mainstoreBackup - Support: sr #108717, Why isn't storeBackup more popular?

 
 

sr #108717: Why isn't storeBackup more popular?

Submitter:  Vianney Stroebel <viybel>
Submitted:  Wed 07 Jan 2015 03:24:16 PM UTC
   
 
Category:  None Priority:  5 - Normal
Severity:  1 - Wish Status:  None
Privacy:  Public Assigned to:  None
Open/Closed:  Open Operating System:  None
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Mon 12 Jan 2015 04:32:02 PM UTC, comment #5: 

To be sure: I wasn't at all commenting on the speed of development, which seems great to me.

And fair enough: I'll simply do my job ;-)

 Vianney Stroebel <viybel>
Sat 10 Jan 2015 11:38:14 AM UTC, comment #4: 

Don't know what to answer on that ;-)

I see two points:

1. I do not plan to abandon it at least in the next 10 years. Also, it uses no proprietary format. So it's not a deadly restriction - at least not for the data. And - I tested (just for fun) to run version 1.0 from 13 years ago. Unbelievable but it worked on an actual box without complaining. Perl5 seems to be very stable in terms of compatibility.

2. Development progress could be faster, naturally. But that's a double-edget thing regarding stability and new features (and complexity). As far as I know there are still people out there using version 1.19 because it simply works for them.

And yes, it's typically admins using it like this one:
http://grokbase.com/p/centos/centos/123cd8pgj5/centos-server-backup-options

And I should add: mostly the ones not talking all the time but simply doing their job :-) .

Heinz-Josef Claes <hjclaes>
Group administrator
Fri 09 Jan 2015 02:23:20 PM UTC, comment #3: 

I must add that if I'm insisting on this topic, it's because a piece of software created and maintained by only one person will sooner or later be abandonned (as many have already). That's the only drawback of using storeBackup as far as I'm concerned.

I'm guessing that you don't realize how poor the landscape of open source backup still is in 2015 (it takes quite a long time to review each existing software). I seriously think that storeBackup could become an industry standard, provided a community of sysops would help you maintain it as well as distribution packages (and help you manage the community).

 Vianney Stroebel <viybel>
Fri 09 Jan 2015 02:13:37 PM UTC, comment #2: 

These arguments make sense and yeah, I was talking about storeBackup's popularity amoung sysadmins, not users who need a GUI or are frightened by config options (which are nothing but features).

I guess we the users could also give back a little by posting reviews on relevant sites about your amazing piece of software.

Honestly, it does not take long for a sysadmin to figure out the advantages of the kind of features you're offering. After all, backup often is one of their main and most critical responsibilities.

Even though I understand that you're not caring about it that much, maybe you could mention in your documentation that it's up to users to spread the word. With no additional effort, you could give much more to the world if your software was more used (and who knows, someday some people could submit you valuable patches).

 Vianney Stroebel <viybel>
Thu 08 Jan 2015 10:52:20 AM UTC, comment #1: 

You're not the first asking this question :-) .

I think in Germany it's known better than in other countries (I get about 50% or more emails in German):

http://www.linux-magazin.de/Heft-Abo/Ausgaben/2003/09/Brave-GNU-World/%28offset%29/4

http://www.heise.de/ix/artikel/Huebsch-verschnuert-506963.html

http://www.linux-community.de/Internal/Artikel/Print-Artikel/LinuxUser/2012/05/Aktuelle-Software

http://www.linux-magazin.de/content/view/full/71541

http://www.admin-magazin.de/News/Storebackup-3.3-bringt-Isolated-Mode-und-Replikation

http://www.freiesmagazin.de/mobil/freiesMagazin-2012-10-bilder.html
same article printed here:
http://www.pro-linux.de/artikel/2/1596/


But you're right, its not very popular. I think there are the following reasons:

1. no GUI (for users coming from windows and don't understand Unix / Linux)
2. too many possibilities - difficult for users like at 1.
3. does the same as rsync - you can read this sometimes in forums. :-)
4. people don't understand hard links (often the same users as in 1., but a common knowledge problem.
--> difficult for low lever users. (There are exceptions, somebody wrote me his understanding of Linux grew by using storeBackups features starting with the simplest one.)

5. Debian and Debian related distributions still use a very old version, because the maintainer doesn't react any more (no idea how to change this, because you always are directed to the maintainer). Therefore, several of the newer features are not available in those distributions.
6. People don't understand the importance of backups ('a copy is a backup', maybe a copy on a raid system :-) ). Maybe most of them have to learn it the hard way.


As a summary, it's my impression that storeBackup is used by professionals (in small environments) or semi-professionals.

I have no idea how to change the popularity of storeBackup, but years ago I came to the decision not to care about this. It's my way to give a little bit back from what I got and get from the open source community.

 Heinz-Josef Claes <hjclaes>
Group administrator
Wed 07 Jan 2015 03:24:16 PM UTC, original submission:  

I just completed a quite exhaustive review of existing backup solutions for Linux (mostly open source ones) and storeBackup is clearly the best available solution at the moment.

It has most of the important features: block deduplication, move/rename detection, data integrity with checksumming, backup data is guaranted to be usable in 10 years because it is not in a proprietary format, etc.

What's more, it is both matured AND maintained while there seems to be a lot of alpha quality projects (like Bup and many others) and abandonware (like BackupPC and many others) out there.

Meanwhile, virtually none of the reviews of open source backup software mention storeBackup, the community in Savannah does not seem very big and a Google search returns few results.

Why isn't storeBackup more popular?

 Vianney Stroebel <viybel>

 

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