Re: TarSnap usecases

[Michael Stevens <mstevens@etla.org>]

One use case I haven't spotted in tarsnap that would be nice in both CLI
and GUI versions is an easy way to delete backups older than a
particular age.

Perhaps there's a CLI option I haven't found.

Michael

On Thu, Nov 26, 2009 at 03:22:38PM -0800, Mark Drovdahl wrote:
> One use case I've considered is: how will my wife access my tarsnap
> archives should something happen to me? For better, or for worse, a
> simple, cross platform GUI could make tarsnap more accessible to more
> end users.
> 
> Regards,
> Mark Drovdahl
> 
> On Thu, Nov 26, 2009 at 2:18 PM, Robert Clemens
> <robert@solidsolutions.net> wrote:
> > I think a GUI would be neat. But I think the only thing that would really
> > make it useful would be the ability to have it provide a lot of detail about
> > the files being backed up and the ability to specify a file version and have
> > the gui request the container file from tarsnap and then extract the single
> > file to a specified location.
> >
> > Colin made the CLI to tarsnap quite usable and simple so it'd be hard to
> > just make a GUI that made tarsnap more simple.
> >
> > A GUI for tarsnap would have to really elaborate on the file versions and
> > what is inside of each snapshot to really make it worthwhile.
> >
> > Also of note is that this would primarily be for workstations or windows
> > servers and not unix based servers. So functionality would really need to be
> > geared towards those applications. I would consider basing your functions
> > off of that of BackupExec from Symantec. Options like Exchange archiving and
> > SQL backups and details on all backups.
> >
> > Only feature I'd like tarsnap to add is local data stores for data backup
> > and the ability to pull data from those before requesting it from the
> > tarsnap server should the file be available locally.
> >
> > Just my thoughts.
> >
> > --
> > Robert Clemens
> >
> > Martin Grünbaum wrote:
> >>
> >> Hi there,
> >>
> >> I'm contemplating writing a GUI frontend for TarSnap in Java. However,
> >> before pursuing that I'd like to get an idea on a variety of different uses,
> >> since I can only speak of my own. If anyone would be so inclined as to share
> >> with me (or the rest of us) what you're using TarSnap for, in enough detail
> >> that I can draw up proper usecases for it, that would be greatly
> >> appreciated!
> >>
> >> To get the ball rolling, here is what I myself am using TarSnap for at the
> >> moment:
> >>
> >> I back up University school work on a daily basis through a shell script
> >> that appropriately names the archive, such that I get archives that look
> >> like so:
> >>
> >> 20091118-200001-daily-diku
> >> 20091126-200001-daily-diku
> >> 20091110-214801-weekly-diku
> >> 20091117-200001-weekly-diku
> >> 20091122-200001-daily-diku
> >>
> >> That is, YEARMMDD-HHMMSS-daily/weekly/monthly-archive_name
> >>
> >> Similarly, for a workplace I back up their email and calendar folders on
> >> 15 different laptops with the same shell script, named in the same way.
> >>
> >> Options used when creating archives are -H -v --humanize-numbers --lowmem
> >> --print-stats for decently readable logged info.
> >>
> >> Beyond supplying usecases, if you have any thoughts on the general idea of
> >> a TarSnap GUI it would be nice to hear so that I can take it into
> >> consideration :)
> >> Cheers,
> >> Martin Grünbaum
> >
> >
> > __________ Information from ESET NOD32 Antivirus, version of virus signature
> > database 4640 (20091126) __________
> >
> > The message was checked by ESET NOD32 Antivirus.
> >
> > http://www.eset.com
> >
> >
> >