Flyback is based on rsync and creates successive backup directories mirroring the files you set up to back up. In order to save space, Flyback hardlinks any unchanged files to previous backups. With Flyback you can backup to either a networked drive (so long as it is mapped), a usb drive, a thumb drive, or a directory within the file system. One thing you want to certainly avoid is backing up to a directory that is also being backed up. In other words, if you are backing up /home/jlwallen you would not want to back up to /home/jlwallen/BACKUP. Instead you would want to back up to something like /BACKUP. But we’re getting ahead of ourselves. Let’s first learn to install and use Flyback.

Installation

Installing Flyback is fairly simple. You will not find Flyback in any of your repositories, nor can you add repositories so that Fly can be installed with apt-get or any GUI tool. You can, however, install all of the dependencies with apt-get. To do this open up a terminal window and issue the command:

sudo apt-get install python python-glade2 python-gnome2 python-sqlite python-gconf rsync

You might find that apt-get will return that everything is already up to date. If so, you’re ready to go. If not, let the installation process happen and then you’ll be ready to go.

After you have issued the above command you can then download the Flyback file with the command:

wget http://flyback.googlecode.com/files/flyback_0.4.0.tar.gz

Now unpack the tar file (from within the directory the file was downloaded) with the command:

tar xvzf flyback_0.4.0.tar gz

which will create a new directory flyback. The next step is to change into the newly created directory and start up the application.

Starting and using Flyback

In order to start the application you will issue the command (from within the flyback directory):

python flyback.py

Figure 1

When the main window opens (see Figure 1) it might seem like a number of directories and/or files are already marked for backup. This is not the case. You have to actually add the files/directories from with the Preferences window. So the first thing you will want to do is click on the Edit menu and select Preferences. From within the Preferences window (see Figur 2) you will need to take care of a few tasks. The first task (and you might get a warning about this) is to configure the backup location. This is fairly

Figure 2

straightforward – just click on the Storage Location tab and then click the drop down to select  your backup location. After you have configured this click on the Include/Exclude Directories tab. From within that tab you select the directories you want to include in your backup from the drop down and then click the Add button. In order to delete  a directory from the backup you simply right click the directory from the “Included dirs” pane and select Delete.

Once you have all of your directories set up, you can then create exclude patterns. Fortunately the application includes a great Help file on creating exclude patterns. To get to this file click on the Help button just above the OK button. This will give you all the information you need on creating excluding patterns.

Figure 3

After you have your directories set up, you can either click OK and then click the Backup button on the main window, or you can set up a scheduled backup from within the Backup Schedule tab (see Figure 3).

In order to set this up as an automatic backup click the “automatically” check box and then set up the time you want to run the backup.

From this same window you can configure Flyback to delete backups when space is need or when a backup is older than a defined time period.

One thing to note. If you are setting up a regular, automatic backup, you need to make sure the location you are backing up to will be available. For instance, if you backup to a thumb drive, that thumb drive best be inserted when the backup is set to run.

Final thoughts

That’s it. A very simple backup solution that is somewhat flexible, but very user-friendly. Although not the most advanced solution, but a solution that should meet most of your desktop backup needs.

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AutoVer is a automatic software versioning application that monitors folders on your hard drive and creates backups of those files whenever they are changed. It’s like a realtime incremental backup of the files in those folders to another folder or drive on your hard drive.

Each folder that is being monitored has its own settings which means the application is highly customizable. It’s even possible to store the backup folder on an USB drive which gets synced whenever it is connected to the computer.

• Select any number of separate folders or folder trees (including sub folders) to watch for changes – each folder tree has its own independent settings
• Select straight backup or versioning mode
• Select any folder or drive to backup to (including memory sticks)
• Optionally create an initial backup before the automatic backup starts and ensure it is current on every startup
• Restrict which files and folders to include and exclude (by file mask) & maximum size
• Change the versioning datetime stamp format (and you can use this to restrict the rate of which the versions are stored)
• Optionally zip or delete old versions after a specified time
• Optionally delete backup files on original file deletion
• Fault tolerance in case your backup folder/drive goes off line or source files are locked. USB & Firewire drives sync’ed when they come online
• MS Office, Visual Studio plus many others supported (temp file creation, delete then rename is treated as original file change)
• Backup file & version explorer included
• Open backups or file versions directly (file extensions are preserved) or via inbuilt explorer
• Compare file versions (using customisable external application)
• Restore file versions via inbuilt explorer or manually
• Runs discretely in the Windows System Tray.

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It really does not matter if you have a root server or just a shared account because those normally have Gigabytes of storage as well, mostly unused. Ghacks for instance uses less than 200 Megabytes of storage space plus less than 100 Megabytes for the database.

I will not explain how to setup an ftp account in this article. If someone would like to know let me know and I could write another article about it. Remember that ftp accounts can also be created on Windows computers using programs like Filezilla Server for instance which means that you could transfer backups between accounts as well.

Please download Cobian Backup and install the software. Start it after installation, you will be greeted with the following screen.

We have to create at least one task for our backup. Press CTRL A to bring up the new task dialog window. The left pane contains several menus that contain settings that we have to configure (once). We select the type of backup, the files that we want to backup, the destination for the backup and so on.

The most important setting in the general pane is the type of backup setting. Do we want to create full backups which means that all files will be uploaded to the ftp, an incremental backup which backups only the changed files since the last backup or a differential backup which would only backup files changed from the last full backup. For our purpose we select full backup.

The files menu deals with the files that we want to backup and the destination for the backup. It is possible to drag and drop files and folders that we want to backup or select them by clicking on the add button. I would not suggest to backup a full hard drive though. The My Documents folder for instance could be a folder to add there, or part of if at least.

It depends on the files that you want to backup, the choice is yours. Just make sure you do not add Gigabytes of files if it is not absolutely necessary because those files have to be uploaded to ftp afterwards using your upload bandwidth and if you are not a lucky one using a symmetrical line with lots of bandwidth you might create a process that would last several days before it completes.

Select Add Ftp Site as the destination which should open a new window where you can enter the login details for the ftp site. Enter the IP, username, password and working directory. Note that there are submenus on the left, those can be used to configure the transfer in details.

You can add TSL (Transport Level Security), a proxy, SSL, IPv6 extensions and much more. The four settings under Connection are the only ones that are required, all others are optional. A click on the test button tests the ftp connection, it displays errors in red. The message All tests passed should appear if everything went well.

The Schedule menu configures when you want to run the backups. Options include Daily, Weekly, Monthly, Yearly plus Once, Manually and Timer. The default setting is daily. I set it to weekly which is sufficient for the kind of data that I want to backup.

The Archive menu configures if you want to compress the files before uploading them to ftp. This is a good idea normally because it will reduce the file size and you will be left with just a few zip files in the ftp directory and not hundreds of files.

Select Zip compression and choose to split the files. I did choose 100 Megabyte zips.

The Special, Events and Advanced menus are not needed to create the backups. They let you exclude files from being backed up or let you include only certain file types for instance.

Events can be configured to happen before and after backups, e.g. executing a file, closing a program or restarting or shutting down the computer.

The last menu is called Advanced. It makes it possible to run the backup as another user. The newly created task should appear in the left pane of the main menu afterwards. If you have scheduled backups they should be automatically started when the date and time is reached. It is possible to manually start a backup as well.

Some closing thoughts. I did not think of it at the beginning of the article but it is also possible to backup the files to a gaming console like the Xbox. My modded Xbox has ftp build in and enough hard drive space to store the backups. The benefit would be that I would not have to upload the backup on a ftp server on the Internet but on my home network which would mean that transfers would be much faster.

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When adding folders you select the source and destination folder, select if you want to include subdirectories in the backup, schedule the backup (minutely, hourly, daily, weekly and monthly), define if you want to start the backup after startup or at a given time and choose if you want to overwrite all existing files or only those that have been changed.

If you plan on using Everyday Auto Backup you should keep the setting that starts it during Windows startup. I would suggest that you disable it if you only plan to use it sporadically.

This is a great backup utility even for inexperienced users who do not like to think about stuff like backing up system files or personal ones.

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