Status of TimeVaultNG

My original reason for working on a replacement for TimeVault was due to me feeling that its core method of taking snapshots using directories and hard linking files was not scalable because of the lack of hard linking directories on ext3 and other file systems. If you have large amounts of directories (for example in source trees or in my own documents hierarchy) each backup takes a non-trivial amount of space just to recreate the directories.

The beauty of starting from scratch means that I can make any of the design decisions without carrying extra baggage from before. This lead to the rewrite existing in KDE4/Qt4/C++ using some of the KDE frameworks such as solid.

I’m still subscribed to some bugs from the old TimeVault and after I had responded to one person asking for a status on TimeVault I thought I should share it with others as well.

If you feel comfortable working with a non-released branch my timevault-external branch has basic support for external devices. I haven’t messed with any of the actual backup code so it shouldn’t mess with your data at all, but I can’t guarantee that. There is more information at the branch https://code.launchpad.net/~astromme/timevault/timevault-external .

Secondly, I have been working on a different backup program that originally had some of the same goals as timevault but has now deviated quite a bit. I have some preliminary work up at https://launchpad.net/timevaultng but nothing close to usable by what I would consider the ‘target’ audience.

With luck, I’ll have more time to work on my next gen concept of timevault more in the coming weeks.

At the moment, I would suggest one of two things.
A: Use the released version of TimeVault if you like the concept of ‘always backing up’. As long as you stop the timevault daemon while your drive is unplugged you should be fine.

B: Learn rdiff-backup and put it in a simple script. That is what I am doing for the time being as it is really flexible. It is also what I am building timevaultng around so you will have a head start on the concepts that will be useful.

Hopefully that clarifies the situation somewhat.