A review of the new TimeVault program, a backup utility for Linux similar to Apple’s Time Machine. Covers installation, configuration, usage, and discuses some of the advantages and limitations of its backup abilities. “TimeVault finally offers a complete, easy-to-use, intuitive backup system for Linux. While advanced and experienced users have been able to schedule backups using rsync, cron, and other tools, new users will find Timevault a comfort; knowing that their files can be easily and safely backed up, and reverted to an older state if necessary. The interface is relatively intuitive, and although the configuration could be a bit simpler, beginners should have no problem setting up TimeVault to keep their files safe.”
TimeVault=FileVault+TimeMachine.
How is copying off of other projects original?
It’s a shame to see all these “me too” projects getting the airtime, while truly original open source projects languish in obscurity. But, I guess they can’t cash in on some other company’s marketing buzz.
I remember when *nix variants were leading innovation as a second nature. Now we see a projects whose main goal is to play catch-up, making clones of MS and Apple products.
Agree whole-heartedly. Remember when desktop compositing (meaning Compiz & Beryl & the like) only got full swing in the Open Source community after Windows Vista was revealed to have such capabilities. No matter, that KDE kinda had their own desktop effects in kwin3 (although scarce and sometimes not working).
With the time-vault-machine-thingy, its the same thing all over again. Oh why do I not believe that nobody else came up with the idea that “backups are so complicated, why not make the process easier and straightforward”. However I do believe that the idea, if it passed the first mental geek-barrier (oh no, i want something to be easier instead of figuring the whole shit out by looking at the source code; i must not be a true geek), it was quickly beaten down by peer-geeks. Until Apple did it, then it became good, necessary, great and wackydoodle.
yeah but in this case all apple did was slap a nicer gui on something. it’s still just agui back up tool, it wasn’t new when apple did it either.
So? Why does it matter who invented it first? Apple made something that is useful, people want it on Linux, so people make a clone. What is wrong with that? Would you rather have people work on “innovative” things that have never been done before, while neglecting basic and useful features?
Reimplementing good ideas is far more important to an OS than “innovating”. Because, face it, I don’t care how talented your people are, the rest of the world is going to come up with more true innovations than any single project. Oh, you can do the Microsoft thing and trumpet every little thing you do as an “innovation”. But then you are just lying to yourself. Far more benefit comes from looking at the best of the ideas developed by other projects, even, or perhaps *especially* by competitors, and reimplementing them in your own domain. A software project doesn’t… *can’t* live by innovation alone.
So enough of this wasted time talking about “project B just copied from Project A”. It’s worse than useless. It’s misleading. And it’s counterproductive.
We would all be the poorer if we disallowed ourselves to copy others’ good ideas. NIH syndrome is every bit as damaging as a bad patent, because it has exactly the same effects.
This comment was meant to disprove the OP’s claims of originality.
But since you mention it, I would nevertheless say that the projects that copy off of everything that Apple and MS does don’t really get us much. I don’t want a free version of Windows or OSX. I wouldn’t pay $200 for Windows, and I wouldn’t pay $0 for it, and I don’t care what its source code says.
I’m willing to accept the fact that a lot of people really do want that. If so, great, go forth and code boring GUI-only desktop applications. But, I remember a vague Unix philosophy where Windows apps would be considered anathema. Now, Linux-users are tripping over themselves to be the first project to port the latest desktop app (with varying levels of competence).
Read the OP again. You completely misinterpreted it.
And shouldn’t you be busy innovating for us instead of wasting time complaining about other people’s work?
Damned if you do, damned if you dont.
One day people complain that Linux does not have these things and that it needs them. The next day Linux has them and then people complain that they are just like, uh, the stuff they previously said it should have.
.. but i like the Timemachine approach better.
Renaming seems bad. It should only expire old copies when it is running low on diskspace. I would want more options.
Currently I use rsnapshot to make backups. It makes hardlinks to duplicates. How is this new tool different? I like the GUI, nice for desktop use, but actualle I use rsnapshot for a remote server so GUI fancyness is not what I am personally interested in. I’m a bit worried about the many many many different backup programs and scripts in Linux land. Too much choice and some of the jewels will live in darkness.
(my current setup: unison + rsnapshot, and waiting for incron to support recursive watches on directories)
Looks good, but the bit on “limitations” suggests that TimeMachine needs a little more work before it becomes fall-off-a-log user-friendly. I won’t try now but maybe in six months, by which time the KDE lads may have got to it, too. Even so, when you compare this with the near-useless, all-or-nothing spud that is the stock Vista backup tool, you realize how fortunate Linux-users are.
To add to the myriad alternatives, I used a simple perl script called plbackitup that’s been around for years. It covers much of the same ground, but without a gui, and you can schedule it for when you like via crontab entries. In quite a few years of use now it has never let me down (and a backup solution only has to let you down once to become effectively worthless).
Vista Business and Ultimate have Shadow copy that does what TimeVault does (and it’s been available on Windows 2003 since it came out). Although it’s probably more limited.
TimeVault suffers from the same problem rbackup, rsnapshot and many others: it performs an “initial backup” which needs as much disk space as the data you want to look after, therefore wasting a lot of disk space. For example, if you have N MB of data, with TimeVault, rbackup, rsnapshot, etc you end up needing 2*N + N’ MB, where N’ is the amount of diskspace you allocate for snapshots.
A more interesting and efficient approach is implemented by ZFS, Zumastor (http://zumastor.org), NILFS (http://nilfs.org), etc. They do NOT need to perform that initial backup, therefore if you have N MB of data, you only need N + N’ MB, which means you save a huge amount of space.
While ZFS and NILFS are filesystems, Zumastor is combined kernelspace/userspace approach which works on Linux on unmodified filesystems (you can use ext3, XFS, etc).
For Zumastor, you need to load a kernel module and apply a few patches to the kernel. Zumastor-enabled kernels for Ubuntu Gutsy are available at my PPA: http://launchpad.net/~pgquiles/+archive (it’s Gutsy’s stock kernel, with Zumastor; there are two variants: -zumastor and -xenzumastor, which has both Xen and Zumastor patches).
While ZFS and NILFS are filesystems, Zumastor is combined kernelspace/userspace approach which works on Linux on unmodified filesystems (you can use ext3, XFS, etc).
I would immediately go for ZFS (quite a lot of reasons actually, it just beats all the other filesystems available :/ ) but well, that Zumastor sounds like an interesting idea too. I had never heard of that so thank you for the link
Might start playing around with it, just out of curiosity, maybe even create a GUI 
Wildfile was first with their GoBack software, now owned by Symantec.
Symantec sold it for less than they paid for it. GoBack is a dog.
Just out of curiosity are their any clones/alternatives available for Windows? I currently use imaging software but it’s not intuitive to do hourly images of the entire drive.