Thank you for the various responses, and sorry to take up your time. It is now clear that trying to use backuppc is not really appropriate in this case.
I have now looked at a whole range of things, and unfortunately there does not seem to be a straightforward tool that I can use in Ubuntu with a GUI or web front end that will do what I want - automated incremental and full backups to an external drive. I have tried a many things and either I cannot understand how to use them or they simply don't actually work. I will therefore return to a manual system of occasionally writing a zip archive of my home drive to the external drive. It works but is tiresome and has a number of problems. On Thu, 2007-11-29 at 13:20 -0600, Les Mikesell wrote: > Martin Fisher wrote: > > Thank you for your patience! > > > > This is my aim: To set up backuppc to make daily incremental backups of > > my home folder in Ubuntu to an external USB drive, and a weekly full > > backup. This should occur each day after I finish work, perhaps at 7 pm, > > and I would like backuppc to start automatically when I start the > > computer and to send me a daily e-mail indicating the status of the > > backup after it has completed. > > First you should probably understand that backuppc wasn't really > designed to do any of those things. Normally it is set up to back up a > bunch of remote hosts to an internal drive and not send notifications > unless something is wrong. That doesn't mean it is impossible to do > what you want, but don't expect it to be automatic. > > > These are my supplementary, less important aims: To have these backups > > directed to two separate USB drives (yes, I have two) for safety, and to > > also backup the essential Ubuntu configuration files so that I could > > restore settings on another machine in case of catastrophe (for this I > > need to know which directories to back up but I haven't figured this out > > yet!). > > > > OK, I install backuppc with synaptic. It asks me which of four apache > > servers I would like to configure automatically. I am unsure, so I tick > > all four. It provides me with the following message: > > And by taking a pre-packaged version you'll have to make your changes > mesh with the distribution packager's changes... > > > > > BackupPC can be managed through its web interface: > > http://martin-laptop/backuppc/ > > > > and I have a username (backuppc) and a password. > > > > So now I can see the web page for managing the backup. > > > > (I note that I don't really understand the difference between a server - > > which is what I think I am looking at with the web page - and a host, > > which I think is martin-laptop). > > The server is the machine doing the backups, a host is one of the > targets. In your case these seem to be the same thing. > > > Through the web page I find the Documentation file, and note that I need > > to specify what to back up and where. I therefore make the following > > changes to config.pl using sudo gedit: > > > > $Conf{TopDir} = '/media/LACIE/backuppc'; > > This only works if you are doing an install from source/tarball. In the > packaged versions the configure step has already been done and the > directories become hard coded in the runtime programs. You can, > however, replace the data directory with a symlink pointing to wherever > your external drive is mounted as long as the cpool and pc directories > are still on the same filesystem so hardlinks work between them (and be > sure you've formatted the external drive as ext3 or equivalant > filesystem with unix semantics). > > > > > $Conf{BackupFilesOnly} = '/home/Martin'; > > > > I don't really understand the difference between smb, rsync, tar etc but > > I know that I have tar on Ubuntu and therefore I set > > > > $Conf{XferMethod} = 'tar'; > > That will work, but the normal method also involves connecting to the > target machine via ssh to run the command. For your first attempt it is > probably easiest to leave it that way and set up the ssh keys for a > loopback connection. There is a more efficient way to use sudo instead > but I've forgotten the details. > > > > > Obviously I need to know how to start backuppc and to have backuppc > > start automatically on boot. This is where I become unstuck. The > > documentation states 'The installation contains an init.d backuppc > > script..' but I don't know where it is. I also read 'BackupPC should be > > ready to start. If you installed the init.d script, then you should be > > able to run BackupPC with: /etc/init.d/backuppc start > > > > I wonder does this mean that, if I can find the init.d script, I will > > still need to run this every time I start the computer, or is there a > > way to run this automatically? > > The packaged versions should take care of this part of the setup for you. > > > I think I can understand how to do the daily scheduling, and I have > > supplementary queries such as how to make the first full backup, but I > > think I need to get backuppc started first, obviously. > > The web interface should tell you if it is not running, but I'd expect > the package to start the server automatically or at least make it show > up wherever Ubuntu does that sort of thing. > -- Dr Martin Fisher Editor, Oryx - The International Journal of Conservation Fauna & Flora International, 4th Floor, Jupiter House Station Road, Cambridge, CB1 2JD, UK e-mail [EMAIL PROTECTED] tel +44 (0)20 81238513 skype martin_pescador Oryx online http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayJournal?jid=ORX Instructions for Contributors http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayMoreInfo?jid=ORX&type=ifc Online submissions http://www.epress.ac.uk/oryx/webforms/author.php Personal subscriptions http://www.fauna-flora.org/membership.php ------------------------------------------------------------------------- SF.Net email is sponsored by: The Future of Linux Business White Paper from Novell. 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