Backup Monitor

Automatic data backup

Backup Monitor is a set a scripts that I've put together in order to make it easier for me to backup my personal data. It became quite straightforward to install and quite configurable too. That's why I'm now releasing it to whoever might be interested. That said... use it at your own risks !

Update: It can also be used to make a personal backup of a web site.

Icône de Backup Monitor

Features

  • performs a backup of a set of default folders that are are automatically installed on the latest Linux desktops (cf xdg-user-dirs specifications)
  • reminds you every month about the need to do a backup, but waits for your command before doing it
  • its default behaviour can be tweaked via a configuration file
  • makes it possible to backup additional folders (by indicating them in the configuration file)
  • makes it possible to launch custom scripts during the backup procedure (useful to backup data related to application for which a simple folder copy is not enough).

Shortcomings

It has also some important limitations:

  • it is not fully automatic (as explained above) since it juste automatically warns you about the need to do a backup, and you're then 2 clicks away from lauching the actual backup (for me it's more like a feature but for others it might well be a bug :) )
  • the install is more "hacker friendly" than "user friendly", even though it is quite light: a bash script to run and a symbolic link to create.
  • does not handle doing several backups on various devices

Screenshot

Exemple d'affichage de BackupMonitor

Licence

BackupMonitor is released under the GPLv3.

Download

The latest release is here: zip archive, tar.gz archive

Related projects

If you're looking for something easier to configure you might find the following projects interesting:

  • Déjà Dup: designed for simplicity, it handles various kind of backup locations
  • Conduit: more focused on personal data synchronisation, it might be handy to backup some applications' data (mails, bookmarks etc).
  • TimeVault Ubuntu's answer to Apple's TimeMachine,
  • rsync used by BackupMonitor's core script, that's still a reference tool for backups