Back In Time is a backup application for

Linux Linux ( or ) is a family of open-source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged as a Linux distribution, which ...

. It has versions that integrate favorably in

GNOME A gnome is a mythological creature and diminutive spirit in Renaissance magic and alchemy, first introduced by Paracelsus in the 16th century and later adopted by more recent authors including those of modern fantasy literature. Its characte ...

and KDE SC 4 and is available directly from the repositories of many

Linux distributions A Linux distribution (often abbreviated as distro) is an operating system made from a software collection that includes the Linux kernel and, often, a package management system. Linux users usually obtain their operating system by downloading one ...

. Released under the terms of the

GNU General Public License The GNU General Public License (GNU GPL or simply GPL) is a series of widely used free software licenses that guarantee end users the Four Freedoms (Free software), four freedoms to run, study, share, and modify the software. The license was th ...

(GPL), it is

free software Free software or libre software is computer software distributed under terms that allow users to run the software for any purpose as well as to study, change, and distribute it and any adapted versions. Free software is a matter of liberty, no ...

. Back In Time uses

rsync rsync is a utility for efficiently transferring and synchronizing files between a computer and a storage drive and across networked computers by comparing the modification times and sizes of files. It is commonly found on Unix-like operat ...

as backend and has the characteristic feature of using

hard link In computing, a hard link is a directory entry (in a directory-based file system) that associates a name with a file. Thus, each file must have at least one hard link. Creating additional hard links for a file makes the contents of that file acc ...

s for files which are identical in snapshots at different times, thus using disk space just once for files that remained unchanged. It is possible to use several backup profiles, e.g. for backups on different hard disks and also to create schedules.

Symbolic link In computing, a symbolic link (also symlink or soft link) is a file whose purpose is to point to a file or directory (called the "target") by specifying a path thereto. Symbolic links are supported by POSIX and by most Unix-like operating system ...

s can be backed up, both absolute and relative ones, but hard links cannot be treated as such due to the used backup method. Back In Time also supports encryption of backups and backup over

SSH The Secure Shell Protocol (SSH) is a cryptographic network protocol for operating network services securely over an unsecured network. Its most notable applications are remote login and command-line execution. SSH applications are based on ...

. Advantages of the hard link method are that it is easy to look at snapshots of the system at different times and also easy to remove old snapshots compared to incremental backup methods which save difference information between consecutive backup times. However, a drawback of Back In Time is that it does not allow for compression, and requires file systems that support hard links on the backup location.

User interface

There is a graphical interface written in Qt.

References

{{Reflist
Back In Time – A Simple backup tool for ubuntu

External links

Back In Time code hosting
Free backup software Backup software for Linux Software that uses Qt Linux-only free software

User interface

See also

References

External links