KBackup

Source (link to git-repo or to original if based on someone elses unmodified work): https://github.com/KDE/kbackup

Description:

KBackup is a program that lets you back up any directories or files, whereby it uses an easy to use directory tree to select the things to back up.

The program was designed to be very simple in its use so that it can be used by non-computer experts.

It can do full- and incremental backups.

The storage format is the well known TAR format, whereby the data is still stored in compressed format (bzip2 or gzip).

The backup can be put onto a local directory (mounted device, etc.) but also on a remote URL (thanks to KDE KIO).

It also includes a german, french, italian, slovak, czech, portuguese, swedish and russian translation for the user interface and an english, french, russian and german handbook.

Note: the documentation for 0.7 is only current in english and german.

For the former KDE3 version 0.5.4:
You'll find all RPMs including 64bit versions for different distributions on the openSuse build service (links below)

Last changelog:

1.0.2 2 years ago

Fixed a crash on exit introduced in 1.0.1 when no systray icon was used

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mkoller
6 years ago

There's a misunderstanding.
Medium: 1, [ 61% ] Size: 593GiB
means: The medium 1 (the target where you archive to) is now 61% full and has an overall size of 593GiB

Medium: 1, [ 0% ] Size: 221.6GiB
"Backup successfully finished",
...finished slice
/backup/backup_2014.05.01-09.33.44_1_inc.tar
-- Filtered Files: 65561

This now means: the backup did not write anything (therefore the target medium you write to is 0% full) and the global size of the target medium is 221.6GiB. (it seems the full backup is ~370GiB large)
As you hit the "Start backup" button simply a second time, it tried to do an incremental backup, that is: archiving only changed files since the last backup.
As you did not change anything after the full backup, it did not archive anything and therefore all files (65561) were filtered (e.g. not put into the archive).

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SeriousSam
6 years ago

Hello

I added many specific folders, some from /etc/, some from /home/, and many photo-containing ones from /run/media/

I hit Start Backup, it's the first one, so it's full. Once finished, in the progress bar, kbackup-0.8 shows:
Medium: 1, [ 61% ] Size: 593GiB
Problem is that "Backup successfully finished"!
So what about the other 39%?

I hit Start Backup again, it's an incremental one. Upon completion, the progress bar shows:
Medium: 1, [ 0% ] Size: 221.6GiB
"Backup successfully finished",
...finished slice /backup/backup_2014.05.01-09.33.44_1_inc.tar
-- Filtered Files: 65561
-- Backup successfully finished --

I took a look at the first full tar file, I couldn't find what was missing just by eye-balling it. Clicked on some random photo albums, they all seemed to be there.

What files were filtered, for what reason? Why doesn't it complete the backup 100%?
Is kbackup only capable of handling 2^16 files?
And if the backup is indeed complete, why did it show 61% and almost 600GiB?

I manually selected the folders, as far as I know there are no "junk" folders with cache/symlink/hardlink stuff, just bunch of config files and a whole lot of very important photos.

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Vascom
6 years ago

Please correct FSF address in license file COPYING.

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Bumpalot
6 years ago

I ran an almost full backup of Kubuntu 12.10, which after running OK, suddenly cancelled. The Warning Section: Backup cancelled. Above this was a hugh list of similar to '/dev/block/1:11' is not readable. Skipping
I copied this list to a file - took up 28 pages!
Have no clue what caused this. Have been using this for over a year with no problems - normally works perfectly. The file types listed were /dev, /etc, /opt, /proc (the largest), all were "is not readable", ending with Backup cancelled. Do I have a system problem, or maybe I was trying to back up too many files (all backing up to a 2 Tera bite drive with more than 1 TB free. Would appreciate your comments, as I am reluctant to use this program until I hear your response. Thanks
bumpysax@gmail.com

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Bumpalot
6 years ago

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mkoller
6 years ago

You should exclude the system special directories like /dev, /proc, /sys, /run - they do not contain real files but things the Linux Kernel generates on the fly.
You will not need them for a restore.

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coogor
8 years ago

KBackup offers the option to pack the backup - each file as single zip. This makes it quite uncomfortable to restore e.g. from ark.
IMHO it makes sense to add an option to pack the whole archive, what do you think?

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mkoller
8 years ago

You can disable the compression completely via a profile setting.

The reason for compressing each file was the idea to allow for archive slices with a maximum size but still have compressed data.
To be able to know if a file still fits into a slice, I have to compress it before putting it into the slice, otherwise I can not know how large the slice will be when I compress the complete slice.

Of course this does not rule out another option to compress the complete uncompressed tar file after creation - it just does not make much sense in combination with a slice size limit.

I'll put it onto my TODO list

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coogor
8 years ago

Indeed you are right regarding slicing...but the slice value can still count for the unpacked file :-)
Still you can open the packed slice with a file manager and easily extract single files from it. If each single file is packed, I see no comfortable way in doing so (which does not mean that someone else has a solution for this...)

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BryanMohr
8 years ago

I can't figure out where to ask for help so I'm doing it here. I've been using KBackup pretty religiously to make sure I don't lose anything in case something were to happen. Well, something did happen, an install went bad, destroyed a bunch of stuff and I had to reinstall Kubuntu 12.04 from scratch. No problem, I have my backups. Well, how do you restore from the .tar file? If I do tar -xf backup.tar, it produces a ton of .bz2 files. How do I either extract all of those bz2 files or, even better, extract from the tar and unzip the bz2 files at the same time? I still don't have my desktop back to how I like it or any of my personal data. Why isn't there a "kRestore" application? Or just an option to "Restore" from within kBackup? That would make life soooo much easier! And judging from the number of people I've seen ask this, it's desperately needed!

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mkoller
8 years ago

Have a look here:
http://members.aon.at/m.koller/

The restore functionality is not yet implemented due to lack of time, sorry.

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kitterma
9 years ago

Here's a request from a Debian user:

It will be better (for me, but I believe for others too) if kbackup
is capable to estimate uncompressed size of selected directories.
Maybe a special button for running estimate. Or may be 'simulate'
mode when archiver walks tree but writes no output, only collecting
sizes.

http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=602837

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kitterma
9 years ago

I should have mentioned the when I initially posted this that there's a patch in the Debian bug.

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kitterma
10 years ago

I got a bug report in Debian from a user wanting to run kbackup via command line as root. It doesn't work.

root@mail:/# kbackup --autobg KBackup.kbp
kbackup(28543): Session bus not found

KCrash: Application 'kbackup' crashing...
sock_file=/root/.kde/socket-mail/kdeinit4__0
Warning: connect() failed: : No such file or directory

Is this something you would expect to work?

Scott K

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kitterma
10 years ago

Forgot the bug link...

http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=596903

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mkoller
10 years ago

I think the problem here is only the connection to DBUS. See the message
"Session bus not found".

I run kbackup here also as root started from within crontab and it works.
On this system, when I run kbackup as root from a shell (not inside a KDE session), I see that a new dbus session bus process is started.

Probably this is not happening on the Debian system ?

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jamjam
9 years ago

I had same problem on openSUSE 11.2

This seems to fix it, in crontab use this command, for example:

dbus-launch --sh-syntax kbackup --autobg /root/mybackup.kbp

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dejamuse
10 years ago

Hi,

I've emailed the maintainer of this port on Free BSD but nothing has happened. Could you prod him for me and get the port updated? This is a popular app on PCBSD.

http://www.freshports.org/archivers/kbackup/

Thanks!

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kitterma
10 years ago

I've packaged kbackup for the next Kubuntu release and it's in the official Ubuntu repository now. I'm also planning on getting it in for Debian Squeeze.

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kitterma
10 years ago

It's in for Debian Squeeze now too.

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dejamuse
10 years ago

Just installed a WD Mybook 1TB drive and formatted it on FreeBSD with sysinstall and disklabel. Using the entire disk for a single slice with 890GB free.

Kbackup reports the target drive size as 4GB so the backup fails when it hits this limit.

I'm using PCBSD and the Kinfocenter correctly reports the drive size.

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mkoller
10 years ago

Are you still using kbackup 0.5.x ?
If so, then this is the limit Qt3 can handle.
Try it with the current 0.6.x version instead.

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dejamuse
10 years ago

.6 is not in ports yet.

.5.4_2 is current.

As soon as the port is updated PCBSD will automatically rebuild the PBI.

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gminnerup
10 years ago

There are several references to documentation but I can't find any. The "Help" function does not lead anywhere. Any suggestions as to where to find docs would be much appreciated.

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mkoller
10 years ago

Depending on how you installed it, it is either in the source package, or in some other rpm package, etc.
E.g. on openSuse it's in the extra package kbackup-lang-0.6.3-3.1.i586.rpm

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1.0.2 2 years ago

Fixed a crash on exit introduced in 1.0.1 when no systray icon was used

Changelog 2 years ago

31.12.2017 (1.0.1)
- small fixes, allows to build with older KF5 versions

02.01.2017 (1.0)
- Ported to KF5
- configurable shortcuts
- context menu in tree allowing direct opening/deletion of files and dirs
- allow to show/hide hidden files

08.09.2013 (updated 0.8 package)
- Added translation for Interlingua, thanks to Giovanni Sora

23.07.2012 (0.8)
- Add dirpath wildcard filters to skip complete directories

05.03.2011 (0.7.1)
- fix handling of output from scripts used via --script
- better error message in case non-local target in non-interactive mode

25.10.2010
- Fix display of version number in "about" dialog

11.09.2010
- added Fedora and Mandriva packages on openSuse build service

19.06.2010 (0.7)
- Add Incremental Backup functionality
- Add wildcard filter to ignore files for backup matching a filename pattern

03.06.2010
- updated french translation

30.05.2010
- added czech translation (thanks to Pavel Fric)
- fixed other translation .po files

15.05.2010 (0.6.4)
- When an error occurs while reading a file (e.g. corrupted filesystem), cancel backup

25.09.2009 (0.6.3)
- When running in non interactive mode (e.g. cron), do not use KIO but only direct file access
as KIO needs a KDE session and $DISPLAY
This now makes the slice-reduction on the local target dir work.

05.09.2009 (0.6.2)
- Fix handling of disk-full situation (and a crash with it)

01.07.2009 (0.6.1)
- Avoid backup of the backup file
- make it compile with KDE Version < 4.2

24.May 2009 (0.6)
kbackup is now ported to KDE4 and has the following new features:
- Port to cmake and KDE4/Qt4, which also removes the 4GB limit per file
- sort hidden files/dirs before normal ones
- show dimmed icon for hidden files (like konqueror)
- don't allow to expand symlinked dirs as the content is not archived but only the link
- Add "Save As..." menu and store name of loaded profile, so that a save directly writes to that
- Add --autobg commandline which starts kbackup without a GUI e.g. for cron, at, ...
- Add --verbose commandline option which allows to see all files when using --autobg
- When the upload fails for a slice, offer a way to select a temporarily different target
- if target-dir does not exist, create it (mkdir -p)
- # of kept backups on target dir (per profile)
- show list of created archive slices in finish-dialog

25.Jan 2008
Added 2 new distributions in the openSuse build-service: RHEL-5 and CentOS-5 (both 32 and 64 bit)

19.Jan 2008 (0.5.4)
- correctly limit slice size:
- limited by the target directory (when we store directly into a local dir)
- limited by the "tmp" dir when we create a tmp file for later upload via KIO
- limited by Qt3 (4GB on 32bit)
- limited by user defined maxSliceMBs
- sort directories first in treeview
- correctly sort by size and timestamp in treeview
- check if a file that is archived into the backup is not the backup itself

4.Jan 2008
I have extended the usage of the openSuse build service.
Therefore I can offer now Suse, Mandriva and Fedora RPMs including 64bit versions.

13.Oct 2007 (0.5.3)
- Add russian handbook (thanks to Alexey Kouznetsov)
- show symbolic links with an overlayed "link" icon
- fix handling of files larger than 2GB
- avoid crash when writing special files (below /proc)

19.Aug 2007
- Repackaged to add spanish translation (thanks to Gerardo Bueno)
15.Aug 2007 (0.5.2)
Finally I release a minor update to kbackup. Here is the ChangeLog:
- start with the HOME folder opened
- add a profile option to avoid media change dialog
- add a profile option to avoid compressing files at all
- Whenever a directory is only partly included, show it with blue color
- Show a dialog when the backup has finished
- automatically save/restore window size
- add "auto" commandline option to automatically start a backup and quit kbackup when done.
- added predefined slice sizes (for CDs, DVDs) in profile settings dialog
- added portuguese translation thanks to Carlos Goní§alves

21.Dec 2006:
Thanks to Carlos Goní§alves kbackup is now in the openSuse KDE:/Community project.
kbackup is therefore now available for openSUSE 10.2 and Factory, SUSE 10.1, 10.0 and SLE10

1.Oct 2006: (0.5.1)
- added "recent files" action
- added profile setting to define a maximum slice size
- store recent directory for file dialog

29.Sept 2006:
KBackup is now included in the Fedora 5 branch.
Fedora users just have to do "yum install kbackup" as root.
- added french handbook

24.Sept 2006: 0.5 released
- added systray functionality
- added profile setting to define file-prefix
- added slovak GUI translation (thanks to Jozef Riha)
- fixed Umlaut encoding for directories

21.Sept 2006:
- added fedora RPMs (thanks to Alain PORTAL)

16.Sept 2006:
- added russian translation (thanks to Alexey Kouznetsov)
- added italian translation (thanks to Andrea Sciucca)

3.Sept 2006:
- added german handbook
- added french GUI translation (thanks to Régis FLORET)
- added missing "unlimited" translation string
- added the RPM .spec file
- added missing .mo translation files into RPM