Startup And Feature Suggestions

Asked by ivo welch

I am switching from OSX to ubuntu 12.04, so I am an experienced but novice user with a fresh eye. backintime was among my first programs to install, with OSX TimeMachine as my base comparison. for the record, I like both of them, though neither is perfect. here are some of my observations:

1* it is not clear whether backintime is backing up even if a backintime window is not open. it would be nice if this was clear from the get-go. do I need to set up a daemon, or does backintime start a daemon by itself? (could it ask for permission or indicate it on first startup and/or with a "daemon running" message on the right.)

2* in the same vein, it would be nice if there was a nice "health status" on the window, too, that points me to past errors (e.g., files it failed to backup, a time to the last interval that exceeds the schedules, etc.)

3* I had some problems with aborted backups earlier, when a nautilus-actions file in my home directory stopped it---or did it abort? (i.e., did the backup continue or abort? it really should continue, not abort!)

4* TimeMachine prunes regularly. Does backintime prune ever/based on disk usage/on a given schedule, or will my 5-minute changes overrun the directory limitations on ext4?

5* it would be great if the restore method could show files that are still the same as those on the main backedup partition in light-gray instead of in black. obviously, I don't need to restore them to begin with. Usually, I really want to restore only the files that I have lost.

6* the "View Snapshot Log" is great---and would be even better if I could click and restore files from it. right now.

there are many great things about backintime relative to TimeMachine, too. right-clicking on a file in the restore window to bring up a list iof histories is great...but it would be even greater if it were smart enough to remove duplicates (and just display them as (from day x to day y)). the left window in the Snapshots (well, the entire interface really) is much more useful than TM, too.

/iaw

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Dan (danleweb) said :
#1

Hi,

1. BIT don't run as a daemon. It use cron jobs (cron is running as a daemon).

2. BIT don't suppor pause/resume/abort for the moment

3. You can configure the purge: on / off and for on you have different rules (base on time, disk-space)

4. You can compare files & folders (from BIT) between snapshot or a snapshot with "now".

5. Good point

6. in the history dialog you can select to show only "really different" items (there is a quick method based on date and a "deep" one who really compare files).

Regards,
Dan

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ivo welch (ivo-welch) said :
#2

hi dan:

1. I am flying blind here. I don't know whether the cron job has run on schedule. I don't even know in which cron directory the BIT job was entered on my ubuntu 12.04 system. it doesn't seem to be in /etc/crontab, and with a 5-minute schedule that I selected, there is no /etc/cron.5min/ directory, either. for example, right now, my last backup happened at 11am (when I rebooted). not sure why nothing since then. do I have to restart it by hand after a reboot?

I think BIT would be much better if it could tells users the status of the background backup system.

2. I think BIT aborted on my initial backup when it had file reading trouble. I wouldn't abort, or get fancy with pause/resume, but simply ignore failures and continue, telling about failures only at the end. I think this may be under "Options" (continue on errors)

(numbering may be off, so I don't think I understand your answers): configuring prune is great and much better than TM. greying would be nicer than viewing differences on demand ("now").

regards,

/iaw

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Dan (danleweb) said :
#3

I put a number for each subject but it is possible I did it wrong :)

1. You can gen more information about cron from it's man page or wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cron
Each user can have a crontab file in it's local folder. When BIT runs it tries to show a "notification icon". I think Unity interface don't show them. Also if BIT runs as a different user if may not be able to show this notificaiton icon. I will try to swith it to another notification mechanism ... not it is not done yet.

2. You are right "Continue on errors" keep a snapshot even it there are some errors inside.

Regards,
Dan

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ivo welch (ivo-welch) said :
#4

thanks, dan.

can you please help me just a little bit? I can successfully generate snapshots by hand, but I don't know where the cron job is supposed to be.

when in "Settings / General", there is a Schedule Settings . what exactly does changing this setting do? to what cron file does it write its request to be invoked? it's not in /etc/, and I cannot see any *cron* file anywhere in my /home/ hierarchy, either.

(or do I need to create a cron entry myself? but if this is so, then what does the Schedule Settings do?

best,

/iaw

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Best Dan (danleweb) said :
#5

Cron is a daemon who execute commands at a specified date + time.
In /etc/cron (or something like this) you have global settings.
Each user can set it's own entries but this are stored somewhere else. To manage them you can use the command "crontab" (you can get more informations from crontab man page). BIT use this command to schedule snapshots.
You can run "crontab -l" to show all commands (and their schedule) for your user.

Regards,
Dan

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ivo welch (ivo-welch) said :
#6

yes, I did not know that crontab did not simply use a file in the user directory.

for some reason, after I edited the file (with crontab -e -u me ) and saved it, it suddenly worked again. go figure.