Let's make Time Machine

[Q-collective]

I've done some searching recently regarding userfriendly backup applications. Deja-Dup, the current favorite of Ubuntu, earns karma points for simplicity. But it's still not there yet.

Anyone who ever used OS X and its Time Machine backup mechanism, knows that there is nothing quite like it in the other Unix variations. Even stronger: Time Machine pretty much leaves anything else behind it by lightyears in terms of simplicity, yet at the same time being extremely effective in restoring single files if needed.

So, let's start a little community fundraiser here, because no one has felt the urge otherwise to write a Time Machine clone in the past 5 years.

I'm putting down €50 for a community effort. You're welcome to respond if you either want to put in money too or perhaps take up the challenge and start coding.

Discuss.

[Q-collective]

So, over 100 views, but no reply?

I was kinda hoping for some feedback, both from users chipping in with modest amounts of cash and developers interested in making this a reality.

Given to how important backups are and to how subpar the current solutions are in terms of usability, I was expecting some responses by now.

[Wolfador]

Have you checked out http://code.google.com/p/flyback/

I don't think backups of a system are as important now as most of us are using "cloud" storage for all of our files.

[Wolfador]

you can also checkout https://launchpad.net/backintime

sudo apt-get install backintime-common backintime-gnome

you can also mount your Airport Extreme / Time Capsule using http://blog.geekliketodd.com/archives/900

[Q-collective]

I don't think backups of a system are as important now as most of us are using "cloud" storage for all of our files.

Clouds are a nice addon, but for the present time impractical to be used as backup because of the sheer size of the data involved (and therefore the costs) and because it is relatively slow to transmit large amounts of data over the internet (slower than, say, on a USB mounted external HDD).

I'm currently using backintime btw, which isn't too bad I guess.

[Q-collective]

Today, I've found out about Redo Backup & Restore, which is a livecd that simply clones your hard drive to another drive. It is simple and restoring is also pretty straightforward. But I don't believe it is incremental, so it'll just clone your entire drive every time, wasting huge amounts of space on your backup drive. Also, rebooting for a restore is a very good idea, but I'm not too sure about the need for rebooting just to make a backup...

BackInTime meanwhile for some reason does no backups at all on my machine. It pretty much completes the backup and then it simply gives an error that it has failed to backup and cleans the backup again. I wasted hours with that today and I just uninstalled it in the end.

Deja-Dup meanwhile just isn't capable (apparently, please correct me if I'm wrong) to backup your entire drive, in the background, without asking for your password every backup cycle.

So, I still believe there is plenty of room for improvement. Although I was rather impressed by the idea of Redo to simply use a livecd to restore your data. Brilliant in its simplicity. Much easier and more fail safe to do than Migration Assistant in OS X even

[Cpierce]

+1 for redo and also CloneZilla

[BDNiner]

Are you looking for an application that has a similar or innovative interface or a comparable backup solution. I used rsync for the longest time with a script, and fwbackups isn't too bad.

http://www.diffingo.com/oss/

I don't thinkfwbackups has been updated in while.

[Q-collective]

Are you looking for an application that has a similar or innovative interface or a comparable backup solution.

Yes. Backing up should happen in the background, restoring should be easy.

I used rsync for the longest time with a script, and fwbackups isn't too bad.

http://www.diffingo.com/oss/

I don't thinkfwbackups has been updated in while.

Perhaps I overlooked it, but how do you restore with fwbackups?

[Tony Flury]

So, let's start a little community fundraiser here, because no one has felt the urge otherwise to write a Time Machine clone in the past 5 years.

Um - I disagree - I started writing a Time Machine clone, complete with plans to add a time slider into Nautilus if a backup existed on a given folder hierarchy. I stopped after my laptop was stolen, and I realised I did not have a backup of my code to date (oh the irony).

I will start re-writing it pretty soon - I don't need donations (although they would be nice) - but I would need help to do all the change management stuff - I used to be able to wrap my head around it - but it confuses the hell out of me now.

Basic specs (as identified by me) :

1) real time identification of changes (new files, sub-directories, deletions, permission changes) on monitored directories, and config tool to support this.
2) Permanent recorded queue mechanism so that changes are still actioned even over a system shutdown.
3) Backups that are in train when system shutdown are automatically restarted. Simple system to prevent loss of old data on crashes.
4) Discrete compressed backups for each file - not one big archive per system - easy restore and less risk of corruption.
5) Command line queue monitor for admin
6) Command line tools to suspend/restart backups, queueing etc.
7) Panel icon to show status etc.
8) Integration with Nautilus (if possible) to show a "time slider" when backups exist.
9) GUI based config tool.

I have designs for 1 to 5 - and I had working code fragments for 1,2,4 and 5. 6 should be easy. 7 should be too. No idea where to start on 8 - but it was not in my top priority list.

My language of choice for all of this (certainly 1 to 6) was python - it is a language I know and has easy to use libraries for all of the above.