Previous version backups

[tqz]

Hello all

One useful feature of the Windows server was that it allowed volume shadow copies. This basically makes a copy/snapshot of the data at specified intervals (so for example 7am and 12pm) even on open files and apps. This was quite a useful tool, as if for example, a database had got corrupted but had been worked on since 9am that morning we could restore quite easily the database at the state that it was at 12pm (assuming its now later than 12pm and the database had corrupted after 12) and would have only have lost the changes made since 12pm. It was also quite user friendly too.

Does anyone use/know about equivalent tools/apps in Linux (Ubuntu)? I was thinking about timevault - but not too sure whether that wold be a great idea as i think i read (not 100%) that development had stopped on this project and it was now abadoned?...

I have some unused space on one of my disks and was thinking that I could partion that as a drive to be used just for this purpose. Maybe do rsync incremental backups at specified intervals executed as a cron job. But would I be able to backup database if they werent closed or open files that users are currently working on?

Was also thinking about r-diff as doesnt this keep the previous states of the files?

Any other suggestions as to how I could do this or any apps you would recc?

Thanks in advance

t.

[oz]

You can find a large listing of backup and recovery applications here:

Backup & Recovery | Linux App Finder

I've not used most of them so can't really provide any info about any particular app, but you can read up on them to see if any of them might be what you are looking for.