[Box Backup] Web Management Interface

[Chris Wilson]

Hi Pete,

On Sat, 8 Nov 2008, Peter Jalajas, GigaLock Backup Services wrote:

> Well, Chris, I, for one, would rather you worked on boxi... :^)  (I 
> think the client side is where more day-to-day activity by non-techies 
> is performed.  And I'd prefer that you focus on what you do better than 
> anybody, and let someone else grapple with the server-side web 
> interface.)

Well I agree that it would be good for me to work on Boxi, but one of the 
best options for me is a partnership with a company that will sell Box 
Backup accounts for me. If they sell enough, it will help to pay for me to 
work on Boxi. But they're not Unix experts and need a better way to manage 
accounts.

Also, the key management on Windows is really hard at the moment, and this 
is a big part of making it easier (by sorting out the CSR and certificate 
transfer). The other part is a script that I have planned for Windows 
should make it much easier.

> While on the subject, while boxi is still under development, I'm about 
> to hire a java developer buddy to work with me to create a gui wrapper 
> around the boxbackup windows client .exe command lines.  For queries and 
> restores, it would be really handy, if I understand it correctly, to 
> read from bbackupd.dat instead of contacting the server each time. Do 
> you have any suggestions in that regard?  Do we already have a tool for 
> reading that file?  Is bbackupd.dat documented somewhere ('cept in the 
> code)?

Not sure what you mean by bbackupd.dat? Is that the StoreObjectInfoFile? 
I'm afraid it's not documented, I think Chromi wrote the code, I can 
explain the binary format to you if it helps (it's actually quite simple) 
but there's absolutely no guarantee that it won't change in future, or 
even that it will be present at a particular time (e.g. it's deleted at 
the start of a backup and only recreated if/when the backup finishes 
successfully).

Cheers, Chris.
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