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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."

3 of 425 comments (clear)

  1. hard link directories by Ydna · · Score: 5, Interesting
    To make it really work like Leopard's Time Machine, we need a way to create hard linked directories. I mean besides the obvious ones that are made for us. Otherwise you get massive trees of directories containing hard linked files (for those that have not changed).

    It's easier to just use rsnapshot.

    --

    "The great thing about multitasking is that several things can go wrong at once." -me

  2. Why not a simple SCCS? by dpbsmith · · Score: 5, Interesting

    What I'd like to see is a very simple source code control system, built on the same design. Perhaps one that would just serve the needs of a single programmer.

    The essential thing is that it should look like a file system, with direct access to the project directories at any state in development... write access to the current version, read-access to previous versions... directly accessible to any piece of code via the normal file API.

    There should be no need for copying files back and forth from a central repository to a working directory.

    It should be equally friendly to text and binary files. It should not take much disk space to store versions of files that have not changed at all from one project version/label/whatever to the next. It is not necessary or desirable to store just the diffs between text files; in the year 2007 we really can afford the disk space to store an entire new source file even if only a few lines in it have changed.

    It should not rely on some central database that can be a central point of failure if it gets corrupted.

    It should reliably serve both the functions of version control and backup. Bells and whistles in version control are less important than backup. In particular, if it's on an external drive and the CPU fails, you should be able to plug that external drive into a new CPU and go on accessing it immediately.

    To those who work on hundred-engineer projects that need full-bore version control and CASE tools and so forth, peace. I'm not talking about a one-size-fits-all solution. I'm talking about a lightweight, simple, minimalist tool that as far as I know doesn't really exist today.

    --

    "How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!

  3. Re:Eh... by Ziwcam · · Score: 5, Interesting

    > Yeah. There's more to Time Machine than just a one-off backup of your data. TM > aggregates changes and you can roll back to any point in time. Doesn't all backup programs do this?
    I would like to clarify this a bit. Say for instance you delete 50 contacts one day, and 25 the next. A week later, you realize you deleted a contact that you needed. Most backup programs would only allow you to rollback the entire address book, re-adding all those contacts (and deleting contacts that you've added since then). Time Machine allows you to LOOK at your address book as you view progressively older backups, then when you find the contact you want to restore, to restore ONLY that contact (not the entire address book).