Re: GNOME Feature Proposal: Backup

[Michael Terry <mike mterry name>]

On 11 May 2011 02:55, Andrew Cowie <andrew operationaldynamics com> wrote:
>        --encrypt-key 5CB48AEA \
>        --sign-key 5CB48AEA \
>
> specify asymmetric encryption using my GPG key.

Not supported currently.  Needs design work to still be friendly for
non-technical users.

>        --volsize 100 \
>
> implementation detail, but it should be tweakable?

I've been taking the stance it shouldn't be tweakable.  One thing Deja
Dup does is adjust it whether you're hitting the network or not.

>        --exclude '/home/andrew/**/*.o' \
>
> I can tell it to ignore certain files or folders by name, but it doesn't
> seem I can exclude by pattern? As a developer there are an awful lot of
> intermediate files that I don't need to backup
>
>        --exclude '/home/andrew/**/tmp/**/*.class' \
>        --exclude '/home/andrew/**/tmp/**/*.h' \
>
> and so on.

Can't do it.  You can't even specify specific files, just folders.  It
needs design work:
https://live.gnome.org/DejaDup/Design/Proposal-MoreThanFolders

>        --exclude '/home/andrew/.gvfs' \
>        --exclude '/home/andrew/.local/share/gvfs-metadata' \
>        --exclude '/home/andrew/.cache' \
>        --exclude '**/*.cache' \
>        --exclude '**/Cache/**' \
>
> If we're backing up a user's home directory, then ignoring all this
> stuff could just be automatic, right?

.gvfs and .cache are already secretly excluded along with .thumbnails
and the like (unless you specifically include them).  See the help
documentation for a list.

I didn't know about gvfs-metadata, but if it lives in .local/share,
sounds like user data that should be backed up.

>        --exclude '/home/andrew/.gnome2/epiphany/favicon_cache' \
>        --exclude '/home/andrew/.local/share/Trash' \
>        --exclude '/home/andrew/.Trash' \
>        --exclude '**/sessions' \
>        --exclude '/home/andrew/.nautilus/metafiles' \
>        --exclude '/home/andrew/.nautilus/saved*' \
>        --exclude '/home/andrew/.fontconfig' \

Sounds like we need to file bugs against epiphany to put its cache in
~/.cache.  Same for nautilus.  I'll look into .fontconfig.

The user's trash is in the default user-visible exclude list.

> Ditto. And of course doing a system level backup, we don't need (and
> need to forceably skip):
>
>        --exclude '/dev' \
>        --exclude '/proc' \
>        --exclude '/sys' \
>        --exclude '/tmp' \
>        --exclude '/var/lock' \
>        --exclude '/var/run' \
>        --exclude '/var/cache/apt' \
>        --exclude '/var/lib/apt/lists' \
>        --exclude '/var/log' \
>        --exclude '/media' \
>        --exclude '/mnt' \
>
> And so on.

/dev, /proc/, /tmp, and /sys are excluded by secret default I believe.
 I don't think /media or /mnt are, but those are good suggestions.

> While this is clearly the sort of thing that could degenerate into a
> zillion configuration options and permutations, I'd like to hope GNOME's
> backup solution could help me out here and just Do The Right Thing™.

Agreed.  That's why I've taken the view that volsize and obvious cache
exclusions should not be something the user should have to see.

-mt