1

Is there any software that takes journaled backups for Ubuntu?

I'm currently using the built-in deja-dup, which is great. However, it backs up at most once every 24 hours (daily). Is there any way to have a backup system in Ubuntu that backs up a file every time it's changed?

Also: Could and/or would it make sense for a file-level backup system make use of ext4's journaling features? Or am I misunderstanding ext4 as a "journaling filesystem"?

EDIT: Perhaps ext4 journaling is ill-suited for this task. In that case, is there software that runs a daemon tracking real-time file changes, and backs up accordingly?

Improve this question

2 Answers 2

Reset to default
2

  • Take a look at bup. It's a git-based backup software, which is in an early stage, but looks very promising and last time I checked, they did plan to implement a file notification based backup system. I guess it's best to check out the mailing list for the current status. edit: I forgot to mention, there's a gui available, named Kup.

  • Another possible tool is inosync, which actually supports inotify-based realtime backups in combination with rsync.

Improve this answer
0

Do not confuse a "journaled filesystem" with a "backup system".

A journaled filesystem is more robust, is journaled to keep track of the variations on the filesystem and, in case something goes wrong, recover that filesystem. This has nothing to do with your data on that filesystem, you can loose your data and have a perfectly healty filesystem fully recovered.

To answer your question i think that a cron job and rsync could be the tools that you need.

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/CronHowto

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/rsync

Improve this answer
1
  • Cron jobs still work on a time schedule. I was wondering if there was software that could make use of ext4's journaling information to only back up files when they change, instead of something like rsync+cron, which (as I understand it) scans all files each time to check for changes.
    – Paul
    Jun 23, 2012 at 0:02

You must log in to answer this question.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .