StoreBackup 3.2
http://storebackup.org

 

Super Quick Start

StoreBackup is a disk-to-disk backup tool for GNU/Linux. Additional details and help are provided in later sections of this document.

In these brief quick start steps we make certain simplifying assumptions. If you are OK with that, then proceed as follows:

1. Download the source from http://download.savannah.gnu.org/releases/storebackup/
2. Unpack it (using tar -jxvf) into /opt (it will make the folder /opt/storeBackup.)¹
3. Create symbolic links. In a terminal, run these 2 commands (the 2nd line ends with: space,dot):

   # cd /usr/local/bin
   # ln -s /opt/storeBackup/bin/* .
   

4. Run your first backup with this command (substituting your actual username in the command):

   storeBackup.pl --sourceDir /home/your_username --backupDir /tmp/my_backup_destination
   

   This may take a while. Open a second shell and see what happens in the backup directory. You have now backed up your home directory to /tmp/my_backup_destination.

For more details, please continue reading; especially see installation and storeBackup.pl. If the above steps gave you any challenges, don't worry. This document will cover everything from storeBackup installation to NFS server settings in much more detail.

storeBackup's Top Features

• restore easily - even without storeBackup! The most important aspect of a backup tool is easy restoring
• transparent (native) storage format
• recognizes when files have been copied, moved or renamed and does not waste time or space to duplicate the backup of such files
• copied, renamed or moved files with identical contents are hardlinked (so each backup set is totally complete, independent and autonomous)
• copies / compresses files to another disk and generates backups with time stamps
• splits big image files (from eg. TrueCrypt, mbox, Xen, KVM, VMware, etc.) or complete devices into small pieces and saves only differences to existing backups, thereby saving space and time
• sophisticated including and excluding possibilities for files and directories
• fast backups even over slow or high latency network connections

Why should you back up your files?

Simple answer. Two reasons:

1. To restore the last state after eg. a hardware or software crash.
2. To recover old versions of a file or folder because it was deleted / destroyed unnoticed (eg. by a software bug) or you discover later it was deleted by mistake.

New releases are announced at http://freshmeat.net/projects/storebackup. Please subscribe to get actual information.

If you have any hints, comments or questions, send an email to hjclaes at web.de

StoreBackup is licensed under the terms of the GPL-v3 or any later version.

Heinz-Josef Claes with support of contributors, July 18, 2009