A "Time Machine" Mimic Save Configurations Script

What features/apps/bugfixes needed in a future Puppy
Message
Author
jimwg
Posts: 121
Joined: Mon 19 Aug 2013, 02:44

A "Time Machine" Mimic Save Configurations Script

#1 Post by jimwg »

Greetings!

My Mac friends constantly cluck that Linux and Mint don't have "Time Machine" like Macs do, but one nice fellow said it might be possible to do a long Puppy script that periodically saves versions of all the configuration files in your system, from windows manager settings and session settings and even SeaMonkey configurations which you can recall after a crash or making bad changes in your system. This kind of programming is way beyond me to do, but such a script could be a real lifesaver especially for newbies and tech tyros who just want taste what Puppy's like and will make all kinds of tinkering mistakes along the way, and I'm asking whether anyone in Puppy has ever made such an attempt.

Thanks for any info!

Jim in NYC


aves the confiuration

User avatar
mikeb
Posts: 11297
Joined: Thu 23 Nov 2006, 13:56

#2 Post by mikeb »

Perhaps the constant clucking is to try and justify the extra cost..... who knows. There's the one about not sitting amounst mockers......

Anyway there is a live save backup script thats floated around here for some time.

I use sfs saves so it inherently makes a backup.

Or just make a copy of your save file manually now and then...you can zip it to make it much smaller.

mike

"Time Machine" reminds me of the wonders of deep freeze on windows that was fashionable for a while... why not have a system thats made to be less vunerable instead....

jimwg
Posts: 121
Joined: Mon 19 Aug 2013, 02:44

#3 Post by jimwg »

mikeb wrote:Perhaps the constant clucking is to try and justify the extra cost..... who knows. There's the one about not sitting amounst mockers......

Anyway there is a live save backup script thats floated around here for some time.

I use sfs saves so it inherently makes a backup.

Or just make a copy of your save file manually now and then...you can zip it to make it much smaller.

mike

"Time Machine" reminds me of the wonders of deep freeze on windows that was fashionable for a while... why not have a system thats made to be less vunerable instead....
Thanks for your swift reply!

I think the idea is to only copy configuration files, not entire apps or save files, which mean such saved configuration files would be very tiny so you can have lots of such config snapshots made at various periods of time to roll back to like "Time Machine". I'll seek the file you mentioned and maybe find someone who can take it and soup it up to do such. Thanks for the tip!

Jim in NYC

User avatar
mikeb
Posts: 11297
Joined: Thu 23 Nov 2006, 13:56

#4 Post by mikeb »

well /root and /etc are the 2 main folders... but the backing up your save idea is that your full setup is easily restored so why not :)

mike

User avatar
Ted Dog
Posts: 3965
Joined: Wed 14 Sep 2005, 02:35
Location: Heart of Texas

#5 Post by Ted Dog »

Of course he may wish to try multisession DVD's for this purpose, Also Fatdog64 version can multisession to hardrive, so roll backs are easy.

User avatar
greengeek
Posts: 5789
Joined: Tue 20 Jul 2010, 09:34
Location: Republic of Novo Zelande

#6 Post by greengeek »

Could this be achieved by sticking with frugal installs and modifying the pupsave code so that after every savefile update (30 mins or however the pupsaveconfig is set...) a backup of the current savefile also takes place to an external drive (ie /home or something). This seems easy to do.

If a smaller subset of files (rather than the whole savefile) is required then I think puppy needs re-shaping so that all of the config files/personal settings you are looking for exist inside a separate sfs which would be significantly smaller than the entire savefile.

Or would it? Maybe the better idea is to stick with backing up the whole savefile but make sure lots of crap is never kept in the savefile in the first place. Keep the savefile slim and trim and use it (or it's backup...) as the Time Machine. There are methods for moving browser temp files etc out of the savefile - and methods for apps to be made portable and kept out of the savefile ie: in /home or elsewhere externally.

jimwg
Posts: 121
Joined: Mon 19 Aug 2013, 02:44

#7 Post by jimwg »

greengeek wrote:
If a smaller subset of files (rather than the whole savefile) is required then I think puppy needs re-shaping so that all of the config files/personal settings you are looking for exist inside a separate sfs which would be significantly smaller than the entire savefile.
.
BINGO! Exactly what I meant! Shrewd Man! :) _Just_ backup configuration files and personal settings, not the whole banana bunch, especially for those sans DVDs or CDs or even HDs! Mint mavens working on such a script coupled with "Deja Dupe" (?) where you can select app configs to copy say the result would be very tiny daily version files that can bail you out of many misconfig/bad setting jams. Why can't such a modified script work with Puppy?

Jim in NYC

User avatar
greengeek
Posts: 5789
Joined: Tue 20 Jul 2010, 09:34
Location: Republic of Novo Zelande

#8 Post by greengeek »

The tricky part might be coping with the variety of programs and window managers that users choose to install. For example: where does each browser keep its bookmarks? Homepage? Personal security settings? As far as I can tell there are many different places depending on browser brand and version.

And which window manager would the "save script" be written for? Each WM stores settings in a different place. And what about installed fonts?? That seems to be a nightmare as far as I can see - fonts seem to be in all sorts of places.

Would you be backing up recent word processor documents, or assuming that the data had already been saved externally?

I think such an idea would have to start with designing/building a single puppy - well structured and tightly controlled. If such a puppy could be configured so as to have personal settings in one place (sfs?) then maybe other pups could gradually mimic the same thing.

Certainly would be handy to have a pup that shutdown securely without having to wait for a 1gig savefile to copy to usb.

bill
Posts: 490
Joined: Wed 28 May 2008, 15:32

#9 Post by bill »

GreenGeek says:
Certainly would be handy to have a pup that shutdown securely without having to wait for a 1gig savefile to copy to usb.
Certainly is and using Seamonkey 2.0.7 . Of course you have to do the drill
here.
http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewto ... 0&start=33

jimwg
Posts: 121
Joined: Mon 19 Aug 2013, 02:44

#10 Post by jimwg »

greengeek wrote:The tricky part might be coping with the variety of programs and window managers that users choose to install. For example: where does each browser keep its bookmarks? Homepage? Personal security settings? As far as I can tell there are many different places depending on browser brand and version.

And which window manager would the "save script" be written for? Each WM stores settings in a different place. And what about installed fonts?? That seems to be a nightmare as far as I can see - fonts seem to be in all sorts of places.

Would you be backing up recent word processor documents, or assuming that the data had already been saved externally?

I think such an idea would have to start with designing/building a single puppy - well structured and tightly controlled. If such a puppy could be configured so as to have personal settings in one place (sfs?) then maybe other pups could gradually mimic the same thing.

Certainly would be handy to have a pup that shutdown securely without having to wait for a 1gig savefile to copy to usb.
Well, if several Mint people are working on a one-size-fits-all config versioning save script, there must be a way to adapt it for Puppy. As they say, just grab basic configuration changes that's all, like desktop settings and Seamonkey bookmark and settings files and Libreoffice ".soc" files (you'd likely understand all that way more than I!). I just say don't over-reach grabbing everything and the moon, just grab and save the simple stuff that people most tinker with and screw up. I mean, we laugh at Macheads paying through the nose for having such a feature via "Time Machine" -- but at least their last laugh HAS it! :(

Jim in NYC

User avatar
greengeek
Posts: 5789
Joined: Tue 20 Jul 2010, 09:34
Location: Republic of Novo Zelande

#11 Post by greengeek »

Sounds as if Barry K himself is contemplating something a bit like Time Machine (if I correctly interpret his thread...)
see here:
http://bkhome.org/news/?viewDetailed=00013
BarryK wrote:.... In addition, I am thinking of implementing yet more interesting features:

11. Install and uninstall SFS files.
12. Simplified version upgrade (and downgrade).
13. Auditing, allowing rollback (system recovery).

User avatar
mikeb
Posts: 11297
Joined: Thu 23 Nov 2006, 13:56

#12 Post by mikeb »

.... In addition, I am thinking of implementing yet more interesting features:

11. Install and uninstall SFS files.
guess I made enough noise .... another 'original' idea lol

just posted for the record

mike

starlyte

Time Machine

#13 Post by starlyte »

I find that a regular safe gaurd with Hot Backup very useful. I use either another hard drive or an external flash drive(SDcard, USB).
If my system crashes I just change the name so it ends in .3fs, and replace my SFS save file.
If I don't forget it's OK.
I must admit that it'd be nice to get a regular back up automatically, but this can be done with other systems for back ups.
I've never used Apple, so I don't miss it's "Time Machine", but I don't miss it's restrictions, cot, or closed sources, either.
TBH, pressing on a button every few days, or once a week largely out weighs the disadvantages in other fields, compared to Linux, and especially Puppy. :D

But if ia system like that came out for Linux, I must admit, it would be really useful, for those of us who let slip regular back ups, from time to time, like me for example. I do try to remember, though, having lost too many good, well balanced SFS saves ;)

User avatar
Ted Dog
Posts: 3965
Joined: Wed 14 Sep 2005, 02:35
Location: Heart of Texas

#14 Post by Ted Dog »

really have any one on this thread tried multisession dvds? hate to harp but this already exists in a mature format for 7 years. It will do what you are requesting and still have full support for the forseeable future. Maybe give it a try and port the idea off of need for optical drive. Fatdog64 lets you multisession on most any media not just optical like normal 32 bit puppies.

It may just be a problem with terminology. Multisession save just the changes between uses. and you can snap shot at anytime, and at shutdown automatically. You can contol if changes are ignored how many roll backs you want. An since its on write once and never actually erased. You can with a single file edit un rollback if you over rolled back.

nooby
Posts: 10369
Joined: Sun 29 Jun 2008, 19:05
Location: SwedenEurope

#15 Post by nooby »

I used to do fully manual back up of the different save files
for Lupu and Slacko and all the other puppies I try out.

Then I got too lazy so that may indicate others also
would need something automatic :)

I remember that one adventurous guy use a script
that did that back up "live" which could fail
if it did happen when something else changed
during the minute it takes. But he had good experience
using it. Typically I even failed to get how one set it up.

And the book mark may be on another computer I used at that time.

It just a post in a thread so not a thread having a title
to search using my signature link
I use Google Search on Puppy Forum
not an ideal solution though

User avatar
mikeb
Posts: 11297
Joined: Thu 23 Nov 2006, 13:56

#16 Post by mikeb »

really have any one on this thread tried multisession dvds?
yes...used it on a driveless machine some years ago.

I took the nature of how it works (but not the system) and created my sfs save system.... in essense you have the same robustness... save is a small read only file.... can be easily copied but pretty robust as it is. Has most of the advantages....robust, immune to power failures stuff and best of all all can be in ram so media can be removed . Only problem I found with multisession is not all hardware would do it.
It never wanted to migrate to a new disk for me either.

mike

User avatar
Ted Dog
Posts: 3965
Joined: Wed 14 Sep 2005, 02:35
Location: Heart of Texas

#17 Post by Ted Dog »

well good. one thing I liked was the readability of files directly with multisession. Would be leary of squashfs files not being backward readable. but some form of package or compression would be needed if savings on ntfs or fat. Im leaning on cpio or tar.gz for the role of sfs in a upgraded multisession methodology using non optical drives. Any input and may be a terminology renaming would be useful.
as another pointed out a form of multisession would be very useful for frugal installs so savefiles problems could be reduced.
if you already have code please share.....

User avatar
mikeb
Posts: 11297
Joined: Thu 23 Nov 2006, 13:56

#18 Post by mikeb »

yes the backward compatability would be the fly in the otherwise fairly clean ointment.
Actually I don't use compressed sfs... it gets too slow for larger saves ... on these old machines takes less than a second for say 50MB but compressed might be 10 seconds or more. Loading times are similar as it happens. I did use .tar for a while...again no compression. Unfortunately the embutils tar was too flaky (files got lost for large saves) plus lacked support for file ownership. I have yet to retry using a recent busybox as its tar might perform better. I use tar on slax as its initrd uses the full glibc so I use standard tar and it works just fine.

The version issue is not that problematic since you would usually use a save with the same kernel it was made. As an aside 7zip can open any version I throw at it. Tar did have one nice advantage and that was the possibility of editing it.

Code...only snag is on puppy I used an init based on puppy 2 and similar matching rc.shutdown. I have ported that to my lucid 5.25 and puppy 4.12 but probably not a simple drop in job. On the other hand its not using anything alien to puppy...only the existing tools and a bit of bash.
Actually the hardest part was sneaking it into the existing init and shutdown menus... the load and save is pretty straightforward.

Ok food arrived..back in a bit

mike

User avatar
Ted Dog
Posts: 3965
Joined: Wed 14 Sep 2005, 02:35
Location: Heart of Texas

#19 Post by Ted Dog »

most of my homemade remaster and multisession changes originated from the same timeframe as yours. Only after having to retype sfs names each time did I recode part of it to automagically figure out what puppy build its made from. Someone just PMed me a set of scripts originally from a person named seaside. Do not recall a poster by that name.

User avatar
mikeb
Posts: 11297
Joined: Thu 23 Nov 2006, 13:56

#20 Post by mikeb »

Yes the file naming .... I kept the version option (useful for ones like devx) but added _uni.sfs that would get loaded by any puppy...handy for things like thunderbird and others that will run on many versions. I still have anything next to the main sfs loaded without the need for a save or bootconfig...handy for compiling for example. Also all sfs get loaded to ram as long as there is enough room....I think multisession does this to but not the other save options normally.
...still waiting for this mysterious food....
mike

Post Reply