Hello, thank you Patrick, for your advocacy work! I know we need more developers to work on rdiff-backup and your work is surely helping towards this goal.
I am adding my small contribution below. On Wed, Mar 24, 2021 at 01:03:20PM +0000, David Precious wrote: > On Wed, 24 Mar 2021 08:44:15 -0400 > Patrik Dufresne <pat...@ikus-soft.com> wrote: > > > Why are you using rdiff-backup ? > > When I was looking for suitable backup software, I wanted: > > * Something I could run easily on machines I control > > * Incremental backups to restore previous versions if I needed to > > * Ability to use the backup as it is for the current version, not > necessarily needing to use the backup software to be able to get > anything out of it - probably my most important requirement > > * Something open-source so I could extend it if needed, and could > understand what it will actually do, not a black box > > rdiff-backup fits the bill well for me, since it's trivial to install & > configure, Just Works, and given an external HDD that I'd backed up to > ages ago, I could just plug it in and access the current backup version > as just a normal mirror, without having to install the backup software > to get anything out of it. > > In years to come, I could still do so, even if the backup software I'd > originally used is no longer supported / actively developed / no longer > runs on modern systems, I could still access the backup with no effort > at all, which is very valuable. I would like to add: * Multi-platform (I have used it on Windows, Linux, FreeBSD) * Easy to deploy and schedule, because all parameters are given on the command line * Command-line interfaces allows easy scheduling and execution on remote Unix machines > The only time I wouldn't turn to rdiff-backup is if I was uploading > backups to somewhere I didn't control and thus wanted encrypted backups > - then I'd likely use duplicity - but I tend to back up to targets I > control and can trust, so I'd rather the "plain mirror, but with diffs > to get to previous versions" approach of rdiff-backup. I think David did not reply to Patrick's second question explicitly: > How does it compare to other backup software ? So here I am. I do not have any ``working experience'' on other backup software. When I had to make a choice, that I considered long-term, I chose rdiff-backup for the reasons pointed above: it is simple to configure and just works, and as David wrote, its backup copies will be forever accessible (at least the latest snapshot). I hope this helps. Best regards, -- Arrigo http://rigo.altervista.org
