideration every single
bit of feedback and comment you may have. Let's use the fantastic
Launchpad infrastructure to track them and work them out.

Thanks again, 

Sivan

[1]: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/HomeUserBackup/UI
[2]: https://launchpad.net/distros/ubuntu/+source/hubackup/+filebug