Description: KBackup is a program that lets you back up any directories or files, whereby it uses an easy to use directory tree to select the things to back up.
The program was designed to be very simple in its use so that it can be used by non-computer experts.
It can do full- and incremental backups.
The storage format is the well known TAR format, whereby the data is still stored in compressed format (bzip2 or gzip).
The backup can be put onto a local directory (mounted device, etc.) but also on a remote URL (thanks to KDE KIO).
It also includes a german, french, italian, slovak, czech, portuguese, swedish and russian translation for the user interface and an english, french, russian and german handbook.
Note: the documentation for 0.7 is only current in english and german.
For the former KDE3 version 0.5.4: You'll find all RPMs including 64bit versions for different distributions on the openSuse build service (links below)Last changelog:
1.0.2
Fixed a crash on exit introduced in 1.0.1 when no systray icon was used
There's a misunderstanding.
Medium: 1, [ 61% ] Size: 593GiB
means: The medium 1 (the target where you archive to) is now 61% full and has an overall size of 593GiB
Medium: 1, [ 0% ] Size: 221.6GiB
"Backup successfully finished",
...finished slice
/backup/backup_2014.05.01-09.33.44_1_inc.tar
-- Filtered Files: 65561
This now means: the backup did not write anything (therefore the target medium you write to is 0% full) and the global size of the target medium is 221.6GiB. (it seems the full backup is ~370GiB large)
As you hit the "Start backup" button simply a second time, it tried to do an incremental backup, that is: archiving only changed files since the last backup.
As you did not change anything after the full backup, it did not archive anything and therefore all files (65561) were filtered (e.g. not put into the archive).
Hello
I added many specific folders, some from /etc/, some from /home/, and many photo-containing ones from /run/media/
I hit Start Backup, it's the first one, so it's full. Once finished, in the progress bar, kbackup-0.8 shows:
Medium: 1, [ 61% ] Size: 593GiB
Problem is that "Backup successfully finished"!
So what about the other 39%?
I hit Start Backup again, it's an incremental one. Upon completion, the progress bar shows:
Medium: 1, [ 0% ] Size: 221.6GiB
"Backup successfully finished",
...finished slice /backup/backup_2014.05.01-09.33.44_1_inc.tar
-- Filtered Files: 65561
-- Backup successfully finished --
I took a look at the first full tar file, I couldn't find what was missing just by eye-balling it. Clicked on some random photo albums, they all seemed to be there.
What files were filtered, for what reason? Why doesn't it complete the backup 100%?
Is kbackup only capable of handling 2^16 files?
And if the backup is indeed complete, why did it show 61% and almost 600GiB?
I manually selected the folders, as far as I know there are no "junk" folders with cache/symlink/hardlink stuff, just bunch of config files and a whole lot of very important photos.
I ran an almost full backup of Kubuntu 12.10, which after running OK, suddenly cancelled. The Warning Section: Backup cancelled. Above this was a hugh list of similar to '/dev/block/1:11' is not readable. Skipping
I copied this list to a file - took up 28 pages!
Have no clue what caused this. Have been using this for over a year with no problems - normally works perfectly. The file types listed were /dev, /etc, /opt, /proc (the largest), all were "is not readable", ending with Backup cancelled. Do I have a system problem, or maybe I was trying to back up too many files (all backing up to a 2 Tera bite drive with more than 1 TB free. Would appreciate your comments, as I am reluctant to use this program until I hear your response. Thanks
bumpysax@gmail.com
I ran an almost full backup of Kubuntu 12.10, which after running OK, suddenly cancelled. The Warning Section: Backup cancelled. Above this was a hugh list of similar to '/dev/block/1:11' is not readable. Skipping
I copied this list to a file - took up 28 pages!
Have no clue what caused this. Have been using this for over a year with no problems - normally works perfectly. The file types listed were /dev, /etc, /opt, /proc (the largest), all were "is not readable", ending with Backup cancelled. Do I have a system problem, or maybe I was trying to back up too many files (all backing up to a 2 Tera bite drive with more than 1 TB free. Would appreciate your comments, as I am reluctant to use this program until I hear your response. Thanks
bumpysax@gmail.com
You should exclude the system special directories like /dev, /proc, /sys, /run - they do not contain real files but things the Linux Kernel generates on the fly.
You will not need them for a restore.
KBackup offers the option to pack the backup - each file as single zip. This makes it quite uncomfortable to restore e.g. from ark.
IMHO it makes sense to add an option to pack the whole archive, what do you think?
You can disable the compression completely via a profile setting.
The reason for compressing each file was the idea to allow for archive slices with a maximum size but still have compressed data.
To be able to know if a file still fits into a slice, I have to compress it before putting it into the slice, otherwise I can not know how large the slice will be when I compress the complete slice.
Of course this does not rule out another option to compress the complete uncompressed tar file after creation - it just does not make much sense in combination with a slice size limit.
I'll put it onto my TODO list
Indeed you are right regarding slicing...but the slice value can still count for the unpacked file :-)
Still you can open the packed slice with a file manager and easily extract single files from it. If each single file is packed, I see no comfortable way in doing so (which does not mean that someone else has a solution for this...)
I can't figure out where to ask for help so I'm doing it here. I've been using KBackup pretty religiously to make sure I don't lose anything in case something were to happen. Well, something did happen, an install went bad, destroyed a bunch of stuff and I had to reinstall Kubuntu 12.04 from scratch. No problem, I have my backups. Well, how do you restore from the .tar file? If I do tar -xf backup.tar, it produces a ton of .bz2 files. How do I either extract all of those bz2 files or, even better, extract from the tar and unzip the bz2 files at the same time? I still don't have my desktop back to how I like it or any of my personal data. Why isn't there a "kRestore" application? Or just an option to "Restore" from within kBackup? That would make life soooo much easier! And judging from the number of people I've seen ask this, it's desperately needed!
Here's a request from a Debian user:
It will be better (for me, but I believe for others too) if kbackup
is capable to estimate uncompressed size of selected directories.
Maybe a special button for running estimate. Or may be 'simulate'
mode when archiver walks tree but writes no output, only collecting
sizes.
http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=602837
I got a bug report in Debian from a user wanting to run kbackup via command line as root. It doesn't work.
root@mail:/# kbackup --autobg KBackup.kbp
kbackup(28543): Session bus not found
KCrash: Application 'kbackup' crashing...
sock_file=/root/.kde/socket-mail/kdeinit4__0
Warning: connect() failed: : No such file or directory
Is this something you would expect to work?
Scott K
I think the problem here is only the connection to DBUS. See the message
"Session bus not found".
I run kbackup here also as root started from within crontab and it works.
On this system, when I run kbackup as root from a shell (not inside a KDE session), I see that a new dbus session bus process is started.
Probably this is not happening on the Debian system ?
I had same problem on openSUSE 11.2
This seems to fix it, in crontab use this command, for example:
dbus-launch --sh-syntax kbackup --autobg /root/mybackup.kbp
Hi,
I've emailed the maintainer of this port on Free BSD but nothing has happened. Could you prod him for me and get the port updated? This is a popular app on PCBSD.
http://www.freshports.org/archivers/kbackup/
Thanks!
I've packaged kbackup for the next Kubuntu release and it's in the official Ubuntu repository now. I'm also planning on getting it in for Debian Squeeze.
Just installed a WD Mybook 1TB drive and formatted it on FreeBSD with sysinstall and disklabel. Using the entire disk for a single slice with 890GB free.
Kbackup reports the target drive size as 4GB so the backup fails when it hits this limit.
I'm using PCBSD and the Kinfocenter correctly reports the drive size.
There are several references to documentation but I can't find any. The "Help" function does not lead anywhere. Any suggestions as to where to find docs would be much appreciated.
Ratings & Comments
106 Comments
10 10 the best its very simple, but very efficient.
There's a misunderstanding. Medium: 1, [ 61% ] Size: 593GiB means: The medium 1 (the target where you archive to) is now 61% full and has an overall size of 593GiB Medium: 1, [ 0% ] Size: 221.6GiB "Backup successfully finished", ...finished slice /backup/backup_2014.05.01-09.33.44_1_inc.tar -- Filtered Files: 65561 This now means: the backup did not write anything (therefore the target medium you write to is 0% full) and the global size of the target medium is 221.6GiB. (it seems the full backup is ~370GiB large) As you hit the "Start backup" button simply a second time, it tried to do an incremental backup, that is: archiving only changed files since the last backup. As you did not change anything after the full backup, it did not archive anything and therefore all files (65561) were filtered (e.g. not put into the archive).
Hello I added many specific folders, some from /etc/, some from /home/, and many photo-containing ones from /run/media/ I hit Start Backup, it's the first one, so it's full. Once finished, in the progress bar, kbackup-0.8 shows: Medium: 1, [ 61% ] Size: 593GiB Problem is that "Backup successfully finished"! So what about the other 39%? I hit Start Backup again, it's an incremental one. Upon completion, the progress bar shows: Medium: 1, [ 0% ] Size: 221.6GiB "Backup successfully finished", ...finished slice /backup/backup_2014.05.01-09.33.44_1_inc.tar -- Filtered Files: 65561 -- Backup successfully finished -- I took a look at the first full tar file, I couldn't find what was missing just by eye-balling it. Clicked on some random photo albums, they all seemed to be there. What files were filtered, for what reason? Why doesn't it complete the backup 100%? Is kbackup only capable of handling 2^16 files? And if the backup is indeed complete, why did it show 61% and almost 600GiB? I manually selected the folders, as far as I know there are no "junk" folders with cache/symlink/hardlink stuff, just bunch of config files and a whole lot of very important photos.
Please correct FSF address in license file COPYING.
I ran an almost full backup of Kubuntu 12.10, which after running OK, suddenly cancelled. The Warning Section: Backup cancelled. Above this was a hugh list of similar to '/dev/block/1:11' is not readable. Skipping I copied this list to a file - took up 28 pages! Have no clue what caused this. Have been using this for over a year with no problems - normally works perfectly. The file types listed were /dev, /etc, /opt, /proc (the largest), all were "is not readable", ending with Backup cancelled. Do I have a system problem, or maybe I was trying to back up too many files (all backing up to a 2 Tera bite drive with more than 1 TB free. Would appreciate your comments, as I am reluctant to use this program until I hear your response. Thanks bumpysax@gmail.com
I ran an almost full backup of Kubuntu 12.10, which after running OK, suddenly cancelled. The Warning Section: Backup cancelled. Above this was a hugh list of similar to '/dev/block/1:11' is not readable. Skipping I copied this list to a file - took up 28 pages! Have no clue what caused this. Have been using this for over a year with no problems - normally works perfectly. The file types listed were /dev, /etc, /opt, /proc (the largest), all were "is not readable", ending with Backup cancelled. Do I have a system problem, or maybe I was trying to back up too many files (all backing up to a 2 Tera bite drive with more than 1 TB free. Would appreciate your comments, as I am reluctant to use this program until I hear your response. Thanks bumpysax@gmail.com
You should exclude the system special directories like /dev, /proc, /sys, /run - they do not contain real files but things the Linux Kernel generates on the fly. You will not need them for a restore.
KBackup offers the option to pack the backup - each file as single zip. This makes it quite uncomfortable to restore e.g. from ark. IMHO it makes sense to add an option to pack the whole archive, what do you think?
You can disable the compression completely via a profile setting. The reason for compressing each file was the idea to allow for archive slices with a maximum size but still have compressed data. To be able to know if a file still fits into a slice, I have to compress it before putting it into the slice, otherwise I can not know how large the slice will be when I compress the complete slice. Of course this does not rule out another option to compress the complete uncompressed tar file after creation - it just does not make much sense in combination with a slice size limit. I'll put it onto my TODO list
Indeed you are right regarding slicing...but the slice value can still count for the unpacked file :-) Still you can open the packed slice with a file manager and easily extract single files from it. If each single file is packed, I see no comfortable way in doing so (which does not mean that someone else has a solution for this...)
I can't figure out where to ask for help so I'm doing it here. I've been using KBackup pretty religiously to make sure I don't lose anything in case something were to happen. Well, something did happen, an install went bad, destroyed a bunch of stuff and I had to reinstall Kubuntu 12.04 from scratch. No problem, I have my backups. Well, how do you restore from the .tar file? If I do tar -xf backup.tar, it produces a ton of .bz2 files. How do I either extract all of those bz2 files or, even better, extract from the tar and unzip the bz2 files at the same time? I still don't have my desktop back to how I like it or any of my personal data. Why isn't there a "kRestore" application? Or just an option to "Restore" from within kBackup? That would make life soooo much easier! And judging from the number of people I've seen ask this, it's desperately needed!
Have a look here: http://members.aon.at/m.koller/ The restore functionality is not yet implemented due to lack of time, sorry.
Here's a request from a Debian user: It will be better (for me, but I believe for others too) if kbackup is capable to estimate uncompressed size of selected directories. Maybe a special button for running estimate. Or may be 'simulate' mode when archiver walks tree but writes no output, only collecting sizes. http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=602837
I should have mentioned the when I initially posted this that there's a patch in the Debian bug.
I got a bug report in Debian from a user wanting to run kbackup via command line as root. It doesn't work. root@mail:/# kbackup --autobg KBackup.kbp kbackup(28543): Session bus not found KCrash: Application 'kbackup' crashing... sock_file=/root/.kde/socket-mail/kdeinit4__0 Warning: connect() failed: : No such file or directory Is this something you would expect to work? Scott K
Forgot the bug link... http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=596903
I think the problem here is only the connection to DBUS. See the message "Session bus not found". I run kbackup here also as root started from within crontab and it works. On this system, when I run kbackup as root from a shell (not inside a KDE session), I see that a new dbus session bus process is started. Probably this is not happening on the Debian system ?
I had same problem on openSUSE 11.2 This seems to fix it, in crontab use this command, for example: dbus-launch --sh-syntax kbackup --autobg /root/mybackup.kbp
Hi, I've emailed the maintainer of this port on Free BSD but nothing has happened. Could you prod him for me and get the port updated? This is a popular app on PCBSD. http://www.freshports.org/archivers/kbackup/ Thanks!
I've packaged kbackup for the next Kubuntu release and it's in the official Ubuntu repository now. I'm also planning on getting it in for Debian Squeeze.
It's in for Debian Squeeze now too.
Just installed a WD Mybook 1TB drive and formatted it on FreeBSD with sysinstall and disklabel. Using the entire disk for a single slice with 890GB free. Kbackup reports the target drive size as 4GB so the backup fails when it hits this limit. I'm using PCBSD and the Kinfocenter correctly reports the drive size.
Are you still using kbackup 0.5.x ? If so, then this is the limit Qt3 can handle. Try it with the current 0.6.x version instead.
.6 is not in ports yet. .5.4_2 is current. As soon as the port is updated PCBSD will automatically rebuild the PBI.
There are several references to documentation but I can't find any. The "Help" function does not lead anywhere. Any suggestions as to where to find docs would be much appreciated.