When it comes to most things, starting fresh is a blessing.  The reason for this is rather simple, when starting over you don’t have to worry about baggage.  After all, baggage is only valuable when on holiday; otherwise, it just slows everyone down.

This is especially true for software.  Over time, computers tend to accumulate a rather potent type of digital baggage that can be very difficult to get rid of.  And that digital garbage results in inconsistencies that can cause enormous – and usually unforeseen – problems.

However, even though starting fresh is usually the best option, that isn’t always true.  Sometimes, it’s better to risk the problems and incompatibilities.  For example, starting over may mean that you destroy hours worth of customization, or that you lose work already created because the older version are not compatible with the new.

Unfortunately, the general rule is also somewhat true of Time Drive.  So, if you were one of those stalwart and brave individuals who decided to experiment with Time Drive 0.1, this post is for you.

In the last few days, I have been in touch with a number of people who have experienced a number of said inconsistencies and problems.  And while several of these problems ended up providing insight on mistakes made during development, some of the others were changed on purpose.  That is to say, the so called “bug” was actually a feature.

After fielding a couple of particularly angry e-mails, however, I thought that it might be good do a formal write up that describes how to work around these incompatibilities.  And while no one likes to squash bugs or fix things that previously worked, rather fortunately, every one of these problems can be overcome with a little bit of effort and patience.

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Tags: Backup,Linux Backup,Mac OS X,Time Drive
Categories: Computer
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The first time that you attempt to do something, it’s pretty much a guarantee that it’s going to suck.  This doesn’t necessarily need to be a bad thing.  Shows like  America’s Funniest Home Videos and MXC have found dozens of way to cash in on the humiliation of their participants.  (And what better exemplifies pure suck than a golf ball to the groin?)

It, therefore, shouldn’t come as any surprise that creative pursuits are no exception to the general rule of suckiness.  After all, you have to overcome inexperience and ineptitude to produce anything.  The only way to ensure that a release doesn’t suck is to finish a first draft and revise heavily.  Which requires a great deal of work.

Yet … as interesting as that might be, this isn’t a post about the creative process.  It’s about Time Drive and I should probably admit that Time Drive 0.1 had a few … rough … edges.  Sure, it mostly worked, but it was new software and did too many strange things to declare anything other than a “work in progress.”  But Time Drive 0.1 was a first release and first releases suck.

Second releases, however, offer a chance to clean things up, refine the bleeding edge, and otherwise deliver the goods.  Maybe that’s why I’m so excited to announce the release of Time Drive 0.2.  This version of Time Drive is a great improvement over it’s predecessor.  So much so that Time Drive 0.2 is hereby dubbed the “More S” release: more stable, more secure, more settings, and Amazon S3 storage.

In the remainder of this post, I’ll attempt to justify such a silly name by taking a look at a few of those new features.

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Tags: Backup,Linux Backup,Mac OS X,Time Drive
Categories: Computer, Programming
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In part 1 of this article, I shared a few of the frustrations and reasons why I decided to write my own backup utility rather than submit to the tyranny of currently available solutions.  While some might find those ruminations interesting, the vast majority are probably far more interested in the end result.  There is a reason why “Get to the point” is one of the most important sentences in the English language.

Here’s the short version: After becoming tremendously frustrated by the state of backup on Linux, I decided to take matters into my own hands and create my own tool.

And though I only want a few things, I want that tool to do each very well.  First, I’m looking for a solution that can incrementally backup over the network and let me restore a file from an existing snapshot.  Second, those snapshots should be compressed, encrypted and secure.  Third, it should be easy to browse old backups for existing files and restoration should be a one-click affair.  Fourth, I want a backup system that can protect me from disaster, carelessness and pathological stupidity.

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Tags: Backup,Linux Backup,Time Drive,Time Machine
Categories: Computer, Cool Stuff, Featured, Programming
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It is a terrible thing to realize that you are stuck in a rut.  Being in a rut effectively means that you’ve stopped advancing and life has evolved to monotony.  No one likes to be around people in ruts, but it’s even worse to discover that you are personally trapped in one.  And, most unfortunately, I am in a rut.

Don’t believe me?  Take a look at the home page of this blog.  You will likely notice that a full six of the ten most recent posts have dealt with one subject: backing up your computer.  That’s pretty conclusive evidence of a rut.

Now, backing up your computer is a very important thing to do; you should do it regularly and have a plan.  But … well … it’s boring.  Talking, thinking and writing about nothing but backup is dull.  As one of the doctors I work with likes to say, “That isn’t sexy.  If I’m going to spend any time with it – women, food, wine; it doesn’t matter – it should be sexy.”

He’s got a valid point, backup is not “sexy” and I’d like to write about things that are, at least for a while.  This, therefore, will be my last post on backups, archives, or servers for the relatively foreseeable future (technology is just too cool to lay it aside for too long).  But before doing that, I want summarize where I ended up in my quest for the ultimate backup system.

Backup on Mac is taken care of, I use Time Machine to a Samba share.  More adventurous persons than I might even say that this arrangement approaches sexy.  It’s convenient, fast, and robust.  It even covers disaster recovery.

Backup on Windows is also covered.  The built-in file backup is easy to use and works well.  Moreover, setting up a disaster recovery system is relatively painless.

But the third major operating system, Linux, is a bit of the odd-man out.  Certainly, you can find some excellent backup systems, Back In Time is one such example.  With a bit of work, you can even tweak it so that it is almost perfect.  But it’s the “almost perfect” and closely related cousins (“mostly useful” and “good enough”) that are the problem.  They have those stupid qualifiers – almost, mostly, enough – bolted on.

Any time you hear a qualifier, you can rest assured that you aren’t going to like what follows.  Consider the rather innocuous phrase, “that may be a problem.”   Here, the term “may,” makes an already bad situation much worse.  Instead of specifying some probability of problemhood, it all but guarantees it.  Positive qualifiers are just as bad.

As a result, it angers me that nearly every backup program available for Linux requires some kind of qualifier.  It shouldn’t be like this.  Linux is a brilliant operating system in practically every way.  It is highly integrated, wonderfully modular and tremendously easy to extend.  So … after finding that nearly every backup utility in existence has failed to meet my needs, I found the situation intolerable and decided to do something about it.

I wrote my own.

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Tags: Backup,Linux Backup,Time Drive,Time Machine
Categories: Computer, Cool Stuff, Featured, Programming
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Despite all of its strengths, Back In Time has one major weakness: it doesn’t support backup over a network.  But luckily, it runs on Linux,the single most customizable operating system in the world!  As a result even though Back In Time might not officially support a backup to a remote computer, you can still make it work through a little bit of spit and grit.

The magical sauce is the Fuse SSH file system.  This kernel module allows for Linux to mount a remote share as a local drive.  And by doing so, Back In Time thinks that it is working with a local folder even though the data might be sent across the network or internet.  To make it work, though, you’ll have to work at the command line and do a bit of programming.  But, don’t panic because it isn’t that hard.  It amounts to a few shell commands and about six lines of code.  Below, I’ll show you how in seven simple steps.

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Tags: Linux Backup,Time Machine,Ubuntu
Categories: Computer, Cool Stuff
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Linux is a bit of a funny creature.  In many ways, it’s the most integrated and full featured operating system in existence.  Take software development, for example.  You couldn’t ask for a more integrated, well thought out solution.  The tools are absolutely first rate, the system is stable, and because the platform is open source, most of the rough edges get worn off rather quickly.

But there’s also a downside to open source.  You see, everyone tends to scratch their own itch first.  Thus, while there are a bevy of tools that perfectly meet the needs of a few (most notably their authors), they often miss the needs of the many.  That is a problem, because the masses don’t necessarily have the skill set required to adapt an already existing program so that it fits them.  If anything, this is why Microsoft is valuable.  They create software that more or less handles the needs of the masses.

And as might be expected, this is also the state of backup on Linux.  It is no understatement to say that you can get your hands on the very best backup tools available, for free.  All it requires is that you use some derivative of the following:

sudo apt-get install toolname

Unfortunately, while you can find the very best tools, that doesn’t necessarily mean that you will be able to use them.  Rather that be written with the end-user in mind, they were created for programmers and system administrators.  You know, the type of people who wonder why anyone would bother with a user interface.  After all, it’s so much faster to do everything from the command line.

The result is that while the Linux backup tools may be powerful, they also have a learning curve steep enough to bang your head against.  And that is an absolute shame.  In general, I (and a great deal of humanity in general) am against activities that require me to learn new things or otherwise grow in what might end up being a painful direction.  Even if it is for a good cause.   (And I can think of few more important than making sure thatmy personal information is safe and secure.)  Ideally, I want backup to be easy.  I  want to “Set it and forget it.”  Time Machine for Mac OS X allows me to do this, as does the Windows Vista File Backup.  But at first pass, such a solution for Linux is woefully absent.

That’s not to say that there aren’t contenders.  In fact, a quick search on Google will reveal several: sbackup, Flyback, and TimeVault all look promising.  But if you look at their project pages, you will notice something disconcerting: in each case, the programs are old and there isn’t much recent activity.  This is typically a bad sign for an open source project.  No activity usually means that the program is dead and unlikely to advance further.  And that is really too bad, because sbackup, Flyback and TimeVault are good programs with potential.  But, like many other open source options, they have a number of very rough edges.

Maybe that’s why I got so excited when I saw a new contender, called “Back In Time,” when it was recently featured on Lifehacker.  At the time, I thought, “Have I finally found a backup program I can really use?”  Now, after four months of using it full time, I can answer that question: Yes!  Without a doubt!

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Tags: Linux Backup,Time Machine,Ubuntu
Categories: Computer, Cool Stuff
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