Caatinga

Introduction

Backup program written in python.

Have you ever accidentally deleted a file or unintentionally saved changes you didn't want to save? Or maybe you would like to look back in time to find a particular version of a file you once had. Caatinga is an easy to use command line backup and restore tool that creates snapshots of your filesystem and allows easy recovery of your precious data.

When new snapshots are created, Caatinga uses hard links instead of copying files that have not changed since the last backup. This makes each backup take a minimal amount of disk space and they execute very quickly. Since a new snapshot can be created efficiently, frequent backups can be performed using a command scheduler, such as cron, to insure current data is always backed up.

If remote backups are desired, a filesystem from a remote computer can be mounted locally using http://fuse.sourceforge.net/sshfs.html. This requires a remote machine to have an SSH daemon running and a user account available for backup purposes.

Caatinga is compatible with python versions 2.7 or newer, including 3.x.

Installation

PyPI

Installing from the Python Package Index can be done by using the pip command. This is the recommended way to install Caatinga.

$ pip install caatinga

Archlinux

An AUR package available here: https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/caatinga/

Source

Installing from source will insure you have the most current code base. In order to run the installer, you must first have the python setuptools package installed. To get the latest source code, clone the git repository with this command.

# git clone https://www.github.com/headmastersquall/caatinga

Change to the caatinga directory that was just created, then run the install as root.

$ python setup.py install

After Caatinga has been installed, it will need to be configured before you make your first backup. Lets walk through a few items in the configuration file to prepare for your first backup.

Quick Setup

This section walks you through the minimal configuration steps you will need to perform before creating your first backup.

1. Install the caatinga using one of the methods mentioned above.

2. Rename the sample configuration file located in /etc/caatinga.

     $ cd /etc
     $ mv caatinga.conf.sample caatinga.conf
   

3. Edit the configuration file and set the backup_location to where you want your snapshots to be stored. This can be any location on your filesystem, but is highly recommended to be a mounted filesystem such as an internal drive for backup use, or an external usb drive.

4. Optionally set the backup_group to a group defined on your system for use as the backup group. Backups will be owned by this group to allow normal users to access their backed up files. Remember to add the users to this group as well.

5. Make sure your backup location is mounted and ready.

6. Register the backup_location, found in caatinga.conf, as a backup device to be used by caatinga.

   caat -g

7. Run caat from the console to create your first backup.

Note: The first backup that is performed will take the most time since it has to copy all your data to the backup location. After the first backup is completed, subsequent backups will complete much quicker.

Documentation

Full docs are available at https://github.com/headmastersquall/caatinga/wiki. Don't forget about your trusty docs that are installed with the application, such as man pages and the built in help system found in lscaat:

• man caat(1)
• man lscaat(1)
• man caat.conf(5)
• caat --help
• lscaat help

I hope you enjoy this program as much as I have enjoyed writing it. If you find any bugs or have any comments or suggestions, please post them at https://github.com/headmastersquall/caatinga/issues.