
System Software backup utility
Source (link to git-repo or to original if based on someone elses unmodified work): https://invent.kde.org/system/kup
Kup is created for helping people to keep up-to-date backups of their personal files. Connecting a USB hard drive is the primary supported way to store files, but saving files to a server over a network connection is also possible for advanced users.
When you plug in your external hard drive Kup will automatically start copying your latest changes, but of course it will only do so if you have been active on your computer for some hourse since the last time you took a backup (and it can of course ask you first, before copying anything).
In general Kup tries to not disturb you needlessly.
There are two types of backup schemes supported, one which keeps the backup folder completely in sync with what you have on your computer, deleting from the backup any file that you have deleted on your computer etc. The other scheme also keeps older versions of your files in the backup folder. When using this, only the small parts of your files that has actually changed since last backup will be saved and therefore incremental backups are very cheap. This is especially useful if you are working on big files. At the same time it's as easy to access your files as if a complete backup was taken every time; every backup contains a complete version of your directories. Behind the scenes all the content that is actually the same is only stored once. To make this happen Kup runs the backup program "bup" in the background, look at https://github.com/bup/bup for more details.
One important note is that bup will work regardless of which filesystem is used on the external drive. You can use NTFS or FAT32, unlike some other backup solutions which require hard links to work!
Download
You can find software packages to download for many linux distros at http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/home:/simper:/kup
What the Kup backup system consists of
- Configuration module, available in your system settings. Here you can configure backup plans, what to include, where to store the backup and how often. You can also see the status for the backup plans here.
- A small program running in the background. It will monitor to see when your backup destination is available, schedule and run your backup plans. It has a system tray icon that shows up when a backup is long overdue.
- Kioslave for accessing bup archives. This allows you to open files and folders directly from an archive, with any KDE application.
- A file browsing application for bup archives, allowing you to locate the file you want to restore more easily than with the kioslave. It presents a merged view: inside each saved folder you can see all the files it ever contained (well, that has been backed up at least). Select a file and you can see which different versions of this file that exists in the bup archive. You can open and view the files from here and it also helps you restore files or folders.
Detailed list of features
backup types:
- Synchronized folders with the use of "rsync".
- Incremental backup archive with the use of "bup"
backup destinations:
- local filesystem path, monitored for availability. That means you can set a destination folder which only exist when perhaps a eSATA harddrive or a network shared drive is mounted and Kup will detect when it becomes available.
- external storage, like usb hard drives. Also monitored for availability.
schedules:
- manual only (triggered from tray icon popup menu)
- interval (suggests new backup after some time has passed since last backup)
- usage based (suggests new backup after you have been active on your computer for some hours since last backup).
Needed backup programs
To actually create backups of your data you will need either "bup" or "rsync" installed. They
provide the implementations for the two different types of backups that Kup supports.
Helping out
If you want to help out with translation, check out
https://www.transifex.com/projects/p/kup/. There you can see the current status of all current languages and also request a new language to be added!
If you feel like helping out with coding, please have a look at the code and the list of issues at the github page:
https://github.com/spersson/Kup
Please report any issues at the github page!
If you do test new features that are not in a released version yet, please let me know if it works or not. This project is still small enough that it is very useful to get feedback on any testing done.
Kup Version 0.8.0 8 months ago
- Change how rsync type backups are stored when only one source folder is selected. This change tries to minimize risk of deleting files for a user who selects a non-empty folder as destination. Added migration code to detect and move your files on first run (avoid copying everything again and double the storage).
- Added advanced option to specify a file to read exclude patterns from, for example to never save *.bak files.
- Changes to default settings, hopefully better
- Reduce warnings about files not being included, was raising too much false alarms
- Changed to no longer ask for password to unlock encrypted external drives, just for the sake of showing how much space is available.
- Fix to not treat a backup saving as failed just because files went missing during the operation, both for rsync and bup.
- Start running backup integrity checks and repairs in parallell based on number of CPUs
- Added support for bup metadata version 3, which was added in bup version 0.30.
- Lots of smaller fixes to user interface
Kup Version 0.8.0 8 months ago
- Change how rsync type backups are stored when only one source folder is selected. This change tries to minimize risk of deleting files for a user who selects a non-empty folder as destination. Added migration code to detect and move your files on first run (avoid copying everything again and double the storage).
- Added advanced option to specify a file to read exclude patterns from, for example to never save *.bak files.
- Changes to default settings, hopefully better
- Reduce warnings about files not being included, was raising too much false alarms
- Changed to no longer ask for password to unlock encrypted external drives, just for the sake of showing how much space is available.
- Fix to not treat a backup saving as failed just because files went missing during the operation, both for rsync and bup.
- Start running backup integrity checks and repairs in parallell based on number of CPUs
- Added support for bup metadata version 3, which was added in bup version 0.30.
- Lots of smaller fixes to user interface
Kup Version 0.7.3 2 years ago
- Fixes problem with plasma applet not showing any text or icons when used together with qt version 5.12.
- Updated translations.
Kup Version 0.7.2 2 years ago
- Improve solution for restoring files from bup archive on a fresh OS installation. You can now launch the file digger app from the backup settings module, then select where your backups are stored and start restoring.
- Improve many translations, add hungarian and chinese(china).
- improve diagnostics
Kup Version 0.7.1 3 years ago
- Important bugfix: saving big backups could cause plasma workspace to freeze for a very long time.
- Change to not show list of every file that has ever been deleted in the bup log file anymore.
- Updated translations, adding two new languages: Czech and Dutch.
Kup Version 0.7.0 3 years ago
- Change system tray icon from simple popup menu to plasma applet - allows you to see status of backup plans there instead of having to open configuration window.
- Add progress reporting with percentage and transfer speed.
- Add option to pause and abort the saving of backups.
- Change folder layout of backups of sync type. Before you would need to go through layers of folders inside folders before reaching your files, now Kup tries to minimize this problem while still making sure that the folders have different names.
- Detect if user is shutting down system while saving of backup is ongoing - shows a warning and gives user a way to cancel shutting down.
- Kup now prevents power saving system from suspending or hibernating the computer while backup saving is ongoing.
- Kup now detects if laptop is on battery and in that case even fully automatic backups that normally don't ask first will now ask if a new backup should be saved.
- System tray icon will now stay hidden until saving of backup is long overdue. Before it would be shown anytime the backup drive was plugged in.
- Improve wording of some phrases and the icon choices in a few places to make things clearer.
- Add button for duplicating an existing backup plan.
- Add notification for successful completion of backup saving, before Kup would only notify you in case of problem.
- Fix a crash that could sometimes happen when loading a new configuration.
- A bunch of smaller bug fixes and layout improvements, mostly in the configuration module.
4 years ago
Kup Version 0.6.1
2016-06-13:
- Show hard drives that are not listed as hotpluggable, but still considered removable. Fixes some cases where a plugged in USB3 harddrive did not show up and could not be selected as backup destination.
- Now allows free selection of unreadable folders but instead warns the user about any unreadable files or folders in the set of current folders to be backed up.
- Now detects if there are any symbolic links being backed up that points to something not being backed up. Shows a warning in that case.
- Updated translations, added Bosnian language.
- Improved messages in the log file.
- Bugfix for the case of no folder selected in the source selection. The entire folder selection tree was impossible to use because of a bug in Qt.
Kup Version 0.6.0
2015-05-14:
- Ported the whole application to KDE Frameworks 5.
- Small bugfix for detecting problem with write permission for the backup destination.
- Please note that there are not so many other applications ported yet, so looking at files directly from backup archive (without restoring the files first) can be a problem. Applications based on KDE libraries version 4 will not be able to peek inside a bup backup archive. If you need that, keep using 0.5.1 instead.
- The default version linked from here is still 0.5.1, packages and source code for 0.6.0 is available at https://build.opensuse.org/package/show/home:simper:kup/kup-kf5
- Ubuntu packages are available at https://launchpad.net/~martin-loschwitz/+archive/ubuntu/kup/+files/kup_0.6.0-2_amd64.deb
Kup Version 0.5.1
2015-03-20:
- Bug fix for source selection: there was a situation where the folder selection collapsed and could not be expanded when dealing with hidden folders, this has now been fixed.
- Expand to show selected hidden folders when enabling "show hidden folders".
- Add ".local/share/Trash" as a default exclude for new backup plans.
- Change how includes and excludes are shown in the source selection, hopefully this way it should be clearer what will be backed up.
- Add an error message, correct some texts, update all translations. Contains big improvements to polish, german, italian and portugese translation.
Kup is now available in 12 languages, 7 of them are complete translations! The remaining 5 are about 70% translated.
Kup Version 0.5.0
2014-10-25:
- Add option to generate recovery information that can be used to fix broken bup backup archive.
- Add option to do integrity testing of bup archive every time a new backup is taken. In case something is broken and you are generating recovery information it will ask you if you want to try repairing the files.
- Now the configuration dialog warns about dataloss when using rsync in combination with fat32 or ntfs.
- Keep a log file of last backup job, can be viewed from system tray menu.
- Bugfix for viewing files in a bup archive containing more than 1000 separate backups.
- Cosmetic fixes and more informative texts in the configuration dialog.
- Add complete translation to Chinese(taiwan) and Lithuanian.
Kup Version 0.4.2
2014-05-09:
- Bug fix: store bup index in backup so that .bup folder in home directory is not needed, it was not being initialized anyway.. that was the real bug.
- Bug fix: allow user to select sources from /run. Internal hard drives could be mounted there, so it's a valid usage scenario.
- Bug fix: fix starting the monitoring process when enabling backups for the first time.
Kup Version 0.4.1
2014-03-15:
- Bug fix: detect when a new filesystem is mounted on a monitored path.
- Now with complete German, Polish, Russian, French, Portugese, Spanish, Tagalog, Swedish and Italian translations. Woohoo! A big "thank you" to all translators!
Kup Version 0.4.0
2014-01-25:
- Bug fix: detect encrypted partitions on external hard drives.
- Small update to keep up-to-date with new metadata format in bup v0.25
- Add German, Italian and Swedish translations. Tagalog and Spanish are still only partial.
Kup Version 0.4.0 beta 1
2013-10-08:
- Add kioslave for accessing files and folders directly from any git archive (including bup archives, of course!). Comes complete with support for metadata scheduled to be available with the soon-to-come 0.25 version of bup. Please test! Just type "bup://" in a kde-based filemanager (dolphin, konqueror, krusader et al)
- Add a new application called filedigger, it helps you find the right version of a file and then also helps you restore that file. You can open folders and files to have a look at them before restoring, thanks to the new kioslave.
- Add rsync-type of backups.
Please help test the above new features! And now is also the time to translate all the new texts, please help adding your language!
Kup Version 0.3.2
2013-05-20:
- Add german, italian and tagalog translations.
- Make it more difficult to create a backup plan without a destination. (Select first usb drive automatically when connected, warn user if no drive is selected when saving)
Kup Version 0.3.1
2013-03-09:
- Fix running with older versions of bup by removing compression level option, not useful for most people anyway.
- Check if bup is installed, notify user if not.
- Add spanish translation.
Kup Version 0.3
2013-02-20:
- Adds an option to take the backup as root. Useful when you want to backup system files which needs root access to read.
- Now checks if you are inactive (no mouse or keyboard activity) when accumulating usage time. For instance, Kup will no longer count time watching a movie on your computer as active usage time.
- Adds ability to configure which compression level is used for backups.
- Adds the option of selecting/deselecting hidden folders.
- Adds infrastructure for translations and a swedish translation. Help with other languages would be appreciated!
- Now sets the CPU and (on linux) the IO scheduler priority of the backup processes to be very nice, just to minimize risk of a running backup disturbing you.
- Fixes a couple of bugs in the folder selection tree.
- Shows more info about external drives connected and now also remembers more info about the drive you have selected.
- Now uses the bup index file in your home directory instead of having the index file located in the destination archive. This can perhaps give better performance in some scenarios, not tested.
- Adds a few hidden folders in your home directory as default excludes, should be useful for most people.
Kup Version 0.2
2012-02-13:
- Introduced a new scheduling mode, Usage. Monitors how long you've been logged in since last backup was taken and suggests new backup after configured number of hours. Made this scheduling mode the default.
- Made a new systray icon (supposed to look like a safe... you judge..).
- The progress notification thing was just ugly & annoying, removed it. Now just showing an animated icon when taking a backup.
- Added option to never ask user before starting to take a new backup.
- Improved error reporting
- Big code cleanup for more maintainable code
- Made the config module's way of detecting/starting the daemon process more reliable.
- Systray icon tooltip now contains info on backup plan status.
- Systray icon now shows up with a red warning symbol if a plan has "bad" status; more than three times the backup interval has passed since last backup.
- Bug fix, already plugged in devices didn't show up in the list for selecting external destination drive.
- Bug fix for local filesystem destination: now detects if destination folder becomes available after a mount.
Kup Version 0.1
2011-12-09:
- Initial release.
snowweb
8 years ago
The version I'm using is:
Version: 0.22a-1 (for i386)
I'm not sure how to find which repo supplied it, but I have a clean new install of Kubuntu 12.04.2 and only added one additional repo so far, which I think was 'extras' maintained by Canonical. I'd love to use the latest version of things like bup, but unless there's a repo I can add with it in, it's hard to do that.
Regarding the dialogs in the application, I do have a couple of suggestions:
1) How about "Locally Attached External Storage" as a label, instead of "External Storage"?
2) The box where I assume detected external storage shows up, should be labelled "Detected external devices:" because if nothing is detected you're left wondering what should be in there!
3) When using the Local Storage option I think the folder field should be labelled, "Path to Backup Directory". I think if it is not too difficult to add tooltips, they would be useful here to be able to add, "May include mounted network drives, etc."
4) Also I would recommend an information screen to be displayed each time the configuration screen is opened, until a check is removed labelled, "Show this screen every time". In there, it would be useful to see a couple of paragraphs about what to expect to happen when you perform the setup, ie, "When you first enable backups on a directory, a '.git' folder will be created in the top level directory, which you should not delete, and the included contents will immediately be indexed. If you disable backups at any point, it will be automatically removed. A cron job is also added under the user, blah, blah.."
That kind of information would make it a bit easier for people to begin troubleshooting permissions issues, etc. I think.
I also noticed and am not sure if this is related to my bup issues or not, that when I start the laptop, if my directory becomes available after Kup has started, Kup continues to report the backup location as not available, even after it is. It would be great if things like this were less of a mystery by including information regarding how this monitored and the frequency of monitoring.
One last thing, I'm interested to know the effect of the storage becoming unavailable, part way through a backup or if the user shuts down their machine?
Thanks, for what promises to be among the 'must have' utilities of Linux in the future. Great job!
Regards,
Peter
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sideshow
8 years ago
I've added checks for existance and version of bup, both in the config UI and in the daemon.
I have also modified the config UI for selecting backup destination, some nice new things there I think!
Anyone interested enough can try to compile and install the latest version from git. Please comment here or message me if any new isssues are found.
Thanks again to everybody providing feedback!
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snowweb
8 years ago
GIT's no problem, compiling might be, but will see what I can do (I originally installed from a .deb).
Will get back to you.
Thanks.
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snowweb
8 years ago
This is the output from the terminal for the "make install" step:
$ sudo make install
Generating moc_kupsettings.cpp
[ 0%] Built target kupsettings_automoc
Scanning dependencies of target kupsettings
[ 4%] Building CXX object settings/CMakeFiles/kupsettings.dir/kupsettings_automoc.o
Linking CXX static library ../lib/libkupsettings.a
[ 14%] Built target kupsettings
Generating moc_backupplanwidget.cpp
Generating moc_kupkcm.cpp
Generating moc_planstatuswidget.cpp
Generating moc_driveselection.cpp
Generating moc_folderselectionmodel.cpp
[ 14%] Built target kcm_kup_automoc
Scanning dependencies of target kcm_kup
[ 19%] Building CXX object kcm/CMakeFiles/kcm_kup.dir/kcm_kup_automoc.o
Linking CXX shared module ../lib/kcm_kup.so
[ 47%] Built target kcm_kup
[ 52%] Built target actions for org.kde.kup.runner
Generating moc_edexecutor.cpp
Generating moc_kupdaemon.cpp
Generating moc_fsexecutor.cpp
Generating moc_bupjob.cpp
Generating moc_planexecutor.cpp
[ 52%] Built target kupdaemon_automoc
Scanning dependencies of target kupdaemon
[ 57%] Building CXX object daemon/CMakeFiles/kupdaemon.dir/kupdaemon_automoc.o
Linking CXX executable kupdaemon
[ 85%] Built target kupdaemon
Generating moc_buphelper.cpp
Generating moc_bupjob.cpp
[ 85%] Built target kuphelper_automoc
Scanning dependencies of target kuphelper
[ 90%] Building CXX object daemon/CMakeFiles/kuphelper.dir/kuphelper_automoc.o
Linking CXX executable kuphelper
[100%] Built target kuphelper
Linking CXX shared module CMakeFiles/CMakeRelink.dir/kcm_kup.so
Building CXX object daemon/CMakeFiles/kupdaemon.dir/kupdaemon_automoc.o
Linking CXX executable CMakeFiles/CMakeRelink.dir/kupdaemon
Linking CXX executable CMakeFiles/CMakeRelink.dir/kuphelper
Install the project...
-- Install configuration: "RelWithDebInfo"
-- Installing: /usr/local/lib/kde4/kcm_kup.so
-- Installing: /usr/local/share/kde4/services/kcm_kup.desktop
-- Installing: /usr/local/bin/kupdaemon
-- Installing: /usr/local/share/autostart/kupdaemon.desktop
-- Installing: /usr/local/share/apps/kupdaemon/kupdaemon.notifyrc
-- Installing: /usr/local/lib/kde4/libexec/kuphelper
-- Installing: /usr/share/polkit-1/actions/org.kde.kup.runner.policy
-- Installing: /usr/local/etc/dbus-1/system.d/org.kde.kup.runner.conf
-- Installing: /usr/local/share/dbus-1/system-services/org.kde.kup.runner.service
-- Installing: /usr/local/share/icons/hicolor/32x32/actions/./kuprunning.mng
-- Installing: /usr/local/share/icons/hicolor/scalable/apps/./kup.svgz
How can I tell if I'm now running the new package?
Should I have removed the old package first?
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sideshow
8 years ago
Try uninstalling the old one first, if it's not starting after that then I guess you will need to install the self-compiled one under /usr:
mkdir build
cd build
cmake -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=/usr ..
make
sudo make install
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snowweb
8 years ago
Nice work on the configuration options. That's a lot clearer now for me.
But I'm getting this error when I try to run a backup:
Backup did not complete successfully:</nl><i>error: option -0 not recognized<br>usage: bup save [-tc] [-n name] <filenames...><br><br> -r, --remote ... hostname:/path/to/repo of remote repository<br> -t, --tree output a tree id<br> -c, --commit output a commit id<br> -n, --name ... name of backup set to update (if any)<br> -d, --date ... date for the commit (seconds since the<br> epoch)<br> -v, --verbose increase log output (can be used more than<br> once)<br> -q, --quiet don't show progress meter<br> --smaller ... only back up files smaller than n bytes<br> --bwlimit ... maximum bytes/sec to transmit to server<br> -f, --indexfile ... the name of the index file (normally<br> BUP_DIR/bupindex)<br> --strip strips the path to every filename given<br> --strip-path ... path-prefix to be stripped when saving<br> --graft ... a graft point *old_path*=*new_path* (can be<br> used morethan once)<br></i>
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snowweb
7 years ago
Anyway, I always thought GIT did a pretty good job of doing the right thing with compression without any help. It's pretty efficient anyway, so I for one won't miss the compression option (particularly if it's a bit of a 'red-herring' and doesn't really make a lot of difference.
I think you're doing a great job over-all. It will be great to be able to do my backups with GIT. Thanks for your efforts.
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sideshow
7 years ago
I did not write the software to handle "unknown"... hmm... what to do about that...? hmm hmm..
Either ignore the problem, hoping that packaged versions of bup will become better soon. I'm guessing the "unknown" version is because of how the ubuntu guys compiled the package..
Or add some more sanity checks to Kup, if the version string is strange then it would play it safe and remove compression level.
Or remove the whole compression level thing again.. I don't think it's a very useful thing anyway. Starting to regret adding it. Maybe put it back when bup version 0.25 has been out so long that everybody runs it.
Getting tired just thinking about it.... would be nice to hear if anyone has an opinion on this.
I'm just gonna finish adding rsync support to kup, uploading to github soon. Then it's time to sleep.
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snowweb
7 years ago
Anyway, I tried "bup version" as you requested but the response was "unknown-".
I then did the following:
$ dpkg -s bup
Package: bup
Status: install ok installed
Priority: extra
Section: admin
Installed-Size: 680
Maintainer: Ubuntu Developers <ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com>
Architecture: i386
Version: 0.22a-1
Depends: libc6 (>= 2.4), python (<< 2.8), python (>= 2.7), python-support (>= 0.90.0), git (>= 1:1.7.0.4-2) | git-core, python-fuse, python-tornado (>= 1.0.1-1)
Recommends: par2
Description: highly efficient file backup system based on git
bup is a backup tool which stores the backups in a system based around
the packfile format from git.
Original-Maintainer: Jon Dowland <jmtd@debian.org>
Homepage: http://github.com/apenwarr/bup
Regarding whether I'm now using the newly self-compiled version of Kup or not, I completely removed the previous version, which was installed from a .deb, then verified it had gone, then compiled the new obtained via GIT.
I noticed some differences in it, it still had the compression option, but it also has some extra text around the options and in the display area for externally detected devices, there was some new text in there, explaining about it.
I've also restarted the machine since too but still get that error. I'm wondering if maybe you are using the "bup version" method to get the version number programmatically (which fails on my machine) and whether it might succeed if you were using "dpkg -s bup"?
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sideshow
7 years ago
I thought I had tested and seen that it was working now.
Hmm.. if you run "bup version" what does it say?
And are you sure you are running the new, self-compiled, version of kupdaemon?
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snowweb
8 years ago
I've confirmed that the drive is mounted and accessible. What could be wrong please?
(I also have installed 'bup')
Thanks. If I can get it working, I rekon I might switch from Rsnapshot which I've been using for the last few years.
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sideshow
8 years ago
To make it more obvious that "external storage" is something like a usb drive, detected via the device ID number (this could then end up being mounted where ever..).
Compared with "local filesystem" which is just a folder path, and Kup just checks to detect when that folder exists.
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snowweb
8 years ago
Still doesn't work though. I did notice that if I enter "cupdaemon status" at the command line, it says, "Kup is not enabled. Enable it from the system settings module."
According to the system settings module, I have checked "Backups Enabled".
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snowweb
8 years ago
Backup did not complete successfully:</nl><i>error: option -1 not recognized<br>usage: bup save [-tc] [-n name] <filenames...><br><br> -r, --remote ... hostname:/path/to/repo of remote repository<br> -t, --tree output a tree id<br> -c, --commit output a commit id<br> -n, --name ... name of backup set to update (if any)<br> -d, --date ... date for the commit (seconds since the<br> epoch)<br> -v, --verbose increase log output (can be used more than<br> once)<br> -q, --quiet don't show progress meter<br> --smaller ... only back up files smaller than n bytes<br> --bwlimit ... maximum bytes/sec to transmit to server<br> -f, --indexfile ... the name of the index file (normally<br> BUP_DIR/bupindex)<br> --strip strips the path to every filename given<br> --strip-path ... path-prefix to be stripped when saving<br> --graft ... a graft point *old_path*=*new_path* (can be<br> used morethan once)<br></i>
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sideshow
8 years ago
In this case newer versions of bup support setting the compression level, seems like the version you have doesn't. Which version of bup do you have? Is it included in your distribution or did you install bup from somewhere else? Which distro?
Perhaps I should find out which version is needed and add that in the Kup package dependancy information. I hope there will be a new release of bup soon and that most distros will package it.
Or.. I could also adapt Kup to check the version of bup installed and only use supported command line options. Hmm... I will see.
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snowweb
8 years ago
Still doesn't work though. I did notice that if I enter "cupdaemon status" at the command line, it says, "Kup is not enabled. Enable it from the system settings module."
According to the system settings module, I have checked "Backups Enabled".
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avlas
8 years ago
Would this be difficult to implement?
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sideshow
8 years ago
If so, I would not like to offer configuration UI for 10 000 different rsync options, I'm trying hard to find the right balance of what stuff to offer.
We'll see what the future brings.. :) Anyway, thank you!
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avlas
7 years ago
Looking forward!
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sideshow
7 years ago
Only thing I know is that I need to fix the "view files" action in the menu to not mount bup-fuse for a rsync-type of backup.
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sideshow
8 years ago
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Contrast
8 years ago
I installed Kup from the Ubuntu 12.10 package, and was initially having some problems. Whenever I tried to manually invoke a back-up, Kup would complain about the destination. It turns out the actual cause was bup wasn't installed. So just FYI, you might want to 1) have Kup offer to install bup if it's not found (similar to how K3B offers to install extra codecs), 2) add bup as a dependency to the Ubuntu package.
Thanks for all your hard work on this project.
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sideshow
8 years ago
And yes, quite foolish of me to not remember adding bup as a dependancy. If ever backends are made pluggable then I guess it would make sense to allow installation from the config UI instead of having a fixed dependancy.
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plaristote
8 years ago
Currently bup is executed by the user, so it's perfect for a backup of work things and all...
I'm already using Kup for backing up my work, but I would like to use it as well to back up my whole system and be able to get back after an update or when I do something stupid to it.
To do this, bup would need to be executed as superuser.
Would it be possible to add a feature so that kup can execute some backups as superuser ?
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8 years ago
When Kup only existed in my head the plan was to use kauth/policykit to be able to run the backup as root. When doing the research it turned out that kauth does not support running a process as the same (calling) user (kinda no-op, so I guess it makes sense in a way..), that means I needed two different solutions for the part that runs the bup processes (in use cases when only backing up user files it would be annoying to type password and run it as root!). So far I only did the easy solution, the one that just runs it directly as the calling user. I also realized that for myself it does not make much sense to run it as root. I use btrfs for snapshotting/rollback of my system in case of a bad upgrade. And I use a backup boot cd to take complete HD image for the case of HD failure, much better since then I have something to restore the backup with! Kup is pretty useless in that scenario. (Maybe someone is interested in making a boot cd with a minimal graphical bup-based backup app on it? Would be nice!)
So... that hopefully explains why I haven't done it yet. So far Kup is mostly developed for my own needs. But I do hope to improve it and make it more generally useful! And all feedback, like from you, makes me more motivated. So thank you for that! Can I ask what your use case is?
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