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:
- 1
- Backup process begins.
- 2
- Backup process ends.
- 3
- A new snapshot was taken. The extra arguments are snapshot
ID and snapshot path.
- 4
- There was an error. The second argument is the error
code.
Error codes:
- 1
- The application is not configured.
- 2
- A "take snapshot" process is already
running.
- 3
- Can't find snapshots folder (is it on a removable drive
?).
- 4
- A snapshot for "now" already exist.
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@lists.launchpad.net>).