[Box Backup] Overall goal for BoxBackup

[Joe Krahn]

Ben Summers wrote:
> 
> On 21 Dec 2004, at 18:02, Joe Krahn wrote:
> 
>> My feeling is that any complete backup tool should be able to back up 
>> a complete system. However, Boxbackup and it's users seem to be 
>> interested in just user-file backups, not system backups.
>>
>> I've mentioned some thoughts on complex features that are beyond the 
>> scope of current BoxBackup plans, but I think the ability to do a real 
>> system backup is important.
>>
>> Are other BoxBackup users/developers not interested in system backups?
>> Or is it just a low-priority?
> 
> 
> On UNIX, there is no reason why you can't use Box Backup to backup every 
> single file on your system. This provides a system backup. All you need 
> to do, over and above restoring all the files, is to install the correct 
> boot block and boot loader.
> 
> Or do you mean something more sophisticated?
> 
> Ben
That's generally what I mean, but a few features are missing, such as a 
one-file-system option. That's easy enough to add, but when I suggested 
it, it seemed that most users think it's best to use other tools for 
whole-system backups, and just to use BoxBackup for important user files 
that change a lot and benefit more from continual backups.

There are a few other things missing, like support for char/block device 
nodes, and I had thought that some directory attributes were left out.

Assuming that device nodes are all in /dev, one could make a system 
recovery directory with files containing a tar.gz of /dev, along with 
disk partition data, etc., and let boxbackup store those meta-data files.

So, it's not bad right now, it's more a question of will I be the only 
one interested in working in this area?

Joe