FullSync - Automatically Backing up your Data

Operating Systems: Windows XP, Linux (RHEL4)
Published:         24.08.2005
By:                Marc Petitmermet
Revised:           14.07.2005
By:                27.09.2005

Introduction

Backing up your valuable data, such as your PhD thesis or drafts of your next paper, is an important task. If you login into a domain such as "ifp_nt", "nanomat" or "matl" your home directory is already stored on a file server and you don't need to read any further; in this case your IT administrator takes care of the daily backup. But in case your home directory and all your data is stored on a local hard disk (e.g. on a laptop) and you back up your data only once in a while or even never then you should read on.

To automate backing up your data in such a situation we suggest that you use FullSync. FullSync is a universal file synchronization and backup tool which is highly customizable and expandable. It is opensource and written in Java and therefore runs on multiple platforms (tested on Windws XP and Linux so far). It allows you to configure different backup setups, called profiles, and define in a scheduler when the backups should be done. The frist time FullSync is run it creates a full backup on the files server. Consecutively, only changes are copied (incremental backup). This reduces network traffic tremendously. More details can be found on FullSync's home page »»

Please follow the instructions below to install and configure FullSync on your computer and please, read also the notes.

Installation

1. download FullSync from sourceforge
   - download FullSync-x.x.zip if you have not administrator privileges
   - download FullSyncInstaller.exe if you have administrator privileges
   - download FullSyncInstaller.jar if you don't run Windows
   
2. Windows: Either upack the zip file and store the applications in an appropriate location or use the installer to install it properly under c:\Program Files.
   Liunx: Start the installer with "java -jar FullSyncInstaller.jar" and follow the installation guide. If you have root permissions store it in /usr/loca/FullSync.
   

Configuration

(You might want to change the language of FullSync in the preferences settings, Figure 5.) Let's assume you want to back up your PhD Thesis and your papers and you want a different backup schedule; your file server ist foo (e.g. matl-s<xx>) and your loginname is bar. Therefore, we create two profiles:

1. Create new profile: File > New Profile (Figure 1)
   
2. Give this profile a name and a description (Figure 2).
3. Choose a source from your local disk; you can use the browse button for this task. E.g.: Source: file:/E:/PhdThesis
   Please note: spaces in file or folder names are replaced with "%20"
   
4. Choose a destination.
   Although you can choose from different transport protocols such as ftp (not available on our servers) and sftp we strongly recomend to use the smb protocol. It is much faster than sftp and it fully supports non-ascii characters in folder and file names. E.g.: Destination: smb://foo/bar/backup/PhdThesis
   Make sure you create the destination folder on the server before you backup.
   
5. Choose the type of synchronization that is better for you. We suggest to use exact copy, but you can find a description of the different types of synchronization here.
   
6. Edit scheduling and enable it. There is an interval (Figure 3) or a crontab-like (Figure 4) scheduling configuration possible.
   
7. If you are backing up a folder with subfolders make sure to check Sync Subdirectories.
8. In the preferences settings (Figure 5) you should enable autostart Scheduler. With this setting, the scheduler starts as soon as FullSync is started.
9. Add a shortcut of the FullSync in your Startup folder to start the application as soon as you log in.
   

Notes

• As soon as your data is on the file server it is backed up on tape every night. Lost data can be retrieved within 3 months following the precedure described in "Restoring Personal Data from NetBackup". Therefore, there is no need to have multiple backups on the file server itself (disk space is limited).
  
• You can also back up whenever you want by pressing the play button on the profile, but it 's better to schedule it anyways, in case you forget...
• (advanced) Some error messages stay there even after the error is gone. To make sure it tells you when there is a new error we recomend that if you feel brave you edit the profiles.xml file on the fullsync folder to clear the error after closing fullsync.
• Don't backup your private collection of mp3s, movies and images. The file server is intended to store data concerning your research and work at the ETH and not your private life.
• Take into account that the disk space available for each user is limited by a diskquota.
  

Acknowledments

Thanks to Manu Forero from the nanomat group for finding this application and doing some initial testing.