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Features
Backup Software
The repository I used had version
0.33, so I downloaded and installed
that (although v0.4.1 is current). The
source code is available, but various
Linux distributions have compiled
packages.
Describing itself as a backup and
synchronization tool, luckyBackup
uses rsync, to which it passes various
configuration options. It provides the
ability to pass any option to rsync, if
necessary. Although it’s not a clientserver
application, all it needs is an
rsync connection to back up data
from a remote system.
When you define which files and
directories to back up, you create
a “profile” that is stored under the
user’s home directory. Profiles can be
imported and exported, so it is possible
to create backup templates that
are copied to remote machines. (You
still need the luckyBackup binary to
run the commands.)
Each profile contains one or more
tasks, each with a specific source
and target directory, and includes the
configuration options you select [Figure
2]. Thus, it is possible to have
different options for different directories
(tasks), all for a single machine
(profile).
Within a profile, the tool makes it
easy to define a restore task on the
basis of a given backup task. Essentially,
this is the reverse of what you
defined for the backup task, but it is
very straightforward to change options
for the restores, such as restoring
to a different directory.
Scheduling of the backup profiles is
done by cron, but the tool provides a
simple interface. The cron parameters
are selected in the GUI; you click a
button, and the job is submitted to
cron.
A console, or command-line mode,
allows you to manage and configure
your backups, even when a GUI is
not available, such as when connecting
via ssh. Because the profiles are
stored in the user’s home directory, it
would be possible for users to create
their own profile and make their own
backups.
Although I would not recommend
it for large companies (no insult inrectory),
finding the right location for
a given file can be a nightmare. Even
if you are dealing with just a few systems,
administration of the backups
can become a burden.
This leads into the question of how
easy it is to recover your data. Can
you easily find files from a specific
date if there are multiple copies? How
easy is it to restore individual files?
What about all files changed on a
specific date?
Depending on your business, you
might have legal obligations in terms
of how long you are required to keep
certain kinds of data. In some cases,
it might be a matter of weeks; in
other cases, it can be 10 years or longer.
Can you recover data from that
long ago? Even if it’s not required by
law, having long-term backups is a
good idea. If you accidentally delete
something and don’t notice it has
happened for a period longer than
your backup cycle, you will probably
never get your data back. How easy is
it for your backup software to make
full backups at the end of each month
– for example, to ensure that the media
does not get overwritten?
Scheduling
If your situation prevents you from
doing complete backups all the time,
consider how easy it is to schedule
them. Can you ensure that a complete
backup is done every weekend, for
example?
Also, you need to consider the scheduling
options for the respective tool.
Can it start backups automatically? Is
it dependent on some command? Is it
simply a GUI for an existing tool, and
all the operations need to be started
manually? Just because a particular
operating system has no client does
not mean you are out of luck: You
can mount filesystems using Samba
or NFS and then back up the files.
rsync
Sometimes you do not need to look
farther than your own backyard.
Rsync is available for all Linux distributions,
all major Unix versions, Mac
OS X, and Windows. With a handful
of machines, configuring rsync by
hand might be a viable solution. If
you prefer a graphical interface, several
different graphical interfaces are
available. In fact, many different applications
rely on it to do the backup.
The rsync tool can be used to copy
files either from a local machine to
a remote machine or the other way
around. A number of features also
make rsync a useful tool for synchronizing
directories (which is part of its
name). For example, rsync can ignore
files that have not been changed since
the last backup, and it can delete files
on the target system that no longer
exist on the source. If you don’t want
existing files to be overwritten but
still want all of the files to be copied,
you can tell rsync to add a suffix to
files that already exist on the target.
The ability to specify files and directories
to include or exclude is very
useful when doing backups. This can
be done by full name or with wildcards,
and rsync allows you to specify
a file that it reads to determine what
to include or exclude. When determining
whether a file is a new version
or not, rsync can look at the size
and modification date, but it can also
compare a checksum of the files.
A “batch mode” can be used to update
multiple destinations from a
single source machine. For example,
changes to the configuration files can
be propagated to all of your machines
without having to specify the change
files for each target. Rsync also has a
GUI, Grsync [Figure 1].
luckyBackup
At first, I was hesitant to go into details
about luckyBackup [1], because
it is still a 0.X version and it has a
somewhat “amateurish” appearance.
However, my skepticism quickly
faded as I began working with it.
luckyBackup is very easy to use and
provides a surprising number of options.
Despite its simplicity, lucky-
Backup had the distinction of winning
third place in the 2009 SourceForge
Community Choice Awards as a “Best
New Project.”
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