1backintime(1) USER COMMANDS backintime(1)
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6 backintime - a simple backup tool for Linux.
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8 This is command line tool. The graphical tools are: backintime-gnome
9 and backintime-kde4.
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12 backintime [ --backup | --backup-job | --snapshots-path | --snap‐
13 shots-list | --snapshots-list-path | --last-snapshot | --last-snap‐
14 shot-path | --help | --version | --license ]
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17 Back In Time is a simple backup tool for Linux. The backup is done by
18 taking snapshots of a specified set of folders.
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20 All you have to do is configure: where to save snapshots, what folders
21 to backup. You can also specify a backup schedule: disabled, every 5
22 minutes, every 10 minutes, every hour, every day, every week, every
23 month. To configure it use one of the graphical interfaces available
24 (backintime-gnome or backintime-kde4).
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26 It acts as a 'user mode' backup tool. This means that you can
27 backup/restore only folders you have write access to (actually you can
28 backup read-only folders, but you can't restore them).
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30 If you want to run it as root you need to use 'su'.
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32 A new snapshot is created only if something changed since the last
33 snapshot (if any).
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35 A snapshot contains all the files from the selected folders (except for
36 exclude patterns). In order to reduce disk space it use hard-links (if
37 possible) between snapshots for unchanged files. This way a file of
38 10Mb, unchanged for 10 snapshots, will use only 10Mb on the disk.
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40 When you restore a file 'A', if it already exists on the file system it
41 will be renamed to 'A.backup.currentdate'.
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43 For automatic backup it use 'cron' so there is no need for a daemon,
44 but 'cron' must be running.
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46 user-callback
47 During backup process the application can call a user callback at dif‐
48 ferent steps. This callback is "$XDG_CONFIG_HOME/backintime/user-call‐
49 back" (by default $XDG_CONFIG_HOME is ~/.config).
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51 The first argument is the progile id (1=Main Profile, ...).
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53 The second argument is the progile name.
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55 The third argument is the reason:
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57 1 Backup process begins.
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59 2 Backup process ends.
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61 3 A new snapshot was taken. The extra arguments are snap‐
62 shot ID and snapshot path.
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64 4 There was an error. The second argument is the error
65 code.
66 Error codes:
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68 1 The application is not configured.
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70 2 A "take snapshot" process is already running.
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72 3 Can't find snapshots folder (is it on a removable
73 drive ?).
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75 4 A snapshot for "now" already exist.
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78 -b, --backup
79 take a snapshot now (if needed)
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81 --backup-job
82 take a snapshot (if needed) depending on schedule rules (used
83 for cron jobs)
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85 --snapshots-path
86 display path where is saves the snapshots (if configured)
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88 --snapshots-list
89 display the list of snapshot IDs (if any)
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91 --snapshots-list-path
92 display the paths to snapshots (if any)
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94 --last-snapshot
95 display last snapshot ID (if any)
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97 --last-snapshot-path
98 display the path to the last snapshot (if any)
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100 -h, --help
101 display a short help
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103 -v, --version
104 show version
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106 --license
107 show license
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110 backintime-gnome, backintime-kde4.
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112 Back In Time also has a website: http://backintime.le-web.org
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115 This manual page was written by BIT Team (<bit-team@lists.launch‐
116 pad.net>).
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120version 1.0.6 Mars 2009 backintime(1)