[Box Backup] Development feedback & discussion for Box Backup 1.0?

Achim J. Latz achim+box at qustodium.net
Tue Jan 18 00:06:28 GMT 2011


Hello Thomas:

On 15/01/2011 10:42, Thomas Capricelli wrote:
 > While we are at it, here is my (personal, short) list
 >
 > * Snapshotting, which is, i think what those tickets are about:
 >
 > http://www.boxbackup.org/trac/ticket/62

I believe that this was addressed with a couple of fixes in September 
2009, which eventually led to the possibility to turn off housekeeping 
by setting soft limit := hard limit. To be precise, I am talking about 
the threads "Soft/hard limits: "Soft limit must be less than the	hard 
limit." on 16/9/2009 and "Mailbox backup is dangerous." in 
May/August/September 2009.

If my understanding is correct and the behaviour is now corrected, 
perhaps the ticket should be updated and closed to reflect that?

 > http://www.boxbackup.org/trac/ticket/52

Controlling the size and maintenance of old vs. deleted files seems like 
a nice-to-have to me, especially given that you can avoid data loss with 
the setting described above.

 > While performing my big comparison study of backup solutions, I've been
 > very impressed by boxbackup and it was my final choice.
 >
 > Only after this did i notice that i could not request "restore those
 > files/dirs as they were at given date/time". This seems so obvious a
 > requirement that i did not check for this feature. Now, I understand
 > that with boxbackup design this was not that 'obvious'. I think that
 > this feature is, by far, the most important one missing.

The thread "Mailbox backup is dangerous." in May/August/September 2009 
contains some great ideas on how to implement snapshots. Unfortunately, 
as pointed out back then, I am unable to contribute any code...

A thought experiment to eliminate my doubts about this feature: if bb is 
configured to run every 3600 seconds, does this not create a consistent 
snapshot at that point in time X (using LVM or VSS for added 
consistency)? Would it then not be a "simple" matter of adding a 
flag/timestamp to all files that have changed, perhaps even in a 
completely external DB?

For a snapshot restore at point X, you restore all files that have been 
tagged with X. To restore the remaining files, use the version of each 
file which has a timestamp Y < X.

Am I missing something?

 > Is it possible to create an account on trac ? I'd like to subscribe to
 > tickets to be notified when something happens, but i can't find how to
 > create a login.

Chris can probably help you, perhaps just contact him directly. While 
you are at it, you could also update the web page to make the client 
software more visible, as you explained in December.

 > For whoever is interested in creating a GUI, please dont do java or
 > wxwidgets and use a proper multiplatform widgets set such as gtk, or,
 > even better, Qt.

As per my other message about the current GUI status, the only currently 
sort-of-working implementation (Boxi) uses WX. Would you mind sharing 
why that is such a bad choice, especially compared to the non-existing 
alternatives that would have to be reimplemented from scratch?

Best regards, Achim

-- 
Achim J. Latz, Qustodium Internet Security
achim.latz at qustodium.net · http://www.qustodium.net
Data Encryption · Backup Automatisation · E-Mail Protection



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