KBackup

Source (link to git-repo or to original if based on someone elses unmodified work): https://github.com/KDE/kbackup

Available as/for: -

Description:

KBackup is a program that lets you back up any directories or files, whereby it uses an easy to use directory tree to select the things to back up.

The program was designed to be very simple in its use so that it can be used by non-computer experts.

It can do full- and incremental backups.

The storage format is the well known TAR format, whereby the data is still stored in compressed format (bzip2 or gzip).

The backup can be put onto a local directory (mounted device, etc.) but also on a remote URL (thanks to KDE KIO).

It also includes a german, french, italian, slovak, czech, portuguese, swedish and russian translation for the user interface and an english, french, russian and german handbook.

Note: the documentation for 0.7 is only current in english and german.

For the former KDE3 version 0.5.4:
You'll find all RPMs including 64bit versions for different distributions on the openSuse build service (links below)

Last changelog:

1.0.2 3 years ago

Fixed a crash on exit introduced in 1.0.1 when no systray icon was used

105 comments

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gminnerup
11 years ago

A question which the handbook doesn't really answer: I'm backing up to a networked (smb) NAS box, so I've entered "unlimited" and "no compression" in my profile, yet KBackup still splits into several media (of around 22Gb in size). Shouldn't it simply write one large .tar file with those settings?

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mkoller
11 years ago

There are other constraints:
In the source I made the following comment:

// calculate how large a slice can actually be
// - limited by the target directory (when we store directly into a local dir)
// - limited by the "tmp" dir when we create a tmp file for later upload via KIO
// - limited by Qt (64bit int)
// - limited by user defined maxSliceMBs

I will add this to the documentation.

So in your case it must be the KDE-tmp-dir free disc space.

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gminnerup
11 years ago

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gminnerup
11 years ago

Thanks, found it now. Had installed KBackup but not the lang extras.

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texstar
11 years ago

PCLinuxOS package available: http://tinyurl.com/porjbd

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franciscot
11 years ago

I made a package for kubuntu jaunty in:
https://launchpad.net/~leviatan1/+archive/ppa

Wishlist:
- Exclude files with regexp, for example *.part or *.mp3.
- Exclude files by size, for example bigger than 200MB
- Include by default a sample profile, with /usr/local /etc /home /var ... etc.

Thank you, It's a great application.

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Gen2ly
11 years ago

Great program. Keeps it simple, blends well into KDE 4.

Got a bug about half way into the backup. Kbackup crashed I guess (because I left and came back and it was no longer there) and didn't complete backup. It left two tar files:

backup_2009.06.16-05.43.53_1.tar
backup_2009.06.16-05.43.53_2.tar

The first is 780MB and the next is 12MB. I looked at both tar's and stopped on this file:

home/todd/.etwolf/tcetest/obj_nbh_b031.pk3

This file is in the second tar and is the only one.

This file was also left (not sure what it is):

backup_2009.06.16-05.43.53_3.tarr16264.new

and it is 3.9MB. Best backup program I've seen yet. Hope these can be fixed. :)

I noticed a couple things as a new user:

1) Maybe it's my theme but I can't tell from a main directory checkbox if a subdirectory has something in it. I noticed however a blue outline when I ran the program as root.

2) No idea just what "medium" means.

3) I have no idea what the trailing numbers (following the date) in the filename mean.

Thanks for work, appreciate the program.

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mkoller
11 years ago

> This file was also left (not sure what it is):
> backup_2009.06.16-05.43.53_3.tarr16264.new

This is a temporary file used during the tar-file creation. This seems to be a KDE internal way of creating the file and when it's finished, it's renamed to the final name.

>1) Maybe it's my theme but I can't tell from a main directory checkbox if a subdirectory has something in it. I noticed however a blue outline when I ran the program as root.

Hmm ... seems to be a style thing. I defined to show the entries in a tree in blue when a directory has partly selected subitems.
What Style are you using ? What KDE version are you on ?

> 2) No idea just what "medium" means.

originally the program was written to support changeable media, e.g. ZIP-disks. A "medium" is a changeable unit, e.g. a disk.

> 3) I have no idea what the trailing numbers (following the date) in the filename mean.

It's the slice sequence number. Have a look in the online handbook chapter "Archive slices"

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Gen2ly
11 years ago

Ok, looked at the manual. The Online Manual is Help > Kbackup-Help (my google-fu got a workout).

From the manual looks like compression is done to every file individually. Generally when I do restores I to a command like:

tart -xvf backup.tgz -C /mnt/harddisk

If I am to uncompress this archive, wouldn't I have to do something like:

tar backup.tar | bzcat *

Hmm, not even sure just how I'd do it. Any recommendations? Gotta think this complicates things a bit.

As for the crash, there was none. Kbackup is running just fine.

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mkoller
11 years ago

> From the manual looks like compression is done to
> every file individually.

Yes, until you deactivate compression completely, which
you can define in the profile settings.

> Generally when I do
> restores I to a command like:
>
> tart -xvf backup.tgz -C /mnt/harddisk
>
> If I am to uncompress this archive, wouldn't I
> have to do something like:
>
> tar backup.tar | bzcat *

After you extracted it from the tar-file (tar -xvf
backupfile.tar), you can then uncompress all files
from the current directory recursively down with
the following command:

find . -name \*bz2 -print0 | xargs -0 bunzip2

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Gen2ly
11 years ago

Scratch that last part about the bug. Turns out this was because I had run out of room on my backup partition.

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mkoller
11 years ago

It should _never_ crash. I have to analyze why it did that ...

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Gen2ly
11 years ago

Great program, backed up everything no problems. A couple things: I selected "Compress Files" in the profile settings and thought I'd get a compressed archive (for example backup.tgz). Glad everything was compressed but it makes for alot of work to decompress every file. Also, I saved my backup to my backup directory and it included the temp file:

/root/Backup/arch-linux_2009.06.16-12.41.46_1.tarx18260.new (2.6 GiB)
...compressing file /root/Backup/arch-linux_2009.06.16-12.41.46_1.tarx18260.new

Thanks for the program, nice work.

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mkoller
11 years ago

> I selected "Compress Files" in the profile settings and thought I'd get a compressed archive (for example backup.tgz).

Have a look in the online handbook, chapter "Archive compression"

> Also, I saved my backup to my backup directory and it included the temp file:

This is a bug. I have code in it which should make sure that does not happen, but it seems there was a change in behaviour between the KDE3 and KDE4 libraries, which I did not notice.
I'll check if I can fix this easily.

Thanks for your feedback!

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albpanig
12 years ago

I use KBackup from mandriva 2007.
All good but, with rel 2009, I've lot of problem.
On start there's the message: "Could not read network connection list /home/user/.DCOPserver_localhost_0"

Then, opening a profile, the error: "Could not find mime type application/octet-stream"

what means?

thanks

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mkoller
12 years ago

I can't say. Seems to be some general KDE problem.
Are you already using KDE4 ?

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albpanig
11 years ago

with 2009.1 is complete out.
is impossible the installation too.

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gejobj
11 years ago

I made a mandriva 2009.1 rpm version.

You can download it from here:

http://www.latuberia.net/rpms/2009.1/kbackup-0.6-1.mdv2009.1.i586.rpm

Bye.

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albpanig
12 years ago

yes KDE4.

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Paganel75
13 years ago

Most basic users (like me, I guess) will probably want two things :

* Backup /home (once a week ?)
* Backup / except /home (once a month ?)

Backuping /home is very fine with KBackup. However, backuping / without /home is somehow more tricky :

1) First, I do not (yet) see any way to say "/" and deselect /home. It seems, from the first glance, that I have to check each and every check box I am interested in.

2) Even worse : I do NOT know what to select. When I checked all boxes, Kbackup of course hanged on some /dev or the like; but if I do NOT check these boxes and restore my system on bare metal, I guess my system will not work either because device informations will be missing :-(

It would be great to provide two basic profiles with Kbackup : a) save /home; 2) save everything but /home , especially if one has certainty to get a working system by restoring those two backups on a brand new disk (with or without distng partitions for /home and for the rest).

Up to now, I have *never* been able to restore a system from scratch. Just /home, after having reinstalled everything, which is quite a chore :-(

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nknknk
13 years ago

Hi,

I have created a KDE4 Brainstorm entry,
relative to KBackup,
that might interest you.

Link:
http://www.kde-look.org/content/show.php/BackupTheUser?content=79008

It is just an idea, of course...

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H00K
13 years ago

Erm,

I just opened an archive for the first time and found out that every file in the TAR is being bzipped.

I suppose this has to do with optimisation of compression of each file individually instead of the whole archive, but I see two problems with it:
I back up my whole home dir, which makes it very hard to just untar to restore — but I see a restoration system/UI is already on your ToDo list ;)
Currently it compresses every file it finds even already compressed ones, which in turn produces extentions like .tar.gz.bz2,.bz2.bz2 .tgz.bz2,.zip.bz2 etc.

Otherwise, I find it quite a nice app. I'm already switching after using KDar for two years ...when these two quirks get sorted out, I'll be a very happy user indeed :D

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mkoller
13 years ago

To avoid compression, uncheck the "compression" flag in the profile settings (this then avoids compression at all).
The fact I do not compress the whole archive has to do with the slice sice handling. See my reply to "Re: Individual compress "

The point for compressing all files, even already compressed ones, is that when I finally have a restore, I would not know if the file originally was already compressed or not. Now I know I can uncompress either all or none.

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reggler
12 years ago

Hi there, I'm just using KBackup for the first time - I'm compress8ing my home directory and I'm wondering how I'm gonna restore it when all files are compressed individually. Is there a switch for tar i don't know? How do you recommend to untar the backup archive?

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mkoller
12 years ago

After you extracted it from the tar-file (tar -xvf backupfile.tar), you can then uncompress all files from the current directory recursively down with the following command:

find . -name \*bz2 -print0 | xargs -0 bunzip2

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1.0.2 3 years ago

Fixed a crash on exit introduced in 1.0.1 when no systray icon was used

Changelog 3 years ago

31.12.2017 (1.0.1)
- small fixes, allows to build with older KF5 versions

02.01.2017 (1.0)
- Ported to KF5
- configurable shortcuts
- context menu in tree allowing direct opening/deletion of files and dirs
- allow to show/hide hidden files

08.09.2013 (updated 0.8 package)
- Added translation for Interlingua, thanks to Giovanni Sora

23.07.2012 (0.8)
- Add dirpath wildcard filters to skip complete directories

05.03.2011 (0.7.1)
- fix handling of output from scripts used via --script
- better error message in case non-local target in non-interactive mode

25.10.2010
- Fix display of version number in "about" dialog

11.09.2010
- added Fedora and Mandriva packages on openSuse build service

19.06.2010 (0.7)
- Add Incremental Backup functionality
- Add wildcard filter to ignore files for backup matching a filename pattern

03.06.2010
- updated french translation

30.05.2010
- added czech translation (thanks to Pavel Fric)
- fixed other translation .po files

15.05.2010 (0.6.4)
- When an error occurs while reading a file (e.g. corrupted filesystem), cancel backup

25.09.2009 (0.6.3)
- When running in non interactive mode (e.g. cron), do not use KIO but only direct file access
as KIO needs a KDE session and $DISPLAY
This now makes the slice-reduction on the local target dir work.

05.09.2009 (0.6.2)
- Fix handling of disk-full situation (and a crash with it)

01.07.2009 (0.6.1)
- Avoid backup of the backup file
- make it compile with KDE Version < 4.2

24.May 2009 (0.6)
kbackup is now ported to KDE4 and has the following new features:
- Port to cmake and KDE4/Qt4, which also removes the 4GB limit per file
- sort hidden files/dirs before normal ones
- show dimmed icon for hidden files (like konqueror)
- don't allow to expand symlinked dirs as the content is not archived but only the link
- Add "Save As..." menu and store name of loaded profile, so that a save directly writes to that
- Add --autobg commandline which starts kbackup without a GUI e.g. for cron, at, ...
- Add --verbose commandline option which allows to see all files when using --autobg
- When the upload fails for a slice, offer a way to select a temporarily different target
- if target-dir does not exist, create it (mkdir -p)
- # of kept backups on target dir (per profile)
- show list of created archive slices in finish-dialog

25.Jan 2008
Added 2 new distributions in the openSuse build-service: RHEL-5 and CentOS-5 (both 32 and 64 bit)

19.Jan 2008 (0.5.4)
- correctly limit slice size:
- limited by the target directory (when we store directly into a local dir)
- limited by the "tmp" dir when we create a tmp file for later upload via KIO
- limited by Qt3 (4GB on 32bit)
- limited by user defined maxSliceMBs
- sort directories first in treeview
- correctly sort by size and timestamp in treeview
- check if a file that is archived into the backup is not the backup itself

4.Jan 2008
I have extended the usage of the openSuse build service.
Therefore I can offer now Suse, Mandriva and Fedora RPMs including 64bit versions.

13.Oct 2007 (0.5.3)
- Add russian handbook (thanks to Alexey Kouznetsov)
- show symbolic links with an overlayed "link" icon
- fix handling of files larger than 2GB
- avoid crash when writing special files (below /proc)

19.Aug 2007
- Repackaged to add spanish translation (thanks to Gerardo Bueno)
15.Aug 2007 (0.5.2)
Finally I release a minor update to kbackup. Here is the ChangeLog:
- start with the HOME folder opened
- add a profile option to avoid media change dialog
- add a profile option to avoid compressing files at all
- Whenever a directory is only partly included, show it with blue color
- Show a dialog when the backup has finished
- automatically save/restore window size
- add "auto" commandline option to automatically start a backup and quit kbackup when done.
- added predefined slice sizes (for CDs, DVDs) in profile settings dialog
- added portuguese translation thanks to Carlos Goní§alves

21.Dec 2006:
Thanks to Carlos Goní§alves kbackup is now in the openSuse KDE:/Community project.
kbackup is therefore now available for openSUSE 10.2 and Factory, SUSE 10.1, 10.0 and SLE10

1.Oct 2006: (0.5.1)
- added "recent files" action
- added profile setting to define a maximum slice size
- store recent directory for file dialog

29.Sept 2006:
KBackup is now included in the Fedora 5 branch.
Fedora users just have to do "yum install kbackup" as root.
- added french handbook

24.Sept 2006: 0.5 released
- added systray functionality
- added profile setting to define file-prefix
- added slovak GUI translation (thanks to Jozef Riha)
- fixed Umlaut encoding for directories

21.Sept 2006:
- added fedora RPMs (thanks to Alain PORTAL)

16.Sept 2006:
- added russian translation (thanks to Alexey Kouznetsov)
- added italian translation (thanks to Andrea Sciucca)

3.Sept 2006:
- added german handbook
- added french GUI translation (thanks to Régis FLORET)
- added missing "unlimited" translation string
- added the RPM .spec file
- added missing .mo translation files into RPM