Linux Cookbook

Good advice about backups

There are many approaches to doing backups. Unfortunately, most of them are some variation of "it's too much trouble". But even if you are doing backups, this article reminds us that Your backup is only as good as your last restore.

Which brings me to another article about backup, this one much more technical and complete, from IBM: Automate backups on Linux. Maybe not everything you need to know about automating your backups, but it's a good place to start if you need to know your backups are being done, and being done securely.

Snapshot backups in Ubuntu, with Timevault

Here's a good one from HowtoForge: Creating Snapshot Backups Of Your Desktop With Timevault On Ubuntu 7.10.

From the TimeVault UbuntuWiki entry:

TimeVault is a simple front-end for making snapshots of a set of directories. Snapshots are a copy of a directory structure or file at a certain point in time. Restore functionality is integrated into Nautilus - previous versions of a file or directory that has a snapshot can be accessed by examining the properties and selecting the 'Previous Versions' tab.

Snapshots are protected from accidental deletion or modification since they are read-only by default. The super-user can delete intermediate snapshots to save space, but files and directories that existed before or after the deletion will still be accessible.

TimeVault lets you set up backup regimes and browse backup histories, so you can easily revert to the "way things were before".

Could this be the backup tool non-techie Linux users have been needing? Perhaps.