rbackup/README.rst

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rbackup - An rsync-based backup tool
====================================

Yet another rsync-based tool for automating backups and using plugins.

Rationales
----------

* 'Keep It Simple Stupid'
* Automate as much of the process as possible. This includes options, path selections, and managing snapshots
* Store backups in a format that does not require a program or script; this means that backups can be browsed with a file manager
* Deleted files are kept in old snapshots and rotated out using the rotation script
* Subsequent backups do not touch each other, unless specified by the user. This reduces the risk of overwriting backups with corrupted files

Features
--------

* Snapshot-based backup management
* Creation of installed package lists and archives of package manager databases
* AppArmor profiles

Advanced Features
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

* rbackup depends on the filesystem that stores the repository to provide features such as checksumming, deduplication, and data integrity verification
* Encryption must be handled by an external program, this is out of scope for rbackup
* xattrs and acl's are handled by rsync but must be a supported feature of the filesystem the repository is stored on

Target Directories
------------------

* /boot/loader
* /etc
* /home
* /root
* /var

  * /var/lib
  * /var/log

* Plugins

  * Installed packages
  * Package manager databases

Backup Directory Hierarchy
--------------------------

::

   Repository
     current -> data/snapshot2
     data
       snapshot1
         .metadata
       snapshot2
         .metadata
     .metadata

Assuming snapshot2 was the most recent backup and snapshot1 was the backup before that:

  * "current" would link to snapshot2
  * Unchanged files files from snapshot1 backed up to snapshot2 are hardlinked to snapshot1

Implementation Notes
--------------------

* pathlib is used for path handling
* When hardlinking, rbackup passes the entire path to avoid needing relative paths
* The backup script changes the process umask to 0000

To-do
-----

* Make Repositories network-aware. This means we might need to split ``rbackup.struct.repository.Repository`` into a server and client
* Add override for umask i.e. add the command-line options -u, --umask or an option in the config file
* Add __enter__ and __exit__ for PackageManager lockfiles to prevent transactions during backup
* Create snapshot manipulation script
* Interactive cleanup script

  * Repository.__delitem__()
  * Reconfiguring Repository.snapshot_symlink whenever a snapshot is deleted

* Plugin API
  * Plugin.run() and Plugin.communicate() abstract methods

    * Plugin.run() is passed a set of specific arguments

      * snapshot?

Dependencies
------------

Runtime
^^^^^^^

* python>=3.7
* rsync

Build/Testing
^^^^^^^^^^^^^

* pytest
* setuptools
* hypothesis

-------
License
-------

This project is licensed under MIT. See LICENSE for more details.