On Thu, May 9, 2013 at 6:46 PM, Gareth France <gareth.fra...@gmail.com> wrote: > I'll be using a desktop for the duration the machine is away. I have been > looking at incremental backup solutions. What I'd like to do is setup a > system where it connects to an FTP server and only backs up the data that > has changed since last backup. Something I would trigger rather than > scheduled as I'm on mobile broadband and would need to do backups whenever I > was near a proper broadband connection. I've found quite a few solutions > which 'sort of' do this as I'd like but most don't cut it and some simply > refused to connect to my server. Do you have any suggestions which may help?
Don't use FTP unless you plan to pre-encrypt the backup first (since you will be sending the data in the clear; duplicity will do this using gpg as the pre-upload/store encrypt mechanism). If you can backup to somewhere that does ssh+rsync, use rsnapshot. Both are packaged within Ubuntu. rsnapshot prefers to run automatically from cron (/etc/cron.d/rsnapshot) but you can run it manually if you prefer. You can get a cheap Ubuntu server from kimsufi.co.uk (OVH) for a tenner a month that has 0.5TiB storage and 5TiB/mo traffic allowance, ample as a backup/DR solution. > Bad customer service is something which really winds me up and you have hit > the nail on the head there. This is the customer service equivalent of > painting by numbers. The collection has been arranged now and fingers I wasn't suggesting you were receiving "bad customer service", I was suggesting you were receiving *cheap* customer service, with limited scope to move beyond the standard support script. Just out of interest, how have you handled this hard disc issue? > crossed they will fix it. I know that my laptops always take quite a > pounding but I can only think of one other which faired this badly, made by > a company called Hi-Grade. I really don't expect a machine to be virging on > unusable after only 8 months, regardless of how cheap it is. You're surely aware of the consumer maxim, "you get what you pay for". Granted this is a personal preference within my own realm of income and affordability, but this is why I usually wait until I have enough cash to buy an Apple computer. The build quality is usually stunning, and the level of support is unsurpassed. If you're going to buy/accept a system manufactured by a boxshifter like Packard Bell, don't expect stellar levels of support. In my experience, the cheaper the laptop, the less reliability you should expect from it, and the less support you should expect from the manufacturer. I have literally kicked the heck out of my MacBook Pros and they have all lived to tell the tale (the slight dent on the lid of one notwithstanding). I've also suffered maladies such as dead GPUs on the mainboard, and they have been dealt with inside of 90 minutes (albeit under warranty with the highest tier of support pre-purchased [ProCare]). You get what you pay for. -n -- ubuntu-uk@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-uk https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UKTeam/
