Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Apple's "Time Machine" Now For Linux... Sort Of

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the because-you-can dept.

deander2 writes "Apple's 'Time Machine' is cool, but I use Linux, not MacOSX. So here is a Linux implementation (built off of rsync, of course). No fancy OpenGL, but quite functional none-the-less."

8 of 425 comments (clear)

  1. Question by stoolpigeon · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I have not used Leopard - so this is a real question, not a snarky response. My understanding was that a large part of what makes the whole Time Machine work and worthwhile is the interface. So if you don't have that, isn't it just another backup tool? Let me reiterate - this isn't a rhetorical question. Is doing the same thing without the interface sufficient or is it missing the point?

    --
    It's hard to believe that's how Micronians are made. Why don't we see it right now by having you both kiss one another?
    1. Re:Question by krog · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Another thing which makes Time Machine so cool is that it is hooked into the filesystem at a low level. Rather than having to inspect the entire directory tree rsync-style, Time Machine uses the FSEvents interface to stay informed of filesystem changes. FSEvents isn't perfect (it actually only records when a directory's contents have changed) but it beats rsync-ish traversal any day.

      In my opinion, without such a method for watching FS changes as they occur (or later, from a log), any hackish solution will fall far short of Time Machine's performance.

      --
      Cretin - a powerful and flexible CD reencoder
    2. Re:Question by dlsmith · · Score: 5, Insightful

      I don't know whether this Linux implementation does something like it, but what I like most about Time Machine isn't the interface. It's the fact that the backup utility takes care of disk management automatically.

      My current backup strategy works something like this:

      1. Set up Retrospect nightly backup scripts.
      2. Happily enjoy the security of having backups for a few weeks.
      3. Wake up in the morning to see an "external disk full" error message.
      4. Procrastinate for weeks while I try to decide whether I'd rather trash the entire archive or find someplace to dump my 80 GB of data (which probably involves making space somewhere, which is always a project).
      5. Finally get fed up with having no backups and just discard the archive.
      6. Return to step 1.

      If I were smart and vigilant, I would catch when the archive reaches about 30 GB, and create a new one then, so that managing older archives could be done in more tractable chunks. If I were rich, I would just buy a number of external drives that I would rotate as they filled up. But I am apparently neither, so I just get stuck in this cycle in which I only have a current backup 1/3 of the time, and older archives are randomly discarded or distributed wherever I can find the space.

      The great thing about Time Machine is that it consistently fills up my disk with the most relevant backup data: current backups at a high frequency, and months-old backups at a low frequency. When space runs out, the oldest data gets thrown away, but the quantum chunk is a diff between backups, not an entire 80 GB archive.

  2. Completely misses the point by Just+Some+Guy · · Score: 5, Insightful

    We've had backup systems for decades. Even Windows has a more functional system than Leopard by accounts I've read. What Leopard did is make backup and restore sexy to the point that people will actually want to do it.

    "Flyback" is a replacement for, well, I'm not sure what. It's certainly nowhere near Time Machine whose primary innovation was "damn gotta get me that" user-friendliness.

    --
    Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
  3. Not the interface by Thornburg · · Score: 5, Insightful

    IMO, it is not the _interface_ that is cool about Time Machine, but the ease of use and the fact that it is fully automatic.

    I didn't RTFA, so I don't know if this "Time Machine for Linux" implementation is as easy to use or not, but the real thing that makes Time Machine cool is that even my mother can use it.

    The Ars Technica article about Leopard has lots of very cool details about Time Machine in it, including how it works. (It uses hard-links, including hard-links to directories, so in each and every time-stamped folder on the backup drive, you have a *FULL* copy of your HDD at that time (minus anything you excluded from the backups). Read that portion of the Ars Technica article if you want answers to questions about it.

    1. Re:Not the interface by Hatta · · Score: 5, Insightful

      IMO, it is not the _interface_ that is cool about Time Machine, but the ease of use and the fact that it is fully automatic.

      What's the difference? The interface is how you use software. If it's easy to use, it has a good interface.

      --
      Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
    2. Re:Not the interface by bestinshow · · Score: 5, Insightful

      That's great if you know the date you want to restore too.

      Time Machine's ability to simply browse backwards through time in the folder, whilst still having the folder functionality usable is far beyond BackupPC. Indeed I bet there are many times that you just want to do this, you don't want to restore the file or the folder as it was then, you just want to quickly glance inside the file as it was.

      There's nothing amazingly clever about Time Machine, but it is Apple "Getting It Right(tm)" interface-wise (excluding silly starfield, etc) and functionality-wise.

  4. Recovery tool is better than a backup tool by emj · · Score: 5, Insightful

    It's more of a way to recover your backup tool. So you are right, Time Machine is nothing without the interface. It sucks not being able to recover data easily, and sadly most other tools seems to concentrate on snazy ways to backup, not how to recover.