backintime (1) Linux Manual Page
backintime – a simple backup tool for Linux.
This is command line tool. The graphical tools are: backintime-gnome and backintime-kde4.
Synopsis
backintime [ –backup | –backup-job | –snapshots-path | –snapshots-list | –snapshots-list-path | –last-snapshot | –last-snapshot-path | –help | –version | –license ]Description
Back In Time is a simple backup tool for Linux. The backup is done by taking snapshots of a specified set of folders.All you have to do is configure: where to save snapshots, what folders to backup. You can also specify a backup schedule: disabled, every 5 minutes, every 10 minutes, every hour, every day, every week, every month. To configure it use one of the graphical interfaces available (backintime-gnome or backintime-kde4).
It acts as a ‘user mode’ backup tool. This means that you can backup/restore only folders you have write access to (actually you can backup read-only folders, but you can’t restore them).
If you want to run it as root you need to use ‘su’.
A new snapshot is created only if something changed since the last snapshot (if any).
A snapshot contains all the files from the selected folders (except for exclude patterns). In order to reduce disk space it use hard-links (if possible) between snapshots for unchanged files. This way a file of 10Mb, unchanged for 10 snapshots, will use only 10Mb on the disk.
When you restore a file ‘A’, if it already exists on the file system it will be renamed to ‘A.backup.currentdate’.
For automatic backup it use ‘cron’ so there is no need for a daemon, but ‘cron’ must be running.
user.callback
During backup process the application can call a user callback at different steps. This callback is "$XDG_CONFIG_HOME/backintime/user.callback" (by default $XDG_CONFIG_HOME is ~/.config). The first argument is the reason:- 1
- Backup process begins.
- 2
- Backup process ends.
- 3
- A new snapshot was taken. The extra arguments are snapshot ID and snapshot path.
- 4
- There was an error. The second argument is the error code.
- Error codes:
- 1
- The application is not configured.
- 2
- A "take snapshot" process is already running.
- 3
- Can’t find snapshots folder (is it on a removable drive ?).
- 4
- A snapshot for "now" already exist.
- 1
- Error codes:
- 1
Options
- -b, –backup
- take a snapshot now (if needed)
- –backup-job
- take a snapshot (if needed) depending on schedule rules (used for cron jobs)
- –snapshots-path
- display path where is saves the snapshots (if configured)
- –snapshots-list
- display the list of snapshot IDs (if any)
- –snapshots-list-path
- display the paths to snapshots (if any)
- –last-snapshot
- display last snapshot ID (if any)
- –last-snapshot-path
- display the path to the last snapshot (if any)
- -h, –help
- display a short help
- -v, –version
- show version
- –license
- show license
See Also
backintime-gnome, backintime-kde4. Back In Time also has a website: http://backintime.le-web.org