Back in Time

[AZgl1800]

by AZgl1500 » Thu Apr 19, 2018 9:26 am

Cosmo. wrote: ⤴
Thu Apr 19, 2018 4:47 am
My recommendation for backing up your home is Back in Time. Extremely flexible and able to back up automatically.

Got a question on Back in Time:

what value is it, if it won't recognize a USB drive so the backups can be stored off PC?

If I can't keep my backups off PC, then I won't use it.

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by Cosmo. » Thu Apr 19, 2018 9:30 am
This question deserves an own thread with more information (does the drive show in the system / file manager?). So here I only say, that I use an USB (3) drive as backup target regularly with BiT.
_____________________________________________________________________________

and yes, the USB-3 drive is attached, and Nemo sees it, and it is also displayed on the Desktop.





Kernel: 4.13.0-38-generic x86_64 (64 bit)
Desktop: Cinnamon 3.6.7 Distro: Linux Mint 18.3 Sylvia
john@john-TP500LA ~ $

[deepakdeshp]

http://backintime.readthedocs.io/en/lat ... tings.html

[AZgl1800]

http://backintime.readthedocs.io/en/lat ... tings.html

that ended up as useless,

they show an external drive, but it does not work for me.

then as a 2nd thought, I went to the Root/ media ..... and finally it got to the drive.

then started the mess of trying to get it to select the folders, nope, it keeps opening up and wanting to select "files".

enough of that, back to LuckyBackup... it works plain and simple.'
going to uninstall it as useless.
closed

[Cosmo.]

enough of that, back to LuckyBackup.

Your decision. But it sounds, as if you are not really interested.

then started the mess of trying to get it to select the folders, nope, it keeps opening up and wanting to select "files".

Whatever this means. Without a reproducible description nobody can clear the mystery, where "it" wants to select files. Obviously a backup profile needs to know, what you want to backup, in the case, that this is meant.

As you started this thread with a quoted recommendation by me, I do point out: I strongly recommend BiT and it does work as described. Possible questions are definitely answerable, but not without some interest and a proper description of the problem.

[AZgl1800]

I like to investigate everything I see, but when it came to BiT selecting the folders, it just kept opening up and drilling down deeper and deeper.


once you select "Document" it should stop right there and add that to the Profile.

LuckyBackup does.

if I can get it to work, I will use it along with LuckyBackup.... I have a 6TB extUSB HDD drive, so am not concerned over-kill

[Cosmo.]

BiT does this for me also. Just as shown in the first picture of the linked documentation.

[AZgl1800]

Okay guys....

Egg on Face here..... it is called Pilot Error by the FAA, or to a Redneck, it is Cockpit Failure

My first experience with it was sort of overwhelming, but it is running right now.

[AZgl1800]

when it finishes,
I need to name the profile, I think hit a wrong button and that screen disappeared.

[Cosmo.]

Congratulations. I knew, that it will work. I see in the picture by the progress bar at the bottom of the window, that is not only installed and configured, but also working.

[slipstick]

Congratulations. I have been using it for some time and it works very well for me. I have even figured out a use for the different profile capability. I dual boot (actually triple boot with W7, but that's irrelevant) with LM 17.3 and 18.3. I did this in order to make the transition from 17 to 18 easier, so I could take my time setting up 18 and still have 17 to use until 18 was up and running. Now I'm mostly only using 18, but keeping 17 as a backup. When I install 19, it will replace 17 and I will use 18 until 19 is up and running, and the same for 20 and so on. So I have a / and a /home partition for each installation (probably don't need a separate home, but that's the way I started and see no particular reason to change). In addition, I have a Data partition which is shared between the two systems, mounted to /home/Data on each one. I moved my thunderbird profile (xxxxxxxx.default) and my firefox profile (yyyyyyyy.default) to ~/Data/.thunderbird and ~/Data/.firefox (had to whitelist ~/Data/.firefox in the firejail config. file to get that to work) and connected them to the home .thunderbird and .firefox folders by symbolic links. This means I can use my browser and email client just as easily from one system as the other and not worry about syncing the emails or bookmarks.

So for backup, on LM 17, I use the main profile for backing up /home to profile 1, and a Data profile to back up the ~/Data partition to profile 3. On LM18, I use the main profile to back up /home to profile 2 and the Data profile to back up ~/Data to profile 3. The backup drive, an external USB HDD, has three folders, one for each of the three profiles. In addition, I occasionally transfer my BIT backups from the external USB drive to another computer on my network, via ssh as an additional backup. For this, I have written a shell script, launched from a launcher on my desktop.

Code: Select all

#!/bin/bash

# Get menu selection

clear
echo "
Select an option:
1. Update /home snapshots to profile 2 on backup pc
2. Update Data snapshots to profile 3 on backup pc
3. Update both /home and Data snapshots on backup pc
0. Quit
"

read -p "Enter selection [0-3] > "

case $REPLY in
	0)	echo "Program terminated."
		exit
		;;
	1)	echo "Updating /home snapshots (log file is ~/home_snapshot_list)."
		rsync -aAuHXvis --progress --delete --numeric-ids -e ssh --exclude=lost+found /media/steve/Ext_Backup/backintime/steve-Z97X/steve/2/ steve@steve-desktop.local:/home/steve/Backup/backintime/steve-Z97X/steve/2 | tee  ~/home_snapshot_list
		;;
	2)	echo "Updating Data snapshots (log file is ~/data_snapshot_list)."
		rsync -aAuHXvis --progress --delete --numeric-ids -e ssh --exclude=lost+found /media/steve/Ext_Backup/backintime/steve-Z97X/steve/3/ steve@steve-desktop.local:/home/steve/Backup/backintime/steve-Z97X/steve/3 | tee  ~/data_snapshot_list
		;;
	3)	echo "Updating /home and Data snapshots (log files are ~/home_snapshot_list and ~/data_snapshot_list)."
		rsync -aAuHXvis --progress --delete --numeric-ids -e ssh --exclude=lost+found /media/steve/Ext_Backup/backintime/steve-Z97X/steve/2/ steve@steve-desktop.local:/home/steve/Backup/backintime/steve-Z97X/steve/2 | tee  ~/home_snapshot_list
		echo "Finished updating /home snapshots - now starting update of Data snapshots"
		sleep 5
		rsync -aAuHXvis --progress --delete --numeric-ids -e ssh --exclude=lost+found /media/steve/Ext_Backup/backintime/steve-Z97X/steve/3/ steve@steve-desktop.local:/home/steve/Backup/backintime/steve-Z97X/steve/3 | tee  ~/data_snapshot_list
		;;
	*)	echo "Invalid entry" >&2
		exit 1
		;;
esac

echo "Finished"
sleep 10
exit 0