Tux Training

TimeVault is a simple front-end for making snapshots of a set of directories. Snapshots are a copy of a directory structure or file at a certain point in time. Restore functionality is integrated into Nautilus - previous versions of a file or directory that has a snapshot can be accessed by examining the properties and selecting the ‘Previous Versions’ tab.

Snapshots are protected from accidental deletion or modification since they are read-only by default. The super-user can delete intermediate snapshots to save space, but files and directories that existed before or after the deletion will still be accessible.

A snapshot is a copy of a directory at a certain point in time. Snapshots don’t use space for the files that haven’t changed but instead simply increment the link count for them. On Linux, when a file is deleted, the link count is decremented, but it isn’t actually removed until the link count hits zero.

Only files are hard-linked this way. Directories have to be recreated for technical reasons (since a hard-link is actually the file it points to, you would find yourself in a completely different path if directories were hard-linked).

Go to the site here: https://launchpad.net/timevault/ and grab the latest .deb file.

To install:  sudo dpkg -i timevault*.deb

After installing the .deb file, there are two steps required to complete installation:

• You must configure TimeVault, the backend will start automatically but the notifier needs to be started: To get the notifier app to start in your systray whenever you log in you can add it to your startup programs in System>Preferences>Sessions in the tab Startup Programs you should have an option to add a program click that, name it TimeVault and put:

  '/usr/bin/timevault-notifier'

in the command box, you can put whatever you like in the comments box. After you have done this if you log out and back in again you should magically have the TimeVault notifier app sitting in your systray. Right click on it and go to preferences to configure TimeVault as you wish.

Configuration

When you start the TimeVault Notifier for the first time the tray icon will be greyed out and if you hover over it it will say that it is unconfigured. Listed below are the steps needed to configure TimeVault:

There are three tabs: General, Include and Exclude.

General

• Enable Automated Snapshots: By default, TimeVault will not automatically take snapshots of your system. Checking this box will tell it to automatically take daily snapshots.
• Show snapshot notifications: This switch toggles on and off whether snapshot notifications are to be shown or not.
• Snapshot Root Directory: Where to store the snapshots. Ideally, you should pick a directory that is mounted onto another physical drive from the data you are backing up. This is so that, in the case of a hard-disk failure, the backups will remain intact (unless the drive containing the backups fails, in which case the current version of the data remains).

Include

Backup paths are listed here. Every directory that you want to be snapshotted should be added to this list.

Exclude

• Paths or patterns to exclude from the snapshots should be listed here

When you have finished making the necessary changes press the save button and TimeVault should pop up a message saying

You have included new directories in the TimeVault. File signatures will now be computed.

Click ok in this box and TimeVault should be active and will start watching your files.

TimeVault/Restructure (you should check this page for development information)

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