Linux equivalent to "Time Machine"
 

Is there a polished and working equivilent to Mac's time machine?

I've googled and found some of the alternatives, and installed them and used them, but most are just plain old sh!t.

Is there a less popular, polished, fancy, working version somewhere out there?

You don't say which ones you tried. To avoid suggesting ones you already tried here's a list. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_backup_software

Unless you tell us which ones you tried, this is going to be tough. I've had luck with, and continue to use without thinking about it, BackInTime. It's a set-it-and-forget-it tool, a bit like Time Machine. It does incremental backups and has a reasonably pretty though functional interface through which you configure it.

Sorry about not listing the software I had tried -- but really, I've forgotten.

This "Backintime" program looks good enough for me. I will give this one a try.

More than anything, I was wondering if there was a program that "Looked Like" Apples Time Machine. With the pretty pictures and interface and all. "Backintime" will work, but has a simple interface.

Thanks for the pointers everyone!

If linux would dump their kernel and use bsd we could be using zfs. A wonderful time slider.

first of all linux can't 'dump their kernel and use bsd' because linux IS the kernel, nothing more, nothing less, so that argument is not only off topic but sounds ignorant.

back on topic
@the op have you tried bacula?

Here's some information on using ZFS in Linux based operating systems. Linux is the kernel, not the operating system, so as already stated Linux can't dump itself, that's like a schizophrenic person dumping their other personality. Anyway here's the link with info on various projects, some of them apparently working, from their wikipedia page.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ZFS#Linux

What a childish group. Grow up. If you have an issue, why not post a PM to me to help you understand simple discussions.

ZFS on Linux is dead. It was never a proper implementation.

So the folks at Debian and other places have thought this out.

http://www.debian.org/ports/kfreebsd-gnu/

http://wiki.debian.org/Debian_GNU/kFreeBSD_why

So what is it? Debian or freebsd or neither. Linux is both a kernel and a common name for a group of distros. SheeZe.

See also.

http://wiki.debian.org/Debian_GNU/kF...ZFS_support.3F


Q. Is there ZFS support?

A: Yes! You have to install the zfsutils package.

apt-get install zfsutils

Q. Can I use ZFS as root file system?

A. Yes, with some caveats:

You may not use multi-device arrays nor gzip compression in this case (default compression is fine). You may want to read about the latest developments in GRUB which will make this possible: http://lists.debian.org/debian-bsd/2.../msg00125.html.

If you're not repartitioning this disk from scratch, it's likely that GRUB install will fail later on (see #614768.

Well here is one way i am familiar with on the command line, i have used before (i would say this is the most simple approach) to backup a complete harddrive.

http://www.cyberciti.biz/tips/how-do...p-with-dd.html

Check the section titled:

The "pretty pictures" user interface on Time Machine is just glitz (those of you who haven't seen it should ask a Mac user to let you see it). It's like a magician putting on a show. Behind the scenes it's really pretty simple. I considered using it for backing up the administrative Macs where I work, and decided that it was probably better just to script rsync myself. If the backups go to a share on the server, then the user interface for finding a lost file is just the finder and doesn't require office staff to learn another interface. The server gets backed up to tape with Amanda, and I can set polices as to what is kept for how long and so forth as well as regulating disk usage.

There is a writeup of the concepts at http://www.backupcentral.com/mr-back...ine-rsync.html. I took a slightly different approach. If you were doing it for just yourself to an external drive, and on linux, things would be a bit simpler. I named directories so /share/host/user/backup-20110704-1140/ contained the rsync backup for that user on that client host machine on that date at that time. A user who mounts the share can find what they want from it, and permissions are controlled from the Unix side to protect privacy.

If you just forget about Apple and instead Google "rsync based backups for linux", you'll find the classic background (http://www.mikerubel.org/computers/rsync_snapshots/) as well as a variety of implementations to choose from.