FlyBack: a “Time Machine” backup utility for Linux
For all the linux users that saw the new OSx Leopard and the new backup utility called Time Machine and said “wow”! Now there is FlyBack. For who don’t know what I’m talking about:
Time Machine, like many backup utilities, creates incremental backups of files which can be restored at a later date. It also supports limited restoration of files within applications that are specifically programmed to use Time Machine’s functionality. For more information about Time Machine: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_Machine_(Apple_software)
Now, how flyback work? From the web site:
FlyBack is a snapshot-based backup tool based on rsync It creates successive backup directories mirroring the files you wish to backup, but hard-links unchanged files to the previous backup. This prevents wasting disk space while providing you with full access to all your files without any sort of recovery program. If your machine crashes, just move your external drive to your new machine and copy the latest backup using whatever file browser you normally use.
Note that this means you can selectively delete specific backups and still retain files stored in previous ones. (ie., you can delete Tuesday’s backup and keep Monday’s, without screwing up Wednesday’s)
Install flyback is very easy. You have to resolve some dependencies:
| Debian | $ sudo apt-get install python python-glade2 python-gnome2 python-sqlite rsync |
| Ubuntu | $ sudo apt-get install python python-glade2 python-gnome2 python-sqlite python-gconf rsync |
| Redhat/Fedora | $ yum install pygtk2 gnome-python2-gconf pygtk2-libglade python-sqlite |
After downloading flyback from http://code.google.com/p/flyback and unpacking the tar.gz with the command “tar -zxvf flyback_0.4.0.tar.gz”, enter in the new flyback directory and launch it “python flyback.py”
Screenshot:
It is very simple to configure. You have to choose what folders to backup, how many time etc. Here a screenshot of my configuration
The * mean all the day, months and years. */2 mean to do the backup every 2 hours. For the storage location i use an external hard disk and i do the backup only of my my home folder
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