What features did the rdiff-backup utility have thanks to migration to Python 3

During the migration to Python 3, the developers of the rdiff-backup utility have improved it, adding many new features.

In March 2020, the second major release of the utility was released rdiff-backup… The second – for 11 years. This is largely due to the end of support for Python 2. The developers decided to combine business with pleasure and improved the functionality of the utility.

For about 20 years she has been serving the Linux community with faith and truth – it helps to make backups on local and remote machines, let’s say … without unnecessary headaches. The secret is simple: the utility allows you to backup only those files that have changed since the last backup. For a more concise definition of this process, there is the term “incremental backup”.

Rdiff-backup experienced its rebirth thanks to a team of enthusiasts led by Eric Solf and Patrick Dufresne of IKUS Softwareand also Otto Kekeläinen from Seravo

New features

The project has moved to a new repository and invites everyone to become contributors. The team has made all the useful improvements that have appeared over the past 11 years into the new release. Among them – support for sparse files and bug fixes for hard links.

Automation based on Travis CI

Another major improvement is the CI / CD pipeline based on a distributed web service Travis CI… Users will now be able to run rdiff-backup in various test environments without the risk of breaking a running project. The CI / CD pipeline will enable automated assembly and delivery for all major platforms.

Easy installation with yum and apt

The new version works on most Linux operating systems – Fedora, Red Hat, Elementary, Debian and many others. The developers tried to prepare all the necessary open repositories for easy access to the utility. You can install rdiff-backup using your package manager or step by step instructions on the project’s GitHub page.

New house

The project site has moved from Savannah to GitHub Pages (rdiff-backup.net), the developers have updated the content and design of the site.

How to work with rdiff-backup

If you are new to rdiff-backup, you will be surprised how easy it is to use. The developers have made sure that you feel comfortable: in their opinion, such utilities should not distract with their complexity from such important processes as preparing a backup or planning data recovery.

Backup

To run a backup on a local drive (e.g. USB), enter the command rdiff-backup, then the name of the source (where you will copy the files from) and the path to the directory where you plan to save them.

For example, to make a backup on a local disk named my_backup_drive, enter:

$ rdiff-backup /home/tux/ /run/media/tux/my_backup_drive/

To save files to external storage, enter the path to the remote server along with the “::”

$ rdiff-backup /home/tux/ tux@example.com::/my_backup_drive/

You will probably also need SSH keys to access the server.

Restoring files from a backup

Backups are made because sometimes some files tend to be, shall we say … lost. The utility allows you to simply restore files from a backup. But still, with the click of a finger, this will not work.

Here copy commands will come to our aid – cp for the local disk and scp for a remote server.

For a local disk, you need to write, for example, this:

$ cp _run_media/tux/my_backup_drive/Documents/example.txt  ~/Documents

For a remote server:

$ scp tux@example.com::/my_backup_drive/Documents/example.txt  ~/Documents

Team rdiff-backup there are options that allow you to customize the copy settings. For example, –restore-as-of allows you to specify which version of the file you want to restore.

Let’s say you want to restore a file to the state it was in 4 days ago:

$ rdiff-backup --restore-as-of 4D  /run/media/tux/foo.txt ~/foo_4D.txt

Or maybe you want the latest version:

$ rdiff-backup --restore-as-of now  /run/media/tux/foo.txt ~/foo_4D.txt

You can see that rdiff-backup is easy enough to work with. This utility has many settings and capabilities. For example, you can exclude individual files from the backup list, make backups from one remote server to another, and so on. You can find a description of all its capabilities on the page with documentation


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