I've just put up the first "version" of my new backup software, NArchivist, on SourceForge. It's not available as a regular download just yet, as there's too much to do to make it ready for a casual install (even tho "casual" by SourceForge standards usually means pretty technical). So you can get it from the source repository. See the project summary page for the gritty-kitty details, or you can start with my lame-o-rama project home page if you're in for a larf. Stuff It Does- It takes files from one or more "locations" on your filesystem(s), and copies them and their metadata (stuff like ownership, permissions, etc) to one or more "targets" in the cloud. For now, I only support Amazon S3, so if you want more than one target, you need to either create more than one s3 bucket or more than one AWS/s3 account. Or you can add support for other storage targets. Go ahead, it'll be fun.
- When a file changes, it backs it up again, and continue to until it reaches a configurable minimum number of copies. Basic versioning.
- File names are obscured. Actually, they're mapped via database to other, cryptographically-generated name. Session names are not obscured, however.
- It keeps a database of each of these operations, so we know where all our stuff is.
- There is a basic, text-mode installation/configuration program. This doesn't install the software, per-se. That'll be next. This just allows you to bootstrap the thing, create the database, and manage the target, location and backup parameters. Very rudimentary.
Stuff It Doesn't Do But WillIn no particular order: - Sessions ("runs" of the backup routine) are named and kept separate on the targets, but the files from all locations are intermingled within the session. I'd like to change this. Ok, truth be told, since I'm using cloud storage, I really don't know how things are "mingled" at all. It's a black box. But for my piece of mind, I'd like to make keys like {session-key}/{location-key}/{file-key} rather than the current {session-key}/{file-key}. And I will, very shortly. Be warned if you try the software that the next version will lose all your existing backups for that reason.
- Backup is useless without restore, and I don't have a utility to do that yet.
- It doesn't back up the database, and must.
More to come.
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