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• Launchpad entry: https://features.launchpad.net/distros/ubuntu/+spec/continuous-backups

• Packages affected:

Summary

Ubuntu needs a robust and easy to use backup-solution that allows the user to restore his system even in case of catastrophic failure. The backup-tool needs to be:

• Automatic (once enabled). It must not nag to the user. We do not want a Clippy that asks the user "Would you like to back up your data?"
• Continuous, so it backs up everything and all the time. We need to be able to restore anything, at any point in time.
• Versioning, so we can restore older versions of the data, instead of just the latest version.
• Transparent, so the user does not even know it's running.
• System-wide, so it backs up everything. Ubuntu is a multi-user OS, we need to have a backup-tool that backs up every users data. Of course some users could be excluded from the backup if so desired.
• Flexible, so we can backup to external drives or network-shares. Manual archive-backups could be done on optical media.

Rationale

The most important thing in users computer is the data. Whether it's his collection of music and video, archived emails that go back years, or that unfinished novel he has been writing, it's all absolutely vital to the user. OS'es and apps can be re-installed, hardware can be replaced, but that data might be irreplaceable.

Use cases

• Tim is "the IT guy" in a company, who needs an easy-to-use backup-solution for his users, with centralized backup-server.
• John is a home-user who keeps his digital-photos and music in his computer. His computer is shared by his wife Anne, who has her own data in her account. Both users want their data to be backed up.

Scope

There are already several backup-tools available for Linux. We need to pick one, and spread some "Ubuntu pixie-dust" on it.

Design

The tool needs to be "configure once, run all the time". That is, the user sets it up once, and after that, it just works. It must not nag user to "backup your data!", it needs to do that automatically, without prompting the user. The user can select where to backup (network-share, external drive etc.), and he can specify how much space the backup can use on the target-media, as well as which users should be backed up (if the machine is shared by several people, each and every one would not have to configure their own backup-scheme). The tool could also be used for making "archive-backups" on optical media and such.

The obvious inspiration of this tool is the Time Machine that will be relesed in Mac OS X "Leopard".

Implementation

* A good tool too look at for this might be [http://www.nongnu.org/rdiff-backup/ rdiff-backup]. Its a great backup utility that already handles datings revisions, and time records.

• That is something I had in mind. All we need to do is to give it some GUI-love and integrate it with the rest of the system. -JanneOjaniemi-

* Another point to be made is we have lots of revision control programs as well, I always felt thats What 'Time Machine' more readily resembled then an on demand backup, but my $0.02. -KevinKubasik

* A really simple way to get at least some of this functionality would be to mount /home and /etc as versioned filesystems (for example: [http://wayback.sourceforge.net/ Wayback] or [http://n0x.org/copyfs/ CopyFS]). Neither of these are really mature, but it would be a nice long-term goal. Also, some form of UI would need to be written for this. (Of couse, a more awesome solution would be for Gnome Storage to not be dead ) - ChrisHalseRogers

Code

Data preservation and migration

Unresolved issues

BoF agenda and discussion

CategorySpec