Please help I have installed both nepoukm backup and deja dup backup tool the first just says its not running the second get me as far as selecting directory’s but won’t write to disk I though dup was a dependent of nepoukm is it a different program?. Do’s nepoukm block dup?,…I am running ubuntu 11.04
First off. what is it your trying to back-up?
Install Simple Backup instead.
sudo apt-get install sbackup-gtk
… personally I use “rsync” for everything.
It might look to be more difficult to set up, but it wipes the floor with everything else operationally.
It handles backups to a remote machine, does differential / incremental backups, handles compression over slow lines and even has a bandwidth limiter so you don’t saturate network links while copying. As a point of reference, this is my standard backup script, runs from cron on all machines daily;
#!/bin/bash
HOST=`hostname`
DEST="backup_server_ip_or_name"
BACK=`date "+%A_%d_%B_%Y_%H"`
EXCL="/etc/backup.excludes"
OPTS="--force --ignore-errors --delete-excluded --exclude-from=$EXCL
--bwlimit=1024 --delete --backup --backup-dir=/$BACK -rvlpgoDtO"
export RSYNC_PASSWORD=**password on server**
export PATH=$PATH:/bin:/usr/bin:/usr/local/bin
nice -n19 rsync $OPTS / root@$DEST::$HOST/current
Typically /etc/backup.excludes contains;
/proc
/sys
/tmp
/var/cache/apt/archives
And anything else on your box you don’t want backed up.
It will create a folder on the server called “current”, and another dated folder for each backup with copies of the files that were updated during the backup … so you end up with your current backup in “current”, and revisions of all changed files in dated folders.
Hmm … Interesting, I’ll need to take a closer look at that, though Simple Backup seems to be able to do pretty much the same things, I suppose there is more scope for tweaking the Full and incremental backups particularly as far as backup timing with cron… though Simple backup is also pretty configurable, and can use a custom cron timing definition
Does it allow for backup purging when they reach a certain age or if the drive becomes full ? … or would you need to write a script for that ?
I’m not knocking rsync, hell I wouldn’t be surprised if Simple Backup is based on it (or is just a bunch of scripts that use rsync and cron in the background) … I’m just trying to understand what it does that Simple backup doesn’t ?
Ok, looks like it installed for you … it was a “warning” rather than an “error”, unless something doesn’t work, I’d ignore it.
Problem with backup programs; the more complex / the prettier it is, the more change their is that something may go wrong. With “rsync” it’s very simple scripts, and backups are stored as files so verifying they’ve worked is easier than easy.
This is how I clean backups > 7 days on the server …
# m h dom mon dow command
0 0 * * * find /vols/backups -maxdepth 2 -name "*_20??_*" -ctime +7 -exec rm -rfv {} \;
Also, I guess if you have just the one server, GUI’s are nice … but when you get into double figures, they’re just a pain … and when you get into triple figures, they’re unmanageable. If you work on scripts, you can roll a backup system (or update to) from a single point to 100 servers with just one line.
the simple backup dos look a lot better but its asking for a port number I don't know what to put in?
What are you trying to back up to ?
Server needs /etc/rsyncd.conf, looks like this;
uid = root
gid = root
use chroot = yes
max connections = 10
auth users = root
secrets file = /etc/rsyncd.secrets
read only = no
[<server name>]
path = /vols/backups/<server name>
comment = This is the backup volume for <server name>
.. add additional stanza's for additional servers ..
And rsyncd.secrets just contains;
root:<password>
There’s a lot to be said for keeping backups incredibly simple, the less the complexity, the less chance you’ll end up with a backup you don’t understand or can’t restore.
Thanks for those, I’ll have a mess about and probably come running back with a request for help … I like the idea of understanding exactly what’s going on in the background and me being its master rather than the other way round 
I also like the “stored as files”, Simple backup saves everything as a tarball even when set to use no compression … not a major issue, but it would be nicer to just have simple “file” access without the need to un-tar
This has been a really interesting thread. time to do some backups!
Interesting indeed! It makes me want a NAS even more, because I like to back-up my stuff, but all the drives I have are full, and right now having no money is doing my head in. 
having no money is doing my head in. :(
Welcome to a select but very BIG club. 
I assume system backups you would only need settings files?
Depends what you mean by “system backup” … and what you expect from the backup.
This is not an easy question to answer … only you can know what your backup is intended to do.
Lets say you wanted to be able to quickly restore your system to EXACLY where it is now, and space was of no concern … the best bet would either be to take an “image” of the hard drive using something like Clonezilla … but this doesn’t allow for incremental backups etc.
if on the other hand space is a problem you might just want to backup your home folder so you can reinstall the OS, then copy that stuff across … you may also want to backup any individual files that you know you’ve edited (in your case) such as /etc/modprobe.d/alsa-base.conf … if you have also added repositories you may also want to include /etc/apt … if you’ve added a NAS drive to fstab then you might want to backup /etc/fstab … or if you have any VPN tunnels set up you may want to backup /etc/openvpn … etc. etc.
My point is … there are so many “variables” in play such as space, the need for incremental backups, what you keep where, what the purpose of the backup is, what you have installed, etc. … it is pretty much impossible for someone else to advise on a backup strategy … only the person that is going to use the backup should it become necessary can decide that.