[mbackup-devel] Starting up again

[James O'K. <jo...@mi...>]

Hi,
	From my notes, the last traffic on this list was December 8th. A
large reason for that is because I started getting quick deadlines at work
and some things had to drop to the floor. This doesn't mean that I haven't
been thinking about mbackup.

At work we've hired someone else to split the load with me, which
means until the load at work reaches the need for 3 people, I'll have more
time for coding and planning this project.

The last topic we were discussing was the possibility of writting this in
java. The several people who suggested that I don't use java I feel were
right, but I would like this to be written OO, so that means C++. I'm
going to scrap the code that I've already written and reimpliment it with
a new layout which I'll be describing in my next few messages.

To start off, a few words about why write mbackup. At work we were
evaluating several commercial offerings as I'm sure several of you have,
and I was disappointed that some offered some features and other offered
different ones and I wanted them all. I decided to take the approach that
apache uses where they define a module API and modules can register their
interest in different phases of the http request. That's what I would like
mbackup to do.

In stead of the term backup application, I would like mbackup to be a
'framework for building custom backup solutions'. It sound kinda
buzzwordy, but here is what I mean. In a config file, people can specify
modules that are in charge of reading from disk, manipulating data, and
writing data. Because we are abstracting things, it should be easy for
someone to add custom modules for their project. They might want/need to
filter files that are older than a certain time and owned by a certain
user. Or only backup files that were created on Sundays. I've also had an
idea of taking a kernel patch from SGI that notifies applications when
inodes change, and use that to schedule files to be backed up shortly
after they were created or modified. I have an idea for a project I would
like to do that offers over the internet backup similar to www.backup.com,
but cover real OSes such as linux and *bsd. That has different
requirements than a small home user, or a middle size office. I think it
is possible to create an application that can be adapted via modules to do
all of those.

Why should you help? Because you have a need for a similar piece of
software possibly? You're bored? Either way, I'm going to try and create
rewards for people who contribute. My first thought would be printing
custom tshirts, any other ideas?


I've done some block diagrams that help explain my ideas. I'll start
sending them with descriptions in my next few mailings.

-james