Is there a way to synchronize Keep's backups with my system?

[integr8e]

Using Keep, is there a way to create a full backup of my system, and then synchronize the backup with my system's status each successive time it's run? I would find this much more useful than always having to perform a full backup.

The last time I used Keep to backup my system, I configured it to backup periodically. Apparently, it duplicated the backup every time it ran, quickly filling my entire hdd minus about 60mb; I have a 200gb hdd and only about 9gb of that was being used for applications.

Thus far, I have been unable to find a program similar to Microsoft's System Restore for Linux (if anybody knows of one, please tell me what it is; I have been searching the internet and found there are many Linux users interested in such a program). If I could configure Keep to merely synchronize itself to my system during backups, I would it almost as useful as System Restore was when I was using Windows. It seems to me this would be a very sensible solution until a similar app to System Restore is developed for Linux; it would take much fewer system resources to perform a backup, and one could be performed fairly quickly.

[Snowhog]

Re: Is there a way to synchronize Keep's backups with my system?

Useful reading here.

[Fintan]

Re: Is there a way to synchronize Keep's backups with my system?

I have been unable to find a program similar to Microsoft's System Restore

Actually Keep is pretty similar. sys restore puts a backup image of your win system in a directory (can't remember which) every time you close win down. So you can have tons of restore images. I remember deleting about 6-8gig worth at one time.

Besides, if you don't know what you are doing sys restore isn't worth s... because it will just reuse the last used system. If that is borked then you get same system back. Of course one can fiddle with it but when I was still fooling with windows I made a DVD image of my working system with an image tool (norton, etc) once and deactivated sys restore because it just bloats my drive and slows the whole system down.

I am not sure what you want to back up. If it is only apps, respectively your system on a given day / state use aptoncd:
http://aptoncd.sourceforge.net/

It is very useful, almost sexy.

For data backup, well there are so many tools to choose from.
I do a dvd data backup every week. But that is me.

Hope that helps.

[integr8e]

Re: Is there a way to synchronize Keep's backups with my system?

My experience with Keep was that it filled a little over 170GB of my hdd; being that large of a backup file, every time I tried to delete it, my computer froze and I got nothing accomplished. I finally just had to wipe the whole thing and start over.

Microsoft's System Restore allowed me to save as many restore points as I wanted, without taking much room; I could restore my computer to any one of them whenever I wanted, and even undo the restore. It would definitely be a nice feature if Linux would incorporate something similar to its arsenal.

I don't exactly know how System Restore works, only how to use it; I am completely anti-Microsoft, however I do miss the System Restore feature. As far as Keep goes, until there is something like System Restore for Linux, I guess I'll just continue tampering with it.

I've been learning a lot about Linux very quickly being as I just switched from XP Pro only about 3 or 4 months ago. I'd been using Windows since 3.1 was in style, and only really learned anything about Linux, (K)Ubuntu in particular, shortly before I switched to it. I love Kubuntu, the only thing is that in the process of learning the todo's and not-todo's of Kubuntu, I've had to format my hdd and reinstall several times; not too much of a problem, just slightly inconvenient. I feel it would just be nice to be able to restore my computer to an earlier time quickly and without requiring much space to store a backup copy of the system. I don't have an external hard drive, thus the reason I would like to be able to merely synchronize Keep's current backup with my system, without creating another backup copy. I'll fiddle around with the information Snowhog sent me and see what I can get accomplished; currently, I'm majoring in computer science at the school I'm attending, so maybe I'll be able to code a program like System Restore sometime in the near future, if someone doesn't beat me to it I'll also plug around with the APTonCD Fintan informed me of.

[Fintan]

Re: Is there a way to synchronize Keep's backups with my system?

In fact Linux doesn't really need a system restore like windows does. I agree Keep is probably not exactly what you are looking for but you are free to make advancements on it if you wish. It is after all open source.

I use aptoncd because it lets me reinstall my linux on many machines and gets me up and running should I over do it with a test install.

As for snowhog's suggestions go, mondo is very powerfull. That is probably what you will be looking for.

Welcome and enjoy

[Snowhog]

Re: Is there a way to synchronize Keep's backups with my system?

As for snowhog's suggestions go, mondo is very powerfull. That is probably what you will be looking for.

As I gathered from integr8e initial post, he was looking for a backup utility that could be configured for incremental backups once a full backup was made. Keep obviously doesn't have this capability.

[sky]

Re: Is there a way to synchronize Keep's backups with my system?

Hi,

I'm using keep on two accounts on my main computer and it's working in rdiff-backup mode, so first time full backup and then only modified files diff. It's working since almost one year and it's not taking so much space on disk.
How did you configure it ?

[integr8e]

Re: Is there a way to synchronize Keep's backups with my system?

I apparently had Keep set to perform a full backup incrementally; how did you set it up to run in rdiff-backup mode? I was unaware Keep's backup type settings could be configured in any way other than a full backup.

After looking at Keep, does it automatically function in rdiff-backup mode? Also, if you don't mind, please explain a quick way to set up an effective backup using Keep and describe which directories I NEED to backup; those such as /home, /etc, and /root I already know about, but are there any others?

[sky]

Re: Is there a way to synchronize Keep's backups with my system?

In fact, afak keep is running only in rdiff-backup. I don't know why it could act in a different way for you... Maybe you should fill a bug report about it.
Anyway, for me the folders to be backup are /home for all users (I have one occurence of keep by user). About /etc I don't make a backup for it because I didn't need to modify anything on the distros. And for /root I'm not using the account so it's useless also for me.
So if you're always taking care of putting any sensitive data in user folder, this backup should be enough...
To explain how I did the backup configuration, just add a new backup, set the folder to backup, set the destination and the backup interval and make the backup. Then every should work well.

Hope it helps