backintime
NAME
backintime − a simple backup tool for Linux.
This is command line tool. The graphical tools are: backintime-gnome and backintime-kde4.
SYNOPSIS
backintime [ −−backup | −−backup−job | −−snapshots−path | −−snapshots−list | −−snapshots−list−path | −−last−snapshot | −−last−snapshot−path | −−help | −−version | −−license ]
DESCRIPTION
Back In Time is a simple backup tool for Linux. The backup is done by taking snapshots of a specified set of folders.
All you have to do is configure: where to save snapshots, what folders to backup. You can also specify a backup schedule: disabled, every 5 minutes, every 10 minutes, every hour, every day, every week, every month. To configure it use one of the graphical interfaces available (backintime-gnome or backintime-kde4).
It acts as a ’user mode’ backup tool. This means that you can backup/restore only folders you have write access to (actually you can backup read−only folders, but you can’t restore them).
If you want to run it as root you need to use ’su’.
A new snapshot is created only if something changed since the last snapshot (if any).
A snapshot contains all the files from the selected folders (except for exclude patterns). In order to reduce disk space it use hard−links (if possible) between snapshots for unchanged files. This way a file of 10Mb, unchanged for 10 snapshots, will use only 10Mb on the disk.
When you restore a file ’A’, if it already exists on the file system it will be renamed to ’A.backup.currentdate’.
For automatic backup it use ’cron’ so there is no need for a daemon, but ’cron’ must be running.
user-callback
During backup process the application can call a user callback at different steps. This callback is "$XDG_CONFIG_HOME/backintime/user-callback" (by default $XDG_CONFIG_HOME is ~/.config).
The first argument is the progile id (1=Main Profile, ...).
The second argument is the progile name.
The third argument is the reason:
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1
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Backup process begins.
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2
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Backup process ends.
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3
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A new snapshot was taken. The extra arguments are snapshot ID and snapshot path.
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4
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There was an error. The second argument is the error code.
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Error codes:
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1
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The application is not configured.
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2
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A "take snapshot" process is already running.
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3
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Can’t find snapshots folder (is it on a removable drive ?).
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4
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A snapshot for "now" already exist.
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OPTIONS
−b, −−backup
take a snapshot now (if needed)
−−backup−job
take a snapshot (if needed) depending on schedule rules (used for cron jobs)
−−snapshots−path
display path where is saves the snapshots (if configured)
−−snapshots−list
display the list of snapshot IDs (if any)
−−snapshots−list−path
display the paths to snapshots (if any)
−−last−snapshot
display last snapshot ID (if any)
−−last−snapshot−path
display the path to the last snapshot (if any)
−h, −−help
display a short help
−v, −−version
show version
−−license
show license
SEE ALSO
backintime-gnome, backintime-kde4.
Back In Time also has a website: http://backintime.le−web.org
AUTHOR
This manual page was written by BIT Team (<bit-team AT lists DOT launchpad DOT net>).