Copyright (C) 2008-2022 Oprea Dan, Bart de Koning, Richard Bailey, Germar Reitze, Taylor Raack

Back In Time is a simple backup tool for Linux, inspired by "flyback project".

It provides a command line tool 'backintime' and a Qt5 GUI 'backintime-qt' both written in Python3.

You only need to specify 3 things:

• what folders to back up
• where to save snapshots
• backup frequency (manual, every hour, every day, every month)

• Documentation & FAQs
• Support
• Known Problems and Workarounds
• Download
• Installation and Dependencies
• News Feed
• Contribute

The (not totally up-to-date) end user documentation is published here: https://backintime.readthedocs.org/

A wiki with FAQs is published here: https://github.com/bit-team/backintime/wiki

The source code documentation for developers is published here: https://backintime.readthedocs.io/projects/backintime-dev/en/latest/

Please ask questions and report bug on https://github.com/bit-team/backintime/issues

The development of this project has been dormant for a while, but a small team has started to get things moving again. Stick with us, we all love Back In Time :)

We are currently trying to fix the major issues while not implementing new features to prepare a new stable release.

If you are interested in the development, please see the Contribute section.

The latest release (1.3.2) and earlier versions of Back In Time are incompatible with rsync >= 3.2.4 (#1247). The problem is fixed in the current master branch of that repo and will be released with the next release (1.3.3) of Back In Time.

If you use rsync >= 3.2.4 and backintime <= 1.3.2 there is a workaround. Add --old-args in Expert Options / Additional options to rsync.

Note that some GNU/Linux distributions (e.g. Manjaro) using a workaround with environment variable RSYNC_OLD_ARGS in there distro-specific packages for Back In Time. In that case you may not see any problems.

In version 1.2.0, the handling of file permissions changed.

In versions <= 1.1.24 (until 2017) all file permissions were set to -rw-r--r-- in the backup target.

In versions >= 1.2.0 (since 2019) rsync is executed with --perms option which tells rsync to preserve the source file permission. As a consequence backups can be larger and slower, especially the first backup after upgrading to a version >= 1.2.0.

If you don't like the new behaviour, you can use "Expert Options" -> "Paste additional options to rsync" -> "--no-perms --no-group --no-owner". Note that the exact file permissions can still be found in the file fileinfo.bz2 and are also considered when restoring files.

backintime versions older than 1.3.2 do not start with Python >= 3.10.

Ubuntu 22.04 LTS ships with Python 3.10 and backintime 1.2.1, but has applied a patch to make it work.

If you want to update to backintime 1.3.2 in Ubuntu, you may use the PPA: see under INSTALL/Ubuntu PPA.

Back in Time does only support selected "known-good" backends to set and query passwords from a user-session password safe by using the keyring library.

Enabling a supported keyring requires manual configuration of a configuration file until there is e.g. a settings GUI for this.

Symptoms are DEBUG log output (with the command line argument --debug) of keyring problems can be recognized by output like:

DEBUG: [common/tools.py:829 keyringSupported] No appropriate keyring found. 'keyring.backends...' can't be used with BackInTime
DEBUG: [common/tools.py:829 keyringSupported] No appropriate keyring found. 'keyring.backends.chainer' can't be used with BackInTime

To diagnose and solve this follow these steps in a terminal:

# Show default backend
python3 -c "import keyring.util.platform_; print(keyring.get_keyring().__module__)"

# List available backends:
keyring --list-backends 

# Find out the config file folder:
python3 -c "import keyring.util.platform_; print(keyring.util.platform_.config_root())"

# Create a config file named "keyringrc.cfg" in this folder with one of the available backends (listed above)
[backend]
default-keyring=keyring.backends.kwallet.DBusKeyring

See also issue #1321

In newer Ubuntu-based distros you may get this warning if you manually install Back In Time as described in the Installation section here.

The reason is that public keys of signed packages shall be stored in a new folder now (for details see https://itsfoss.com/apt-key-deprecated/).

You can currently ignore this warning until we have found a reliable way to support all Ubuntu distros (older and newer ones).

This issue is tracked in #1338.

This effect can be caused by missing installations of Qt5-supported themes and icons. Back In Time may activate the wrong theme in this case leading to some missing icons. A fix for the next release is in preparation.

As clean solution please check your Linux settings (Appearance, Styles, Icons) and install all themes and icons packages for your preferred style via your package manager.

See issues #1306 and #1364.

Please find the latest versions on https://github.com/bit-team/backintime/releases/latest

Back In Time is included in many distributions and can be installed from their repositories.

We provide a PPA (Private Package Archive) with current stable version (ppa:bit-team/stable) and a testing PPA (ppa:bit-team/testing)

Important: Until version 1.3.2 there was a bug that caused backintime failed to start if the package backintime-qt was not installed. As work-around also install backintime-qt because the missing Udev serviceHelper system D-Bus daemon is packaged there.

# You can ignore "Warning: apt-key is deprecated..." for now (see issue #1338)
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:bit-team/stable
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install backintime-qt

or

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:bit-team/testing
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install backintime-qt

./makedeb.sh
sudo dpkg -i ../backintime-common-<version>.deb
sudo dpkg -i ../backintime-qt-<version>.deb

Back In Time is available through the AUR package backintime that also includes the GUI (backintime-qt).

Important: Until version 1.3.2 there was a bug that prevented the successful first-time installation due to a unit test failure when building with the PKGBUILD script (see #1233) and required to edit the PKGBUILD file for a successful installation (see description in #921).

# You need to import a public key once before installing
gpg --keyserver pgp.mit.edu --recv-keys 615F366D944B4826
# Fingerprint: 3E70 692E E3DB 8BDD A599  1C90 615F 366D 944B 4826

wget https://aur.archlinux.org/cgit/aur.git/snapshot/backintime.tar.gz
tar xvzf backintime.tar.gz
cd backintime
makepkg -srci

An alternative way of installation clones the AUR package which has the advantage to use git pull instead of downloading backintime.tar.gz to be prepared to build an updated version of the package:

git clone https://aur.archlinux.org/backintime.git
# Optional: Edit PKGBUILD to comment the `make test` line for the first-time installation of version 1.3.2 or less
cd backintime
makepkg -si

To build and install from the source code

• do a git clone https://github.com/bit-team/backintime.git on your computer
• install the required build and run-time dependencies
• then build and install with make as described below.

The dependencies are described for Ubuntu here. If you use another Linux distribution please install the corresponding packages.

• Build dependencies

  To build and install Back In Time from the source code these (Ubuntu) packages must be installed (together with the run-time dependencies):

  • build-essential
  • gzip
  • gettext
  • python3-pyfakefs (since Ubuntu 22.04) or via python3 -m pip pyfakefs - required for a unit test

• runtime-dependencies

  • python3 (>= 3.6)
  • rsync
  • cron-daemon
  • openssh-client
  • python3-keyring
  • python3-dbus
  • python3-packaging

• recommended

  • sshfs
  • encfs

• Commands to build and install

    cd common
    ./configure
    make
    make test
    sudo make install
  

• build dependencies

  See above...

• runtime-dependencies

  • x11-utils
  • python3-pyqt5
  • python3-dbus.mainloop.pyqt5
  • qtwayland5 (if Wayland is used as display server instead of X11)
  • libnotify-bin
  • policykit-1
  • backintime-common (installed with sudo make installafter building it)

• recommended

  • python3-secretstorage or
  • python3-keyring-kwallet or
  • python3-gnomekeyring
  • kompare or meld

• Commands to build and install

    cd qt
    ./configure
    make
    sudo make install
  

You can use these optional arguments to ./configure for creating a Makefile:

--no-fuse-group | --fuse-group (only COMMON)
    Some distributions require user to be in group 'fuse' to use
    sshfs and encfs. This toggles the check on or off.

--python3 | --python (all)
    Use either 'python3' or 'python' to start Python Version 3.x

Note: The first value is default.

See also common/configure --help and qt/configure --help

Back In Time has an RSS feed https://feeds.launchpad.net/backintime/announcements.atom

There is a mailing list for development topics: https://mail.python.org/mailman3/lists/bit-dev.python.org/

There is a developer documentation on https://backintime-dev.readthedocs.org It's not complete yet but I'm working on it. If you'd like to contribute please add docstrings following the Google style guide and add unit-tests for new methods in common. To run unit-test locally you can run cd common && ./configure && make && make test

_{November 2022}