saf - "one backup is saf, two are safe, three are safer"

[dpx]

saf is a simple, reliable, rsync-based, battle tested, well rounded backup system, written in Python.

It uses rsync to incrementally back up your data to a different directory, hard disk or remote server via SSH. All operations are incremental, atomic and optionally possible to resume.

saf is using very limited set of commands in the background, so it plays well with storage shells with limited set of commands, like Hetzner Storage Box.

Main backup code is used in production for many years and has proved its reliability, while recent saf updates only improve user facing commands. No guarantees but should be safe to use.

https://github.com/dusanx/saf

Contributors welcome.

[freshminted]

"Three backups, Two different media, One offsite."

[dpx]

Soon with time machine like browsing trough revisions on any locally backed up folder, to easily restore or compare any file. Initially in https://vifm.info/ as Lua plugin, fully integrated.

Contributors are welcome to:
- Improve code
- Improve documentation
- Package saf
- Plugins for other file managers are welcome. I use Vifm so can't maintain too many plugins.

Who's with me?

@freshminted: fully agreed, more of them and more diverse the better.

[dpx]

As announced before, saf 0.16 is now available at https://github.com/dusanx/saf

This version adds "saf revisions" command that will list all the backup directories, scattered across all backups in local backup target, where specified path content differs. In other words it will provide short list of backup folders where content changed, providing easy way to restore files or folders.

Using "saf revisions", there is new Lua plugin for Vifm (https://github.com/vifm/vifm), that provides time-machine like functionality to quickly browse trough backup revisions, then to compare or restore file(s) to the original backup source. Only thing missing is star-field animation (planned), rest of the time-machine functionality is there and working well.

With this update saf will most probably enter much calmer phase, because it has reached target functionality I wanted to achieve. As always contributors, merge requests, and questions are welcome.

[KMD2023]

dpx,

Thanks for this post; saf looks interesting.

I'm especially interested in their statement, "...Each backup source location can have one or more backup target locations, in practice same directory (and its sub-directories) can be backed up to several target locations."

I've been wanting to do that for my home dir backups so I can have two backups in separate storage locations. I currently use Timeshift on its own drive for the system and BackInTime (simple but met my initial needs), for everything else. I want to have a completely different 'backup schedule' and target to basically backup my backup.

Digging into saf's website now, thanks again for the post.

- KMD

[dpx]

I'm especially interested in their statement, "...Each backup source location can have one or more backup target locations, in practice same directory (and its sub-directories) can be backed up to several target locations."

Thanks KMD, yes you can't be too paranoid with home dir. I am currently backing up home to two local disks, one vps, and dirt cheap but good Hetzner Storage Box. I think saf will work well for your use case. Anything I can help with just shout here or on github (I am probably more frequent on github).

dpx