Summary

The UbuntuHomeBackup aims to provide an interface to easily create backups of your files in any medium. It backup your settings, home directory or system files by a simple step-by-step interface that guide you into the process.

Rational

Ubuntu Linux is growing, and people would be using it for everyday use. However, file loss and critical data corruption is likely to happen accidentally or by hardware or software faults. Mediums of data storage keeps getting cheaper, and much easier to access, but currently, it is not yet used by backup tools.

Scope

The backup tool will be able to use CD-R/RW Recordable Disc, USB Disk Drive, E-Mail, FTP Network Servers, Apple iPod, and Local Directory as a backup medium. Backups of the user's home directory files, settings, or system files like /home, /etc, and /var would be available in the interface.

Design

Invocation and Overall Design

The software will be linked right into "System > Administration > Backup" menu. and will have a stock harddisk icon. A selection of what files would be available for backup, and what storage medium would be used.

Screenshots

Selection of files to be backup

Selection of storage mediums

E-mail storage medium

FTP storage medium

Administrator backup

Backup label name

Backup compression method

Final Screen

GUI file extraction

This would be available along with the backup files if disk medium is used as a backup storage. The user simply double click the application to easily extract the files to the directory.

Code

The code is written in GTK+, C, sh and perl as a scripting backend.

Source Package

ubuntu-home-backup-0.1.tar.gz

Version 0.1 "No one accepts my 5 cents and 10 cents anymore."

This is the first release of the software, but it's quite stable, FTP and GUI file extraction is still WIP. I really love feedbacks!

Installation

It does not require other dependencies other than build-essentials and GTK+ 2.0 Libraries. It can be installed by standard configure, make & make install

However, if it doesn't work, run ./autogen.sh --prefix=/usr

joelbryan

Comments

IrvinPiraman: There was already a spec drafted like this but deferred for dapper. https://launchpad.net/distros/ubuntu/+spec/home-user-backup

Joel Bryan Juliano I've been reading the wiki, and specifications, and been fantasizing with HomeUserBackup GUI, how it would look like, and I've been thinking, how friendly a backup tool can get, I test my curiosity, so I made one, UbuntuHomeBackup.

sardion The source package here requires automake1.9 which is in the repos but not installed by default. The package should be updated, but for now, if you have trouble compiling do aptitude install automake1.9.

Vincent I successfully installed it, but when I run it I get the following error:

$ ubuntu-home-backup 
/usr/local/bin/ubuntu-home-backup: line 6: /usr/libexec/ubuntu-home-backup-gui: No such file or directory

I installed it with ./autogen.sh , make, then sudo checkinstall.

Robert It's missing the /local directory, just edit line 6 to read /usr/local/libexec/ubuntu-home-backup-gui

Vaida Bogdan It needs encryption. I wouldn't use it otherwise.