AVG announced the LiveKive service in February and promised that a beta would soon follow. The beta has just started and everyone who participates gets 5 Gigabytes of free online storage for a year.

The LiveKive beta is limited, and places are served on a first come first serve basis. You can head over to the beta signup page right now to grab your spot before someone else does.

The beta runs under the codename AVG AirSpace. Users need to register a free account over at the beta signup page after filling out a small survey about online backups. The software client is compatible with Windows XP, Windows Vista and Windows 7, sorry no Linux or Mac support in the beta.

AVG LiveKive Review

Installation of the 16 Megabyte setup file is straightforward and requires no user interaction. A setup assistant is launched after installation. Here it is necessary to enter the email address and password that was used to register the beta account at the AVG website

and enter a name for the PC or device the software is running on

It is optionally possible to click on Data Encryption Settings to create a custom passphrase for the application. AVG LiveKive will create one otherwise automatically.

The main application interface divides information on five pages and subpages that can be reached via tabs at the top.

The status tab displays backup, sync and share activities, queued files, actions that are currently performed, a log and statistics.

The backup tab suggests five pre-defined categories that can be backed up. The categories are desktop, documents, movies, music and pictures, all part of the my documents folder structure.

A click on advanced displays the computer’s folder structure with options to select additional folders and files for backup. A search is provided to find specific files or folders, and a switch to display hidden files and folders as well in the file browser.

The View Restore tab displays all backed up files and folders with options to download or restore selected files or folders. Files and folders are restored by selecting them first in the browser, and clicking on the Download icon afterwards. This opens the page below with options to download or restore the selected files and folders.

The sync tab offers configuration options to synchronize files and folders between different folders. The folders can be located on the same local computer, for instance an internal hard drive and external drive, or two different computer systems.

Data synchronization is setup in four steps: You select a name and optional description in step one. The two folders are selected in the next step. Only folders that have been added to the backup process can be synced. The interface lists all folders and the devices that have been setup for backup.

Files that should not be synchronized are added in the third step. You can add file names and extensions that should not be synchronized. The last step displays a verification of the settings. A click on Start Sync synchronizes the selected folders for the first time. Synchronizations can be scheduled in the status or options.

Share finally can be used to share files and folders with friends, colleagues or business clients. Individual share links can for instance be created in the View / Restore tab.

You can also create a publicly accessible, protected, url that you can use to share data. To do that you need to define a name, password and share folder that is then accessible via a newly generated url. Users can then access the files online if they have the right password.

Users with permission are then able to download folders and all files within, or individual files from the shared space. The owner of the files can change the password at anytime, and delete the share if it is no longer needed.

The preferences contain several interesting options. It is possible to define file size and age limitations, exclude files or folders with wildcards, schedule backups, syncing and sharing of files and configure network settings.

A local copy of data that is backed up can be saved by AVG LiveLive automatically. The local data is prioritized whenever files or folders need to be restored. This improves the speed of large restorations, and can also be beneficial if no Internet connection is available, or if the AVG servers are not reachable. The local copy of the backup needs to be activated in the Copy preferences.

Data that is exchanged with the help of the backup program is encrypted from start to finish, from the user’s computer to the AVG server and the other way round. Data on the AVG server remains encrypted so that no one can access the data on the server without the password.

AVG LiveKive In Short

AVG LiveKive is a file backup, synchronization and sharing solution in the cloud that is currently in beta. Beta users get 5 Gigabytes of free storage space for a year, and can install the software on PCs that run Microsoft Windows.

All activities can be scheduled to run regularly from the Status tab or the Schedule preferences in the program options.

Beta Verdict

No word yet on the pricing. The Get More Space button in the interface leads to a non-existing page on the AVG website. It is apparently not possible to save more than 5 Gigabytes of data in the beta.

The application is a bit slow reaction-wise sometimes. It happens that a click takes a few seconds to process. Not all the time but sometimes. This is likely a beta quirk that will be resolved in the final product.

AVG LiveKive adds a few interesting ideas to the online backup world. Especially the option to store a local copy of the backup is interesting as it offers several advantages and a fallback option. The developers should add the option to create custom categories, Windows Explorer integration, support for other operating systems and devices, and easier options to access backed up files.

The pricing, and the availability of a free account, are the two factors that make or break the product. Users who are experiencing problems should take a look at a sticky post in the AVG LiveKive support forum which lists several issues and fixes.

One of those tasks is backing up with Rsync. Of course you can set up rsync by hand (see my article “Backup your Linux box with rsync“), but for many new users, having to edit configuration files or run lengthy commands is simply not an option to be explored. That is where a good GUI will go a long way. Gadmin-rsync is just that – a good GUI that takes all of the hassle out of backing up with the classic rsync command. With this handy GUI you can set up rsync for local, local-to-remote, or remote-to-local backups. In this tutorial I am going to show you how to install and use Gadmin-rsync to set up and run a local-to-remote backup. This backup will be to and from Linux boxes. This tutorial will assume you have access to the remote box.

Installation

There is only one tool to install – Gadmin-rsync. The rsync command should already be installed on your distribution. To install this tool, follow these steps:

1. Open up Synaptic.
2. Search for “gadmin” (no quotes).
3. Mark Gadmin-rsync for installation.
4. Click Apply to install.

When the software has completed installation you are ready to backup.

Using the software

Figure 1

To run the tool go to the System Tools sub-menu of the Applications menu, where you will find the Gadmin-rsync entry. Click on that to open up the main window (see Figure 1). As you can see, the GUI is well laid out.

To create a backup you need to know:

• The directory/directories you want to backup.
• The address and authentication credentials of the user you want to use for backup.
• The path on the remote machine you wish to backup to.

When you have all of this information gathered, click the Create new backup button near the bottom.  When you do this a window will open asking you to name your new backup. Give this backup a name and click OK.  Now a pseudo-wizard where you will configure your backup. In the first window of the wizard you select the type of backup you wish to create. You have three choices:

• Local: Backup a directory or multiple directories onto the same machine you are working with.
• Local to remote: Backup a local directory to a remote machine.
• Remote to local: Backup a directory (or directories) from remote machine to a local machine.

After you select the type of backup you want to make a navigation window will open where you locate the directory or file you want to backup. Make sure you see the full path to the directory you want to back up in the Selection line above the text area. For example: If I want to backup /home/jlwallen/Documents I should see the line:

Selection: /home/jlwallen/Documents

near the bottom of the window. If I only see:

Selection: /home/jlwallen

That means I am planning on backing up /home/jlwallen and not /home/jlwallen/Documents. This can happen if you don’t double click the directory you want to back up in the navigation window. After you have made the selection click OK to continue on.

Figure 2

The next step is to configure the remote machine information. Figure 2 shows all of the information you need to set up your remote location. When you have filled out all of this information click Forward. It may take a moment, but a new window will open informing you that the Public key installation on the remote host was successful. You can close that window, which will take you back to the main window.

The final step is to select the backup you want to run and then click the Run selected backup button. This will run your backup in the background (the Gadmin window will remain open.

Before you close out the window you might want to click Save backup so that backup you just created will be there when you open up the Gadmin tool the next time. This way you can set up multiple backups, open up Gadmin-rsync, select the backup you want to run, and run it with a simple click.

Final thoughts

Backups should never be an after thought. And now, with the help of Gadmintools, you can create simple rsync backups with the help of an outstanding, user-friendly GUI.

The script made use of the following tools: date, cat, tar, mv, and rm. That’s it. The script will create backups with the date in the file name and then move the backups to a central location. Without further adieu, let’s get to the script.

#! /bin/sh

TMP=”/tmp/”

#Format the date in YEAR-MO-DY format
TODAY=`date +%F`

# Check to see if there is a lastbackup file in /tmp, if not create it,
# if so then set LAST equal to $TODAY
if [ -f /tmp/lastbackup ]; then
LAST=`cat /tmp/lastbackup`
else
LAST=$TODAY
fi

# Set the web directory backup name to the following
WEB_FILENAME=”inc-”$TODAY”-web.tar.gz”

# Set database backup name to the following
DB_FILENAME=”inc-”$TODAY”-db.tar.gz”

# this tars up my web directory into web.tar.gz tarball.
/bin/tar -czf $TMP$WEB_FILENAME –after-date=$LAST /var/www/html

# Move the web back to the backup directory
/bin/mv $TMP$WEB_FILENAME /data

# Remove web backup file from temp director
rm $TMP$WEB_FILENAME

# this tars up my database directory into $TODAY-db.tar.gz tarball.
/bin/tar -czf $TMP$DB_FILENAME –after-date=$LAST /var/lib/mysql

# Move the backup database to the backup directory
/bin/mv $TMP$DB_FILENAME /data

# Remove web backup file from temp directory
rm $TMP$DB_FILENAME

What I wanted this to do is create daily backups and move the backups to the /data directory on the drive housing the server. These backups will be saved for one month. After the month is completed i have a second script that deletes the months backups prior to running the next backup (so there is always a backup to fall to). How I made use of this script is simple. I save the script (called backup.sh) in the root user directory and create a second script called rm_backups.sh that looks like this:

#! /bin/sh

rm /data/*gz

With these two files in place I create two cron entries. The first cron entry is for running the backup.sh script and looks like:

0 23 * * *     ~/backup.sh

The second cron entry is for running the rm_backups.sh script and looks like:

0 20 1 * *     ~/rm_backups.sh

Both of the above cron jobs are created as the root user.

Final Thoughts

Naturally this solution could be easily modified (using such tools rsync) to set up an offsite backup solution. What should be obvious is that creating a simple, flexible server backup system on Linux is easy. With the help of a little ingenuity, you can create your own automated backup service.

Tame is easy to use. Just install the application on your system and pick an application from one of the running processes. That application will be monitored from then on. The only other information that have to be specified are the folder that should be backed up after that process terminates and the backup folder that will contain the backup of the data.

That’s pretty easy, ain’t it? The While that is the main use of Tame it does offer another way to backup files. Next to the so called Program Closing Backups System Timed Applications are available.

tame

This comes closer to normal backup operations on a system. The user can specify a time, a folder that should be backed up and a destination folder for the backup data and the backups will be started at that time if the computer is running. Folders can be local folders or folders on a network or backup server.

Tame requires the Microsoft .net framework 2.0 or higher. No information on operating system compatibility. It runs fine on Windows XP Service Pack 3.