thefastestwaytobreakamachine

Git is nice and flexible. I wish my backups were that flexible. Thankfully, my wishes have been answered, as bup was created.
I used to lookup the 28c3 bup slides for a quick reference, until I realized I was always looking for just one page of the slides. Best docs are short docs.

# Install
sudo apt-get install python2.6-dev python-fuse python-pyxattr python-pylibacl
git clone https://github.com/bup/bup.git
cd bup && make && make test && sudo make install

# index zz's home directory
bup index -ux /home/zz
# backup to default BUP_DIR and label the backup 'laptop'
bup save -n laptop /home/zz
# backup to remote myserver, naming the backup 'laptop'
bup save -r myserver -n laptop /home/zz
# index /home/zz on myserver
bup on myserver index -ux /home/zz
# backup myserver:/home/zz, naming the backup 'server'
bup on myserver save -n server /home/zz
# check the latest laptop backup
bup ls laptop/latest/home/zz

It’s hard to migrate from tivoli, rsnapshot, tarsnap and friends when you don’t know how. So here we go, without further ado, all you needed to know about bup but never daret to ask, ie

Some reasons to use bup:

• global deduplication
  • rsnapshot: 4.97G = 2.18G with bup
  • rsnapshot: 12.6G = 4.6G with bup
• save transmission time
• backups are oneliners
• anytime snapshots
• uid,gid,permissions,acl,selinux
• par2 anti-bitrot and corruption resistance
• runs on dd-wrt

This is awesome, but there are two caveats. One is I am unaware of Enterprise&tm; shops using bup yet, the other is a common question: no, bup doesn’t encrypt data.

You can either encrypt or deduplicate. Choose. If you want the other, you probably want duplicity or tarsnap.