back-ups

Just for those who might be interested. I'm using Conduit now. It doesn't have any scheduling, but it let's you browse to choose your network location. And you are done. No other sync program I have found does that. They want you to type magic words in, or mount devices or set up ssh keys. And other hocus pocus that you'd end up having to spend ages "learning".
 
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ianp5a said:
Just for those who might be interested. I'm using Conduit now. It doesn't have any scheduling, but it let's you browse to choose your network location. And you are done.
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Well.. no, since it doesn't have any scheduling ;) How are you going to run it every day/every week/every month/every 32 minutes 14 seconds to ensure it is syncing everything you have changed?
 
ianp5a said:
Rsync can't do that either. It can't even find the network location.
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No... rsync isn't designed to do the file system stuff as that makes it infinitely more portable and quick to use. You have to make the filesystem visible on the host to be able to let rsync do it's magic. There are a few ways of making the NAS share visible, but all require up to 10 minutes of "learning". Once you have rsync setup and working, it is easy to automate it, with another 10 minutes of "learning". Unless scheduling is built in, I suspect you'll have issues getting Conduit to run periodically though, no matter how much "learning" you want to do.

From my brief googling, it appears you now have the equivalent of a one button press equivalent of a drag and drop from Nautilus/Dolphin/whatever your explorer of choice is.... (y)
 
10 minutes here, 10 minutes there and in reality hours of aggro, frustration when things don't work and I'm relying on people in forums. You don't see this as you have not looked into the different user types. And you are still avoiding the big usability fail. I guess you never asked yourself why people put so much effort into creating great desktop GUIs and application GUIs and why people avoid the crap GUIs and why so few people use the command line.

Anyway sure, I have a one click solution. And I don't need to memorise and navigate to specific folders. It's click and done.

Maybe I'll come across a more complete solution which triggers on any file change. Something where rsync or cron fail.
 
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ianp5a said:
And I don't need to memorise and navigate to specific folders. It's click and done.
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I'm happy for you that you need to remember to click every time you change things. GUIs FTW!
 
I use a RAID 5 array to protect against losing a single disk, and all that is backed up across a couple of external drives.

As long as I'm on the ball i'm unlikely to lose any of the data in the first place, but if i do it's just a new disk and a few clicks away.

I also have a 64GB USB on my keys that I have important documents and a few 'precious' photos etc on, just in case my entire house were to burn down!

I have in the past had a deal with a friend who had NAS and we would back up to each others to give location independent backups, but to be honest it felt like overkill so I've stopped that now, good option if your data is super critical though.
 
Might be worth giving SyncToy a try.

It schedules with Windows but not sure about Linux.
 
Thanks. Yes Sync Toy works well. But being a Microsoft program it's Windows only.
 
ianp5a said:
Anyway sure, I have a one click solution. And I don't need to memorise and navigate to specific folders. It's click and done.
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You move the goalposts though with your new requirement to trigger the update when a file changes.

BTW. the item given previously about rsync could be used to achieve that (where your GUI can't).

I think you are being somewhat blinkered if you think people shun crap guis (think windows), or that few people use the command line.
It would seem from your line of questioning that you want something for nothing, and are not willing to consider other people's opinions (or put a little effort in to consider other options).

With very little effort rsync can be run by double clicking an icon, but I guess that doesn't interest you as you might have to know where data might be stored.
 
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Getting back to the op's post.

Personally I have two servers, and sync the data from one to the other. Then in theory I use a single USB disk for an offline backup once a month (er, when I remember).

My servers run standard hard disks, in RAID 5 or 6.
Spinning disks are relatively safe, the danger points when compared to SSDs really are at power up, which is not as large an issue with SSDs. Both types of storage medium can suffer from controller failure, so feel 'at risk' if you have less than 3 copies.

Although SSDs are a nice idea, they are still able to suffer from medium failure, and are in some ways more difficult to retrieve data from.
If you are considering an offsite backup (say USB disk), give a little consideration to encryption, and how to store the encryption key, as well as physical security.

Some manufacturers have a higher failure rate than others, especially on 'GREEN' or 'ECO' products, which might spin disks down when YOU do not realise it. This puts a greater burden on the disks. As an OEM, I once had to return thousands of one manufacturers disks (single order, several manufacturing plants sonic wasn't a batch issue) due to them not being fir for purpose, high failure rate (several per day) mainly due to a bad idea on spinning the disks down whilst they where in use.
 
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coldpenguin said:
You move the goalposts though with your new requirement to trigger the update when a file changes.
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Yes. I'd originally wanted that. Like Dropbox. But lowered my sights.

coldpenguin said:
I think you are being somewhat blinkered if you think people shun crap guis (think windows),
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People generally take the path of least resistance. If there is an easy, not necessarily better, way they usually end up using it. It's all down to the choices they have. And your "think windows" comment is strange as Windows has some good and some bad things about it. It's not all crap. And the Windows help you get online is largely from non-techies. If they have a similar ability the advice they tend to give is more appropriate than the techie advice you'd get on, say, Linux forums. Luring people into a world beyond their depth. This happens time and time again. Putting many people off Linux.
coldpenguin said:
or that few people use the command line.
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Outside the IT world the percentage of people who use the command line is tiny. Even tiny amongst photographers. Miniscule. Why would they need it?
coldpenguin said:
It would seem from your line of questioning that you want something for nothing, and are not willing to consider other people's opinions (or put a little effort in to consider other options).
With very little effort rsync can be run by double clicking an icon, but I guess that doesn't interest you as you might have to know where data might be stored.
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I have experience with people suggesting command line solutions to non IT people, as I mentioned above. Which is why I specifically specified a 'GUI' solution. I am not interested in 'any' command line solution, so that suggestion can't get much consideration can it?. Especially as arad85 was not interested in the ergonomics and usability side, and, as I clarified above, it's a particular interest of mine. It's my home territory. I was polite, but it was way off the mark. Yet arad85 persisted. What can I say? You often find enthusiastic, helpful techies who know their field very well. Yet are rarely experts on everything to do with software. Such as usability.

I'm keen to discuss usability. But here is not the best place for it I think.

I don't want "something for nothing", I want something that I consider good. Which is why I was asking.
 
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ianp5a said:
Yet are rarely experts on everything to do with software. Such as usability.
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I looked and couldn't find anything. Neither could you (and you will have put way more effort into finding something than I did).

We're now 2 full weeks later and you still don't have a method of auto replication. Doing it at the command line is literally 2 lines of text (once you have the NAS disk visible on the Linux machine at the command line). If you think it's not worth investing the time to understand that so you have your files in the place you want them automatically, then that's your choice. In my view though, you have compromised the usability of your computer system as a whole (i.e. the files automatically being on your NAS within minutes of you putting them on your Linux machine) for the sake of holding onto configuring the thing through a GUI in the first place. IMHO, that's a bad tradeoff....

For what you want to do, rsync is the de facto standard. If you are doing more than a simple copy of a couple of files, it is what you should use - whether wrapped in a GUI or not. Automation on *nix is done by cron. It is the tool that gets used, again whether via a GUI or not. In fact, googling "gui cron" produces this as the first hit: http://www.corntab.com/pages/crontab-gui - the person there obviously has a sense of humour ;). These two tools have been around a while and I suspect the reason you can't find a GUI to do what you want is because both of these tools are very good at what they do and are relatively simple to configure and once you learn how to use them, you can apply the same knowledge to do lots of other useful things.

If you want backup on change, you probably want lsyncd which - you've guessed it - uses rsync as the method of transporting the data between two places. GUI for it - nope. But it probably does what you want, although it probably has its own set of problems. The tools to do what you want are there, you just have to do some work to get them to work for you.

Why do I persist? Simple. This is me:

8858-1414324949-977bca26151df4b106d84f21b3e91edf.gif


;)
 
I haven't spent much time on this lately, but I will find an elegant solution. Something within 'my' world, and not 'your' world. Which is the bit that you don't seem to understand. But I have good reasons for doing so.
 
ianp5a said:
Which is the bit that you don't seem to understand.
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I understand it, but I don't think what you want exists because the command line tools that exist are excellent and are relatively easy to configure. I suspect that given that fact, no one has bothered to make a GUI to wrap them.

BTW: I'm not suggesting using the command line for extra geek points, I am suggesting using it as it solves your problem and judging by the past 2 weeks of posts, nothing in "your" world seems to.
 
I have good reasons for wanting an all in one GUI solution. I've discovered several GUI solutions for Windows. As usually any application can navigate to network locations. And only a few can do that on Linux.
 
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ianp5a said:
I've discovered several GUI solutions for Windows. As usually any application can navigate to network locations.
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That's because networking is handled differently on Windows. For example, I can browse one of my shared disks by doing

dir \\<machine name>\<share>

at a Windows command prompt. Effectively, the remote share is "local" to the machine and this is handled by the OS, so applications can just use it as a local drive without mapping it. It isn't the app handling it, it is the underlying OS. That's why I think you'll have difficulty finding what you want - you are not handling the disks via the OS - you are expecting the "app to do it", but you will have to get the OS to do it first. Noone in their right minds would write a tool from scratch to implement something the OS already provides when configured properly.
 
The problem is, that most things in Linux are command line, or script based.
For example, upstart which is what starts your Linux kubuntu, is actually just a bunch of command line scripts.

The reality is, that everything in the background is just pretty much a set of command line scripts.

If you really want to obfuscate the fact that you are using the command line, then
1) Look at grsync, this is a graphical interface to rsync,
2) Look at Ajenti, which is a graphical interface to cron

The power of Linux comes from its flexibility. This flexibility comes from the ability to use building blocks in a logical manner to make a task work.
So, you set up your backup job using rsync (using grsync), and then you tell it to run every X time periods, using crontab, (or if you must, at)

There is no real alternative (not suitable anyway, even the commercial backup demons on Linux will use crontab for scheduling their actions, you don't re-invent the wheel).
 
The fundamental problem though is that the NAS shared drive isn't mounted in any way. Without that, rsync isn't going to work whether through GUI or command line unless the NAS has a rsync client or ssh access (which brings its own challenges). There are a few ways to mount disks (autofs is probably the slickest) but requires some "learning".... BTW: webmin is another web-based sysadmin panel to look at too - and is what I use when I CBA to drop to the command line ;).
 
neil_g said:
like OSX.
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Funny... I think someone suggested that earlier ;) :D

arad85 said:
If you want a *nix that is designed to be driven from the UI, take a look at Apple products (yes, you did read that right, I just suggested an Apple product without it sticking in my throat :D). I've no idea what the Apple equivalent is though.
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It pulled you back in though :p
 
going back to my hatred of WD My Passport drives, been handed another failed one today. cant do anything with it, again, due to the soldered USB port. again the user is looking at a bill for data recovery (and an important lecture/lesson about the importance of backups).
 
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