[Box Backup] bbackupd suggestions

[Ben Summers]

On 21 Apr 2004, at 09:35, Paul Arch wrote:

> Hi,
>
>    can bbackupd provide some more feedback (when a sync has been run) 
> to the
> user ?
>    I am thinking along the lines of say :
>     - Total progress
>     - Current file being synced
>     - Current Speed
>     - Estimated time left
>
>  Actually, someone 'simular' to rsync's --progress would be very nice. 
>  I
> know boxbackup has been 'worked' around the fact for set and forget 
> (lazy
> mode),

Lazy mode was in fact the original design, snapshot mode was added 
later.

>  so I dont know how hard it would be ?
>
>  Also, is it possible to backup/sync individual 'BackupLocations' from
> /etc/box/bbackupd.conf ?

No.

This isn't really what bbackupd was designed to do. It's designed to 
just sit there, looking after things. It's not a sync on demand tool.

As for progress, well, it would be quite a bit of extra work adding the 
hooks into there. I didn't even think about it, as the backup system 
was designed to be something which would just sit there in the 
background doing backups when they were required.

It did occur to me a few days ago that I should do a synchronisation 
tool, using the bbstored server. This would be what you want... the 
idea being to have a file hierarchy that you want to duplicate over 
multiple machines, and then be able to sync machines on demand. This 
would copy up changed files, and download changes with everything on 
the server encrypted (much like Apple's iDisk, but with encryption).

bbackupd cannot do two-way file synchronisation.

bbstored is really just a generic file server, with some special and 
interesting properties. Lots of extra utilities could be built with it, 
it's just a matter of time to write them. My focus at the moment is 
backup, though.

Sorry.

Ben