[Box Backup] Box Backup 0.11rc on OS X 10.5

[Achim J. Latz]

Good day (and first post)!

I learned about Box Backup through a very interesting Usenix paper [0] that
mainly talks about another remote backup system called Cumulus. 

The paper contains some thoughts that might be interesting for Box Backup
0.2, and a comparison of features among selected tools that back 

up to networked storage.


Compiling 0.11rc2 on OS X 10.5.6 (and installing 0.11~rc2-5 on Ubuntu 8.04)
worked without a problem, once the developer tools are 

installed. I would like to share some observations with the list and ask
for feedback or suggestions.


1/ I have read in a couple of comments that the OSX client works great, but
that the server is not usable. Is there some more information 

about what is failing? The build tests fail with "backupstore: FAILED: 5
tests failed (first at testbackupstore.cpp:1201)"


2/ On OS X, a test suite called "Backup Bouncer" [1, 2] has become a
popular test harness for backup solutions. With 0.11rc2, I obtained the 

following results, which already look very promising:

Verifying:    basic-permissions ...ok (Critical)
Verifying:           timestamps ...FAIL (Critical)
Verifying:             symlinks ...ok (Critical)
Verifying:    symlink-ownership ...ok
Verifying:            hardlinks ...FAIL (Important)
Verifying:       resource-forks ...
   Sub-test:             on files ... ok (Critical)
   Sub-test:  on hardlinked files ... FAIL (Important)
Verifying:         finder-flags ...ok (Critical)
Verifying:         finder-locks ...FAIL
Verifying:        creation-date ...FAIL
Verifying:            bsd-flags ...FAIL
Verifying:       extended-attrs ...
   Sub-test:             on files ... ok (Important)
   Sub-test:       on directories ... ok (Important)
   Sub-test:          on symlinks ... ok
Verifying: access-control-lists ...	
   Sub-test:             on files ... FAIL (Important)
   Sub-test:              on dirs ... FAIL (Important)
Verifying:                 fifo ...FAIL
Verifying:              devices ...FAIL
Verifying:          combo-tests ...	
   Sub-test:  xattrs + rsrc forks ... ok
   Sub-test:     lots of metadata ... FAIL

As you can see, the only critial failure is the preservation of timestamps.
More specifically, this test consists of files and folders with 

future timestamps. The files are correctly restored by Box Backup, but the
folder is always created with today's date. Given that the 

folders in the backup storage are always stored with a 1970's date, I was
wondering if this could be fixed so that folders also retain their 

creation date, just like files do already? This would be a fantastic
addition to Box Backup's capabilities.


3/ In addition to 2/, it appears that rsync with certain patches is able to
pass all Backup Bouncer tests [3]. Would it be possible to lift 

other capabilities such as hard-links and ACLs from rsync and implement
them in Box Backup?


Thank you so much for a wonderful program,

		Achim


[0]
<http://www.usenix.org/events/fast09/tech/full_papers/vrable/vrable_html/index.html>
Project home page <http://www.cs.ucsd.edu/~mvrable/cumulus/>
[1] <http://www.n8gray.org/blog/2007/04/27/introducing-backup-bouncer/>
[2] <http://www.n8gray.org/code/backup-bouncer/>
[3] <http://www.bombich.com/mactips/rsync.html>