Destroying "only" your home directory (was Re: Newbie question on permissions)

[Alan McKinnon]

On Monday 03 April 2006 14:35, Michael T. Richter wrote:
> On Mon, 2006-03-04 at 15:48 +0700, Chanchao wrote:
> > MTR> Where does that leave file versioning?  Incremental (or
> > differential) MTR> backups?  Selective backups?
> >
> >
> >
> > Nowhere.  Storage is cheap. :)  Tape is dead, and regular users
> > don't have it anyway. Just copy the lot over once a day, once a
> > week, whatever.  Then keep a monthly copy for a couple of months.
> >  It's not that hard?  It's not the ultimate backup solution, but
> > it's good enough for most people I think?
>
> Let me explain (again) the world according to the end-user.  This
> time let me use my parents as the model.

<snip story of Michael's mum's backup woes>

> It can be done.  It has been done.  Just not under UNIX.

I dunno, I think that's rubbish. There's one thing and one thing only 
that gets users to realise why they should do backups - a 
catastrophe. Doesn't matter which OS: major loss = penny drops.

In Unix, a solution like that would be real easy. Install 
CVS/SVN/whatever and create some user crons based on input from a 
wizard. When the cron runs, it mounts the usb drive, submits all of ~ 
to SVN, umounts the usb drive. You don't even need a big red button. 
With a nice Gtk/Qt front end to do restores. 

-- 
Alan McKinnon
alan at linuxholdings dot co dot za
+27 82, double three seven, one nine three five