[kwlug-disc] GUI Backup Software

[unsolicited]

Khalid makes good points. In the end, it is inevitably going to be 
command line. It just is. e.g. They have to run whether or not a desktop 
is up, if the script even has permission to put anything on that user's 
desktop at the time. And for any users to really help you in this area, 
you're going to have to give them sudo or root access. (Whether that's 
an issue for you is up to you.)

I believe I've seen some rsync gui's that could be helpful for putting 
out the command line for you. Your command line script could then call it.

The most significant thing I've found with backups is making sure you 
have a good alert mechanism upon failure. (For me, success too, as I 
like to see that it ran - so my scripts put a popup regardless, and the 
error log in kwrite if there is an error.) Backups are only useful if 
they run, successfully. And many fiddly bits seem to be able to get in 
the way. There are various script bits necessary to make those popups 
happen. Logs out to e-mail (group?) are useful too, but such can bury 
people into background noise.

The most successful backups I've seen mirror disk contents elsewhere on 
the net. (Then backup from there to something more backupy.) Such let's 
knowledgeable users get stuff back accidentally deleted, which seems to 
be the most frequent issue to address. Other than backups (running 
successfully at all).

It would help us if you could give us a sense of the nature of the help 
they will be giving you. e.g. Backup failure and addressing is different 
than just digging out an accidentally deleted file.

Seems to me Amanda is the most popular / comprehensive backup tool out 
there (other than rsync), but has a non-trivial back end setup burden to it.

'aptitude search backup' also reveals backup-manager, backuppc, sbackup, 
and many more.

Your question is made more complex when you get into number of replicas, 
rotation, maintenance, frequency, archive off to removable media or not, 
and ... lots more.

I use rsync and scripts, including calling mondo-archive to image system 
partitions. I don't archive off, just burp last night's archive to a 
replica before taking tonight's backup. (Leaving original files in 
place, so I have 3 days to catch something accidentally deleted before 
its gone forever.)

YMMV.

GL&HF!

On 14-06-11 10:32 AM, Khalid Baheyeldin wrote:
> Is this for a regular scheduled backup?
> If so, then it should be a cron job, and no need for entering any commands.
>
> Unless you are trying to list the contents of previous backups, or
> selectively extract files from?
> If so, then there are multiple GUI thingies that can read the archives (for
> example, tar.gz), e.g. on KDE it is included by default with Dolphin.
>
> Also, if you want to stay with rsync, then there is lucky backup, which is
> in Debian/Ubuntu repositories. Here is the description:
>
> Version: 0.4.6-1
> Priority: optional
> Section: universe/utils
> Maintainer: Ubuntu Developers <ubuntu-devel-discuss at lists.ubuntu.com>
> Architecture: amd64
> Uncompressed Size: 1,294 k
> Depends: libc6 (>= 2.2.5), libgcc1 (>= 1:4.1.1), libqtcore4 (>=
> 4:4.7.0~beta1), libqtgui4 (>= 4:4.5.3), libstdc++6 (>= 4.2.1),
>           luckybackup-data (= 0.4.6-1), rsync, menu
> Conflicts: luckybackup
> Description: rsync-based GUI data backup utility
>   luckyBackup is an application that backs-up and/or synchronizes any
> directories with the power of rsync. Its main features are:
>   backup, safety, synchronization, exclude/only include options, allows
> custom rsync options, remote connections, restore and dry-run
>   operations, scheduling, profiles and command line mode.
>
>   It is simple to use, fast (transfers over only changes made and not all
> data), safe (keeps your data safe by checking all declared
>   directories before proceeding in any data manipulation ), reliable and
> fully customizable.
> Homepage: http://luckybackup.sourceforge.net/
>
>
>
> On Wed, Jun 11, 2014 at 10:23 AM, Joe Wennechuk <
> youcanreachmehere at hotmail.com> wrote:
>
>> I need a good Opensource GUI based backup solution. We have a bunch of
>> rsync scripts currently, and they work for the most part, but I need to get
>> some other people to help me with the backups, and they are not command
>> line people.
>>
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