more advanced archiving application

[KoRnholio8]

I've had a lot of trouble trying to find an application with more archiving options than Ark and had to just give it up... I was looking for the function, when you set into what size part the archive should be split...

I would really like to see that in the next Kubuntu.

[3vi1]

Re: more advanced archiving application

Rar (http://www.rarsoft.com/) supports that feature, but it is not free software. There is, however, a free trial version for Linux on their page.

[3vi1]

Re: more advanced archiving application

In the same vein, I would like to see a more advanced backup/restoration system built into the distro.

What I do today is boot from a Knoppix CD, and use partimage (which, btw, also allows you to split the partition backup at a specific size) to backup most of my partitions to an external USB drive (or network mount). It works well, but would be 10x better if the few following improvements could be made:

1) Partimage needs some kind of checkpoint support for backing up live file systems. This would allow us to schedule automatic backups - without ever having to leave the OS and dismount the system partitions. DriveImage has done this for a long time on Windows (and is fast!), so I *know* some filesystem hacker could create a Linux equivalent.

2) We need the ability to restore individual files from an image. Partimage only lets you restore the entire partition. Basically, we need something like Ghostwalker. To work around this today, I use Tar for my /home partition instead of partimage. Also, I tend to tar-up an extra copy of /etc before drastic overhauls.

3) Partimage restores headers such so that any partition you restore onto is reduced to the original partition's size (This can be overcome, but it is more hassle than it should be). If #2 were accomplished, it should be no problem to allow files to be restored to a differently-sized partition (just restore all files instead of restoring the partition verbatim?).

4) There should be an "easy for newbs" System Backup and Restore Interface on the Ubuntu/Kubuntu Live CDs. That is, something with a real GUI that can match the saved partitions with the ones you want to restore, and take care of dismounting them if they're already mounted When you need to recover from an image, you should have everything you need without having to installl packages to the live system or find a Knoppix CD.

Being able to back everything up (and restore it to original condition) with an easy interface might give more people the courage to jump from the step where they *try* the live CD to the step where they *install* the OS to their drive.

-J

[askrieger]

Re: more advanced archiving application

Apropos of advanced archiving, whatever happened to KDAR? I get nervous just turning my system on and off without KDAR. I'm forced to use DAR from the command line!

[disturbedite]

Re: more advanced archiving application

i couldn't find a single app that supported all the different archival formats' options like winrar & 7zip (for windows) either. it made me mad so i just forced myself to read the documentation and make a "quasi" shell script for compressing rar archive with my preferred options....

[3vi1]

Re: more advanced archiving application

Apropos of advanced archiving, whatever happened to KDAR? I get nervous just turning my system on and off without KDAR. I'm forced to use DAR from the command line!

That's a good question. I tried KDAR a while back, but wasn't too impressed with it (because it sometime crashed while I was backing up).

[3vi1]

Re: more advanced archiving application

i couldn't find a single app that supported all the different archival formats' options like winrar & 7zip (for windows) either. it made me mad so i just forced myself to read the documentation and make a "quasi" shell script for compressing rar archive with my preferred options....

I did pretty much the same thing, back when I was backing up to DVDs and a FAT32 external drive. I now have a USB drive formatted Ext3, so my scripts just use Tar instead of RAR.

[disturbedite]

Re: more advanced archiving application

i said "quasi shell script" but its really just more of a text file with the commands & options i want. i couldn't get any help to finish making the script, so it isn't executable. i still have to copy & paste from the text file to command line...

[3vi1]

Re: more advanced archiving application

Add this as the first line of your text file:

#!/bin/sh

Then, add the executable flag from a command prompt:

chmod a+x yourfilename

You should then be able to execute your file ("./yourfilename", or just "yourfilename" if the directory is in your PATH). I put my scripts in /home/username/bin, because there are a few lines at the end of the .bash_profile script which will pick up the existence of that directory and automatically add it to your path when you log in.

There are lots of resources on the web, but I recommend the book "Beginning Linux Programming" by Matthew and Stones. Chapter 2 is a pretty good intro to shell programming.

[disturbedite]

Re: more advanced archiving application

i obviously already have the first line down. its the semantics of how to compress a file or more (or directory) as a rar archive where i ran into a roadblock...

by executable i meant what i just typed in the above line, not that i couldn't literally make it executable. (i'm farther along & know more than that )

[3vi1]

Re: more advanced archiving application

Ahh... sorry I misunderstood.

Here's the kind of thing I was doing back then: There was one volume where I only wanted to back up certain directories every-so-often (because they changed very little, or it was easy to recover the changes), so my script just rar'd each directory into 2GB part files.

rar_static a -v2048m -r -ol $backupdir/`uname -n`$windir/games/anarchy.rar $windir/games/anarchy

[disturbedite]

Re: more advanced archiving application

could you help me adapt/"bring mine up to par"?

here is as far as i got: (obviously, the end of it is just for my reference)
rar a -ep -m5 -mdg -rr10 -s /path/to/*.rar

(my goal in making this script was/is to be able to make it so that i could dump this script in konqueror's service menu directory so that i could/can just right-click on a file(s)/folder & go to Actions & select "Compress as RAR" or "Create RAR archive" or some similar title and get a resulting rar archive).

[penguin.ch]

Re: more advanced archiving application

whatever happened to KDAR

From the status of this site I gather that the developers have lost interest (?).

[askrieger]

Re: more advanced archiving application

Actually, if you go to the Kdar site on Sourceforge, you finds that even though the last release (2.07) was in 2005, a preview of Kdar 3.0 was released about a year ago (March, 2006). There doesn't seem to have been any activity since then. System backup is too important to use a preview release. I guess I'm stuck with the command line for a while. Of course, if I'm using the command line, I could go back to Tar with very little loss of function. The loss of function might be compensated by the gain in generality. Or I could switch to a "fancy" backup system like Amanda.