On Wed, Apr 13, 2005 at 11:20:29AM -0500, Brock Noland wrote:
> The biggest problem I had was that if I left, no one else would ANY
> idea about how to use it.

It is a very well documented software package.  I find it hard to
believe that your replacement would be illiterate.  A well documented
deployment, as we all should probably have, would definitely help as
well.

  bacula - Network backup, recovery and verification (Meta-package)
  bacula-client - Network backup, recovery and verification (Client meta-package)
  bacula-common - Network backup, recovery and verification (Common Support files)
  bacula-console - Network backup, recovery and verification (Mgmt. Console)
  bacula-console-gnome - Network backup, recovery and verification (Console, Gnome version)
  bacula-director-common - Network backup, recovery and verification (Director common files)
  bacula-director-mysql - Network backup, recovery and verification (Director daemon)
  bacula-director-pgsql - Network backup, recovery and verification (Director daemon)
  bacula-director-sqlite - Network backup, recovery and verification (Director daemon)
  bacula-doc - Network backup, recovery and verification - Documentation
  bacula-fd - Network backup, recovery and verification (Filer daemon)
  bacula-sd - Network backup, recovery and verification (Storage daemon)
  bacula-server - Network backup, recovery and verification (Server meta-package)
  bacula-wxconsole - Network backup, recovery and verification (Console, Gnome version)

> The BIGGEST problem for me was that there was no way to let users
> restore there own files.

Traditional and many commercial backup system don't allow this.
Bacula was designed to compete with these.  I will point out that the
documentation for Bacula hints to a wxWidget application called
Console::

    Bacula Console services is the program that allows the
    administrator or user to communicate with the Bacula Director (see
    above). Currently, the Bacula Console is available in three
    versions. The first and simplest is to run the Console program in
    a shell window (i.e. TTY interface). Most system administrators
    will find this completely adequate. The second version is a GNOME
    GUI interface that for the moment (23 November 2003) is far from
    complete, but quite functional as it has most the capabilities of
    the shell Console. The third version is a wxWidgets GUI with an
    interactive file restore. It also has most the capabilities of the
    shell console, allows command completion with tabulation, and
    gives you instant help about the command you are typing. For more
    details see the Bacula Console Design Document.

As far as a project that has promise for the future, Bacula is
something worth looking into, as far as I'm concerned.  It is quite
attractive compared to home-rolled systems (no offense intended),
though it sounds like BackupPC is quite featureful.

  backuppc - high-performance, enterprise-grade system for backing up PCs
  libfile-rsyncp-perl - A perl based implementation of an Rsync client

Personally, I'm quite happy with Amanda Backup, though I have had a
long history with it and understand how to set it up quickly.  Now
that you can back up to hard drive fairly easily, it's even more
useful to me.  My favorite feature of Amanda is its ability to
automatically plan full and incremental backups and balance them
across the full tapeset.  Amanda is VERY good at efficiently using the
entire "tape" (whether the tape is physical or a virtual filesystem
based one).  Where it lacks is in front-end utilities...  Again,
Brock's biggest feature need would not be met: user-initiated and
controlled restores.

  amanda-client - Advanced Maryland Automatic Network Disk Archiver (Client)
  amanda-common - Advanced Maryland Automatic Network Disk Archiver (Libs)
  amanda-server - Advanced Maryland Automatic Network Disk Archiver (Server)
  cdrw-taper - taper replacement for amanda to support backups to CD-RW or DVD+RW
  mtx - controls tape autochangers

Amanda has recently received more attention, both from a development
and a user standpoint.  I expect to see more user-friendly tools in
the relatively near future.  Were I to invest time into learning a new
system, Bacula would probably be it.

Other backup packages that matched the search for "amanda":

  chiark-backup - backup system for small systems and networks
  flexbackup - Flexible backup tool for small to medium sized installations

One other project to look at is Mondo Backup and Restore.  Very cool
idea.  Makes it simple to create recovery CD's for your Linux and
Windows systems: basically any filesystem that Linux can read/write.
Optionally, it'll use partimage to make a dd image copy of partitions
it can't read.  You could, and people have, set up a mondo backup
routine that creates images on an NFS/SMB share.

  mindi - creates boot/root disks based on your system
  mindi-busybox - Collection of shell utilities in a single executable for Mindi/Mondo
  mindi-kernel - failsafe Linux kernel for Mindi/Mondo
  mindi-partimagehack - disk partition imaging utility for Mindi/Mondo
  mondo - powerful disaster recovery suite
  mondo-doc - manual for Mondo, a powerful disaster recovery suite

-- 
Chad Walstrom <chewie at wookimus.net>           http://www.wookimus.net/
           assert(expired(knowledge)); /* core dump */
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