FIGURE 17.2 Backup settings are accessed using the menu entries on the left.
Back In Time
Back In Time is a viable alternative to Déjà Dup for many users. It is easily
available from the Ubuntu software repositories, is stable, has a clear and
easy-to-understand interface, and is actually little more than a GUI front end
for well-established tools.
Back In Time uses rsync, diff, and cp to monitor, create, and manipulate
files, and it uses cron to schedule when it will run. Using these command-
line tools is described later in this chapter. Back In Time is little more than a
well-designed GUI front end designed for GNOME and also offers a separate
package in the repositories with a front end for KDE. If you use the standard
Ubuntu interface, install a package called nautilus-actions to get
context menu access to some of the backup features.
The first time you run Back In Time, it takes a snapshot of your drive. This
may take a long time, depending on the amount of data you have. You
designate which files and directories to backup and where to back them up.
Then set when to schedule the backup. The program takes care of the rest.
To restore, select the most recent snapshot from the list in Back In Time. Then
browse through the list of directories and files until you find the file that
interests you. You may right-click the file to view a pop-up menu, from which
you may open a file, copy a file to a desired location, or view the various
snapshots of a file and compare them to determine which one you might want