Re: gdar - a graphical user interface to brows and extract dar archives

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On 24/05/2014 01:08, Tobias Specht wrote:
> Hi Denis,

Hi Tobias,

> 
> my plan is to release version 1.0 as soon as possible. I only want
> to improve stability. Then I can commit gdar to the official
> package repositories of the major Linux distributions, so that it
> will be easy to install gdar. To release a new version won't be
> that difficult then.

OK, now I understand better what you want to do.

> 
> Version 2.0 will be all about creating a backup. As gdar is a GUI
> application the main target will be a Desktop system, especially
> for those users who are not that experienced with Linux. It
> shouldn't be just a GUI that provides all features of dar, like the
> dar CLI but with a graphical interface.

Right, some libdar features are not very needed by GUI like gdar.

> Rather then it should guide the user though the process of creating
> a backup schedule and for example manage the referencing backup
> when creating incremental backups based on the schedule.

That's interesting and makes sense. If I properly understand your
idea, doing regular backup through a GUI is a constraint a user may
skip or forget. cron/fcron/other scheduling is a better choice as it
makes the backup process transparent and configured once and for all.
Having a GUI for programming it is the perfect target, as you
mentioned for users that are not that experienced with Linux. Do I
understand correctly the direction you follow?

> About the details I'm currently not sure and would like to get some
>  other opinions: * the backup source would be /home or /home/bob
Depends to whom it addresses. If it is most common that one user (home
user) manages a computer for the others (the rest of the family for
example) it makes sense to propose /home as default choice. But
implies some privileges to run the backup as.

> * the backup destination should be a external HD
Right, not the same disk if you want the backup be available in case
of crash disk.

> * full backup frequency one of
> yearly/quarterly/monthly/weekly/daily
IMHO, quarterly basis for full backup is a good compromise between
security and work load (I mean the time the computer will be loaded to
create the full backup, which may be annoying when doing other thing
with the computer). It also allows longer data retention without
wasting disk space. However, in CLI the use of "ionice -c 3 nice -n 19
dar ..." leverage low priority facilities provided by the system to
make the backup process quite invisible to the user.

> * differential/incremental one of
> yearly/quarterly/monthly/weekly/daily
Seen my current usage at home, doing incremental backups tend to save
at each cycle the same data that change often, while a lot of the rest
do not change often. For home directories, IMHO, a differential backup
seems more interesting. The other point is that it makes the
restoration more simple and quicker (restore the full backup then the
last differential backup).
For the frequency, IMHO, daily backup (or maybe weekly but not
larger): Users do not want to loose the most precious data they have
at current time: the one they are working on.

> * when it's time for a backup, the user will be queried to start
> the process * when should the backup be executed? * at the
> beginning (fix date, not depending on when the backup has been
> started the last time. e.g. 1th of month) * or after the period has
> expired (variable date, depending on when the backup has been
> started the last time)
Having a fixed time for the backup in particular on laptops which are
powered on at random time makes it difficult to define what time is
better than another. In the other hand there is some asynchronous
scheduling features in fcron or anacron (but not in cron) that let the
scheduling take place once a day/week/month. The backup will then
start as soon the laptop is powered on if it is a newer day/week/month
than the day the previous backup ran.

> * all the specific settings should only be visible in some advanced
> mode * a one-click setup would be nice
100% agreed

> 
> I'm not sure if this is the right place to discuss this, but I'm
> happy on every input I can get.
It is *a* right place, but there is not many active users on the today
60 subscribed ones in this mailing-list.

You may try asking on dar-support, which has a larger audience, asking
for support about dar way of use stays in topic :-) ... and all that
applies to dar about backup scheduling, backup perimeter (/home, ...),
backup location, and so on, also applies to gdar :-)

> 
> Regards, Tobias
> 

Regards,
Denis.
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