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If this feature existed such that my non-computer saavy girlfriend could use it, then I could easily convince her to use Ubuntu on her laptop with the argument that it'd be hard for her to completely mis-place her Thesis as she works on it.
Yes, it's just an interface to existing functionality, I'm really just talking about making this existing excellent functionality more accessible to less intense users.
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I completely agree with this one. The tools are all there. We just need a pretty interface!
Then I can stop keeping my home directory in subversion. :D
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ericvh
wrote on the 29 Feb 08 at 02:00
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Don't take the lame route of copying everything. Use venti - its available for Linux - it just needs a better GUI and setup wrapper.
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AusIV
wrote on the 29 Feb 08 at 02:19
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I'd like to see a good interface to rdiff-backup. What would be really cool would be to have a backup system that could use plugins to map it onto various other backup systems.
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Wouldn't have to copy everything - rsync could be used for that.
Alternatively so could UnionFS.
UnionFS state file:
time_A: [add(doc1_rev1, doc2_rev1)]
time_B: [modify(doc1_rev2)]
time_C: [operation(delete, doc2)]
Time Machine Interface would now have 2 past states to which you could restore:
state B: containing doc1_rev2 and doc2_rev1
state A: containing doc1_rev1 and doc2_rev1
for state B and A, doc2_rev1 is the same file in the filesystem. However doc1_rev1 is a separate file stored in time_A since time_B stores the change - doc1_rev2
That may clarify a little.
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sciurus
wrote on the 29 Feb 08 at 03:32
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The project I've seen that looks best designed is https://wiki.ubuntu.com/TimeVault . Unfortunately, there have been no updates since 2007-10-27.
I think the ideal backup program
* has a nice GUI for restoration like Time Machine
* Monitors directories with inotify
* Makes backups using reverse-diffs (eg like rdiff-backup)
It should not
* Duplicate an entire file when one byte changes
* Have to create hard links for every unchanged file
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I think the control UI should provide an "advanced settings" tab where users could control quotas for sets of and individual directories, restricting file sizes, file types, quantity of free space to reserve, backup frequency, depth of backup history and so on.
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People are thinking way to complicated about this.
Why not make the 'backup' tool a fuse like filesystem mount.
So we get a folder called 'backup' or 'history' in our home-folder. This folder contains a sub-folders per year/month/day/hour
Off course, all of this is virtual. Only the changes have been recorded.
On top of this file-structure we can create all kinds of neat program integrations. Integrate it with editors (show an automatic revision control), file-browsers, etc.
Perhaps, now I think about this, it might be better to put this in /var and make it do the whole file-system as read-only. Then we can also integrate it into synaptics and 'restore' just the installed packages, or the installed packages and configuration (/etc) to some date.
The most important thing will be to seperate the revision technology (so we can improve/update/replace it) and the gui's. We really want integration, not some magic one-size-must-fit-all-tool.
Making it a file-system (mounted readonly) would make it the most easy for programs to integrate this.
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Your idea reminds me of how the distro that ships with the Asus EEE PC is setup - there are two partitions. One is thought of as the "factory" settings partition and is mounted as read-only. That partition has the entire contents of / on it. Then the other partition is mounted via UnionFS on top of the read-only partition. When a change is written to a file on the read-only partition, a copy is created on the user partition and from the file system view, only the changed file stored in the second partition at the same location as the original read-only file is seen. Thus reverting to "factory" settings is as simple as reformatting the "user" partition.
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terra
wrote on the 29 Feb 08 at 06:25
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I think that the Apple Time Machine interface is perfect. Like, really. Perfect. The way it zooms through everything, the ease at which you can just go to it and make it work without reading anything- we NEED a better interface for it. 3d helps. We are seeing lots of 3D these days- why not make it pretty AND purposeful?
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Agreed, however, 3D can be excluding, though progressively less so.
My bigger concern is not just making it flashy for the sake of flash. The only thing I hate more than boring interfaces is flashy totally useless ones. Exhibit A: Aero's window scrolling.
I do think some kind of means of comparing the different saved states near each other is crucial to it's success.
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I am the "Linux buff" at work and as such try to push the benefits of running Linux on the desktop. It can be embarrassing though when you install a patch and the system doesn't start any more (like the X upgrade I think last year). Fortunately I had a tar backup of my filesystem and quickly restored it. A simple time machine utility is absolutely indispensable if Linux is to be taken seriously on the desktop.
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Well put - if the Time Machine UI could interpret one's backups out of the installer's live environment, in a pinch, that'd rock.
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Keep for KDE is a lot like this. It's a front-end to rsync-backup.
Something similar for gtk+ shouldn't be too hard to cook up. I'd take a crack at it but I've never used gtk+ for anything and the gnome HIG stuff would make me insane in about five minutes.
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kaehler
wrote on the 29 Feb 08 at 16:44
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It is simple to make a time machine like function on Linux using rdist and rcs (I have done this already and called it Wayback Machine). Very easy. What I have not done is the GUI. With that it would rock...
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kaehler
wrote on the 29 Feb 08 at 16:47
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Sorry, my above post should be "with rsync and rcs" not "with rdist and rcs" I started using rdist but I manage both Linux and Solaris machines and found that rdist syntax for the two were different. Did not want to maintain 2 versions...
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jelly1
wrote on the 29 Feb 08 at 16:57
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There is already a project for this called flyback but the development lacks, ubuntu could pickup this development and make their own standard backup program
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kaehler
wrote on the 29 Feb 08 at 17:32
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Last time I tried flyback it was doing full backups and taking a lot of disk space. Should only be backing up changed files. Maybe that has changed.
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thed00d
wrote on the 29 Feb 08 at 22:02
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apt-get install backuppc
see http://backuppc.sourceforge.net/
It can use any of the following methods for backup:
rsync+ssh
rsyncd
smb
backuppcd
It's cross platform capable (*nix, OS X, windows)
It's got a great easy to use web front end, that's easy to configure users to only see the machines they use.
I use a little shuttle pc with 3 1T drives that i've got configured as a raid1+spare. I take a live drive out, off site, let the raid rebuild to spare. Swap a drive every other day, works just fine, and I've always got a recent copy of my data off-site off-line.
Just my two cents though, there some other good solutions out there too, like amanda and bru-pro.
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There actually is TimeVault called application that - yes - was inspired by what Apple offers. It's pretty sweet.
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The Time fuctionnality is a good idea but please do not imitate its GUI
As said before, TimeVault and FlyBack has begun the work
Note that this idea is closed to idea #266: Filesystem backup/snapshot system with versioning (ea. Timevault).
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abinoam
wrote on the 2 Mar 08 at 23:12
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rdiff-backup, uses librsync. Creates reverse diffs. It's easy to access something like "how did this file look 3 weeks ago".
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Time Machine has an amazing GUI. Big factor of Time Machine's succes is it's simplicity.
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