25 lines
1.2 KiB
Plaintext
25 lines
1.2 KiB
Plaintext
bup is a program that backs things up. bup has a few advantages
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over other backup software:
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It uses a rolling checksum algorithm (similar to rsync) to split
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large files into chunks. The most useful result of this is you can
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backup huge virtual machine (VM) disk images, databases, and XML
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files incrementally, even though they're typically all in one huge
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file, and not use tons of disk space for multiple versions.
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It uses the packfile format from git (the open source version
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control system), so you can access the stored data even if you
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don't like bup's user interface.
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Unlike git, it writes packfiles directly (instead of having a
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separate garbage collection/repacking stage) so it's fast even with
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gratuitously huge amounts of data. bup's improved index formats
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also allow you to track far more filenames than git (millions) and
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keep track of far more objects (hundreds or thousands of gigabytes).
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Data is "automagically" shared between incremental backups without
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having to know which backup is based on which other one - even if
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the backups are made from two different computers that don't even
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know about each other. You just tell bup to back stuff up, and it
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saves only the minimum amount of data needed.
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