Re: RFS: vbackup

[Stefanos Harhalakis <v13@v13.gr>]

On Monday 28 July 2008, martin f krafft wrote:
> also sprach Stefanos Harhalakis <v13@v13.gr> [2008.07.26.1559 +0200]:
> > a) Can be extended by other packages just by adding files in a predefined
> > location, just like logcheck does.
> > b) Can backup filessystems, databases and almost everything else (for
> > example: dpkg --get-selections)
> > c) Is not graphical and can be used for server backups
> > d) Can be used as a meta-backup solution by combining other backup
> > programs (currently it doesn't do that but patches/proposals are
> > welcome).
>
> Like backupninja?

I didn't knew about backupninja.

There are many similarities and the basic idea is almost the same. vbackup is 
designed to support multiple types of backups while backupninja (if I 
understand it correctly) supports only one kind of backup at a time. In 
vbackup there are directories named backup.XXX under /etc/vbackup that 
describe different backup strategies - for example level 0 and level 5. You 
just run "vbackup 0" and it runs the /etc/vbackup/backup.0 backup

backupninja supports some extra things and I'm going to copy some of them (I 
suppose that there is no license problem - with proper credit of course) and 
extend vbackup. It also has the very nice ninjahelper configurator -  I've 
started coding something similar for vbackup some time ago but stopped.

vbackup currently supports tar and xfsdump backups which backupninja doesn't. 
vbackup is also meant to act as a whole while in backupninja each individual 
script is a backup of its own (they need their own destination directories). 
vbackup does not produce reports other than its output and most probably this 
will not change soon.

backupninja is 4 years old while about half of vbackup's functionality is less 
than 1 year old.

As a conclusion, I don't know if it will offer something different than 
backupninja. I'm going to keep developing it and create debian packages for 
my own needs. I'm also making it available in freshmeat for other people to 
find it. I leave this decision to you without trying to influence you since 
currently my opinion is somehow neutral (even though I'd like to see it in 
debian).

Thanks for your time.