Re: [bu-users] is this list still alive? (status of bu/rbu)

[Vincent S. <bu...@hi...>]

On Sun, Jul 29, 2012 at 08:04:10PM -0700, Rajesh Manglore wrote:
> Vincent, 
> 
> I too have been using bu since 2002. For the first 5 years or so I was
> using it in a startup to backup about 6 servers with about 1.5TB of
> data and for the past 2 years have been using it for my personal data
> (couldn't find anything better :-). Imade several enhancements to bu
> in 2002 so that it would meet my requirements. Some of them were
> - incremental backup where the include list only contained files that
> were changed since the last backup. I found this to be significantly
> faster than using the -i option.

Hi Rajesh.

If I understand you correctly, your changes would change to purpose of
the include list from being able to pre-configure what files get backed
up to just a speed enhancer.  I don't know what version of bu you made
these changes to, but since you have been using bu since 2002, I am
guessing it is possible you did this prior to version 3.2 beta which was
released in June of 2002.  In 3.2 beta, I rewrote the main backup
routine in perl, substantially increasing the speed of incremental
backups by as much as 7 times over the old code.  The old code forked
and called 'cp' for every file.  The change log has the details.

Rbu uses rsync under the covers, which is also very fast at incremental
backups.


> - incremental backup of files changed since a specified time
>
> - keep previous versions of each file (option to compress) with the
> number specified in the config file (some more work and bu could have
> Time Machine functionality)


Along these lines, I have pondered the idea of adding a feature to have
a rotating group of versioned backups, where each time you backup,
rather than overwriting your previous backup, it would backup to a new
destination directory number N.  So if it was configured for 4 rotating
backups, after backing up to number 4, the next backup would overwrite
number 1 making it now number 4.  This would lessen the change of
replacing a good backup with a bad file and then not being recoverable.

Perhaps this feature would accomplish your goals as well?  Since you
could still recover older versions of files based on how many backup
versions you maintain.  With this feature, off the top of my head, I am
not sure if there would be much further use for only backing up files
changed since a specified time, since that could cause modified files
older than the specified time to not get backed up at all.

Although, technically, a fairly simple shell script wrapper could
probably be written to change the destination directory on a rotating
basis as well.  The destination can be set on the command line or as an
environment variable making it script friendly.   But having the feature
built into bu would be a bit simpler and require no skill or scripting
knowledge on the part of the user.


> - compress backed up files

I'm not sure about this one.  Seems like this could get really slow and
file space is so cheap now days with multi terabyte drives for around
$100.  Now, when I get around to updating the CD dump code, it *does*
have compression capability.


> Since the data was constantly changing, I also created cu (cleanup)
> from bu which deleted files from the backup disk which are no longer
> there in the original directories. I did try to add the cu
> functionality to bu but ended up breaking bu badly, so I just created
> a new script.

Rbu already has this feature.  The -s (sync) option.


> Just like Jorge I haven't found anything better than bu yet.
> 
> Thanks for your work. I can email you my version if you'd like.
> 
> Rajesh

Thanks for the feedback.  Based on your changes, I assume they are to
the original bu.  I appreciate the offer, but I plan to put any future
development efforts to rbu rather than do any more work on bu.  Unless,
of course, there was a significant bug discovered in bu that needed
fixed prior to rbu completely replacing bu.

Regards,
Vincent


> >________________________________
> > From: Vincent Stemen <bu...@hi...>
> >To: b-u...@li... 
> >Sent: Sunday, July 29, 2012 11:32 AM
> >Subject: Re: [bu-users] is this list still alive? (status of bu/rbu)
> > 
> >On Sat, Jul 28, 2012 at 09:34:22PM -0400, Jorge F?bregas wrote:
> >> On 07/15/2012 02:05 AM, Vincent Stemen wrote:
> >> > Greetings Jack and others that are still lurking on this list.
> >> 
> >> Hello Vincent , Jack & the others that are still around.
> >> 
> >> I just wanted to mention that I've been using bu for 10 years now (along
> >> with rbu when it came out).? I can't believe that I haven't changed my
> >> main backup program for 10 years!? During those years I changed Linux
> >> distros, mail-clients, web browsers and so on but never the backup
> >> program.? Why?? The bu/rbu combination has been rock solid and it has
> >> served me very well.
> >> 
> >> Once again, thanks for creating this Vincent.
> >> 
> >> Best regards,
> >> Jorge
> >
> >Thank you for the feedback.? It's always good to hear that my work is
> >benefiting others.
> >
> >Vincent