Re: GNOME Feature Proposal: Backup



Le mercredi 11 mai 2011 à 12:16 +0100, Bastien Nocera a écrit :
> > FWIW, this is exactly the use-case I'm missing. I would like to copy
> my
> > personal data to an external hard drive, remote server or cloud
> storage
> > service, so that if my hard drive goes boom, I can get my settings,
> > documents, photos, etc back after installing a new distribution on a
> new
> > system. I'm not that bothered about a full system recovery for a
> GNOME
> > back-up tool.
> > 
> > So I applaud your focus :)
> 
> That's because you're lead to believe that it's enough :) 

From desktop point of view, we usually do no modification of any kind
except for /home. It takes 20-30 minutes to install a distro these days,
and same to install a system backup. Base on that, doing a full system
backup seems a waste to me. As long as I can recover my home into some
newly created user account, I think it's enough. Also, when a hard disk
breaks, I tend to buy a bigger one. Using distribution installer let me
reconfigure the partitioning (or let the distro do it) from an user
interface I already learned before.

For sure, if your looking for server backup it's a different story. But
in reality, servers these days are not backup using integrated UI. Most
of the time, server are virtual, which makes backups something really
different.

Also, my previous experience trying to help someone using Time Machine
and Time Capsule on OS X was not so great. It ended up using the capsule
as a hard-drive and simply copying manually stuff over, as it was much
simpler to get stuff back.

The tech support argument is interesting, but my corporate experience
tells me that we never endup having full system backup for user
Desktop). The reason is that it's time and disk consuming. What I've
seen the most, is user profile being store on central server, and tools
to track software and licenses on each desktop. I'm guessing on this
one, but also tools to reinstall from the ground those machine with the
same softwares and licenses.

At last, I don't think the futuristic system wide backup should delay
having per-user backup. When this advance system wide backup support
exist, we could simply improve the UI and give more options to
administrators, and if an admin has setup system wide backup, cleanly
inform the non-privileged user that backup is already configured by the
system administrator. I would be really surprised such a complex system
wide tool gets written and reach a solid state soon, and even there, I
would be really surprise if sys-admin would start using such a young
implementation right away. Also, restoring user home from a user setting
is quite simple, but restoring a full system requires alternative OS,
which is usually distro expertise, not a UX expertise (I don't agree
Gnome 3 is an OS, but its clearly a UX).

cheers,
Nicolas

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