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Best Backup Solutions for Desktop Linux

Despite common misconceptions, there are more solid backup solutions for desktop Linux than most people might suspect. Best of all, many of them are completely free with the code being open source. Some of them however, are not.

In this piece, I will give you a break down of each of them. How they can work in your specific situation, where you will find the applications, and I'll provide the needed details so that you can better decide what option is best for you.

'Bare metal' backups using Tar

When you want to clone the hard drive sector by sector, including all of the unused space on that drive, the Tar command is one of the most common methods to do a system backup "down to the metal," as system admins like to say. The advantages are plenty, from knowing for sure that you have everything backed up down to being able to do it easily from a simple command line execution. Not getting caught up in some flakey GUI is a plus for users of this method.

Obvious disadvantages would include the fact that you do not have a GUI to make this happen. Yes, if I was to do this, I would likely create a simple bash script that I could then just double click (got to love GNOME) and let my settings take over from there. Still, there is something to be said about a little GUI action to clearly illustrate what is happening in real time.

And the single biggest and definitely impractical problem is the issue of backing up empty space. This alone makes using Tar a bit of an overkill.

Rsync -- Because being practical does not mean you have to stop being geeky

At its purest, rsync is a very powerful backup tool that is used to do complete backups of your system. But it is able to do so both over a network (using SSH) and also do it by "syncing up" your data as to better preserve free space. In other words, rather than doing one-way mirroring of the day from A to B, A and B are synchronized effectively making what some users like to think of as the perfect backup.

And for users who would rather have a GUI, making the experience a little less daunting, solutions like Unison or grsync would prove to be the best choice for these individuals. Both solutions are great for backing up directories while ensuring nothing mission critical is being overwritten by accident.

For those looking at more of a "Apple Time Machine" type of experience, minus the special effects, then Flyback is likely going to be the best GNOME solution, especially for those of the Ubuntu using variety.

In my mind, the only downside of using rsync is dealing with a corruption that is then copied over to the backup. Worse yet, this might not be discovered until it comes time to either check on the value of the backup by deploying it on a new machine or worse, trying to use it for recovery. This being said, this is generally a problem only when you use something automatic, like in a cron job of some sort. So long as you are familiar with the quality of the directories being backed up, there is really no discernible disadvantage in my mind when using a rsync based solution.

Amanda -- A beautiful name, plus solid network backups

Unlike other backup solutions, this one is one of the undisputed leaders, as it has both the option for pro-level support, while remaining an open source application. One of the biggest attractions to using Amanda is the fact that the application is able to backup pretty much anything, on a schedule, to just about anything. Disk storage, tape drives, and doing so over your network on the schedule you set.

Regarding backing up to tape and disk -- Amanda can do this simultaneously! Another giant advantage despite my dislike for taking a Tar backup approach is that Amanda does this as to protect you should you need to get that data without relying on any special software. Just untar it. Amanda is also created with higher quality code than most consumer-level applications, and its encryption ensures that data in transit is protected from prying eyes.

Downsides? Honestly the only one I can think of is the fact that this is not really a solution for anything less than a small-business-sized operation. This is not really that home user friendly. Still, it is worth pointing out that Tar, listed above, can provide some of the most basic Amanda functionality for a home user, without the little niceties and can be made secure with the implementation of SSH for network travel. Still, both Tar and Amanda are just overkill for most home users.

Sbackup -- Just keep it simple

Definitely not the most elegant-looking backup option available today, sbackup does, however, do the job it is tasked with nicely despite any issues with its appearance. Works great with any external hard drive or USB flash device, backups can easily be scheduled to meet the needs of any users, regardless of the schedule they might keep.

Setting up automatic backups, however, if being done with an external USB device, is best suited for PCs that are left on all of the time. In some cases, there is an issue with some distributions of Linux that a new phantom folder of what was once the symlink for the backup drive will be used instead of the new symlink for the current placement of the external drive. This can be a problem.

Bad stuff aside, this is a great way to do /home folder backups in a bind and do them cleanly. Just remember to be aware of the external drive issue.

CrashPlan -- A closed-source prince worth the price

CrashPlan comes in two flavors -- home user and enterprise grade. In this instance, my experience is with the home version. Why even highlight this? Because it is like sbackup with off-site network backup capabilities for a one time fee. Yes, the only time you need to worry about paying for anything after that is if you are looking for continuous backups vs scheduled or for CrashPlan provided data storage offsite. Honestly, considering the ability to store offsite without any fees on one of my own PCs, anywhere in the world, I see little reason to concern myself with any additional fees.

What makes CrashPlan so compelling to me is that my mom can use it to backup her Windows box to my Linux PC, from across the state -- automatically simply by having the PC on and scheduled to do the backup. It is very simply to use and honestly, it has never failed me.

I also like that CrashPlan offers both incremental and differential backups, so I am not filling up space that is really unneeded. At the end of the day, this is as secure as Amanda but as simple to use as sbackup. And it has offsite network storage with self-discovery of other CrashPlan awareness on your LAN. This means other PCs or Macs with CrashPlan installed can be set to "see" one another to make networked backups a simple thing.

The biggest two downsides unfortunately, include the sbackup USB hard drive problem meaning PCs used to backup to ought to be left on. And of course, it is not open source.

Partitioning or imaging solutions are no good

Many of you will argue this point home, but in my honest opinion, backing up to another partition or using Ghost-like options to clone a partition are just asking for problems. Not so much because of the software, rather because of the fact that when using Linux, backing up your home directory alone is a bigger help than putting blind faith into some partition clone option in homes that your data is preserved when it comes time to restore. If you need something this hardcore, I would do the following:

1) Use an enterprise solution like Amanda.

2) Go with Remastersys to backup your "system" installation. Set it to ignore your home directory. Then make scheduled backups of your home directory separately.

The only thing to keep in mind with something like remastersys is that it is for Ubuntu and like-minded distributions only. So I do not believe it will work with OpenSuSE or Fedora. In these cases, going with Rsync or Amanda is going to be a stronger bet for these users.

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