If kup is configured for a manual backup, that backup can be stared from the Save new backup button on the panel widget.
What command does this button actually execute? How might one execute the same command from a terminal (e.g., to allow for other backup schedules besides the ones that the Backup GUI supports)?
Take a look in ~/.cache/kup/
The log file for each plan will give you the command used.
Either rsync or bup is used, depending on the type of backup used for the plan.
do the verify integrity and generate recovery info features under advanced really provide any additional protection over what something like vorta (which also uses the borg backend) or back in time (which uses rsync) does when they make a backup?
wondering because neither of those offer any such integrity / recovery features except maybe vorta has a validation interval you can add to the schedule, but it’s not clear what it does.
Kup uses bup for versioned backups. I don’t have any familiarity with Borg/Vorta, or it is so far in the past that I don’t remember.
Versioned backups vis Bup with recovery info and integrity checks do add a fair amount of time to backups, but I started enabling these about two or so years ago. It was not common, but I have had corrupted sets a few (3?) times in the past, particularly with the cheapo and/or old USB backup drives I was using. Two were successfully recovered, and another was not - I wasn’t using those features yet at the time for that one. It has been a couple of years since I noticed a bad set. I blame the crappy drive and maybe the buggy Kup version at the time.
0.10 has been solid for me, 0.9 was okay. Anything before that was— iffy imo. I was building it from source for a while, until 0.10 was added to neon’s repos.
I don’t think I ever had an issue when saving to my mounted NAS destination, but I also have never needed to repair any corrupted backup sets from there – I was using the recovery data/verification options by then.
Syncs (using rsync) don’t offer recovery/verification.
I don’t recall seeing any integrity checking etc with Backintime (rsync).
What I like about Kup is having multiple schedules and multiple backup types. Particularly the USB options - I have one simple plan that automatically syncs all my selected docs, images, and select video files to a thumb drive when I plug that drive in.
I have a regular bup incremental backup of much of my $HOME and another less frequent plan for may Steam library.
Backintime is too simple for my needs, Vorta seems to have similar enough capabilities and features (multiple profiles/plans). I don’t know what I didn’t like about it, or Borg, back when I settled on the then-buggy Kup, though I have no need for encryption for my local backups. I have been using rclone for ages for that purpose when syncing backup sets to The Cloud.
tl;dr I really dunno
thanks for insights.
i think i’ll keep using kup (with all the bells and whistles turned on) and put up with it’s disruptive popups and cpu churn.
to mitigate that i can play with the Active Usage Time scheduling feature which something i’ve not found anywhere else… and maybe dial back the notifications a notch.
what it’s missing is any sort of automated pruning action which vorta and back in time both offer in spades, so how do you handle pruning of your backups?
restoring files is pretty straightforward but there is no easy way to search or sort the archives… you get name sort only, unless i’m missing something.
hopefully the GUI (kup) can improve upon those shortfalls as bup seems robust enough to expose those features if someone had the time to improve the GUI
for instance bup web offers a local web server you can browse with a browser.
other options i’ve looked at are: vorta (and pika), back in time, deja dup, lucky backup
vorta (and pika) use the borg backend and just like kup (incremental), requires their extractor to unpack and restore a file/folder where back in time and luckybackup just use rsync so the backups are accessible via dolphin if need be.
unfortunately, luckbackup does not offer incremental like the others, nor does it have an easy UX for setup or restore where back in time and vorta offer better sorting options in the recovery mode to help you find your file/folder.
deja dup is sort of a hybrid, that creates a manifest of compressed files you could still dive into with dolphin if you absolutely had to but its not straightforward to do so… it also has a nice Ctrl-F feature in restore mode that i’ve not found anywhere else.