Incremental or full?¶

The backups are incremental and full at the same time. Modified files are transferred, while unchanged files are linked to the new destination using the hard link feature of rsync(1). This saves storage space. In other words each backup is technically a full backup (contains each file) but copies only the really changed files (to save disk space) and "reuses" unchanged files by setting a so-called "hard-link".

Scheduling¶

For automatic and scheduled backups cron(1) is used.

Restoring¶

Restoring is straightforward via file manager, command line or Back In Time itself.

Modes¶

Several backup profile modes are supported. The simplest is the Local profile, which creates backups of items on the local machine and stores them on the same machine. Additionally, Local Encrypted profiles encrypt the backups using EncFS. To store backups on a remote machine, the SSH profile can be used. These backups can also be encrypted using the SSH Encrypted profile.

Regarding encrypted profiles, please take a look at A NOTE ON SECURITY.

backup¶

Create a new backup, but only if the profile is scheduled and if the machine is not running on battery.

--checksum

--background

show¶

List backup ID’s or paths.

--path

--last

restore¶

Restores entire backups or selected files and folders from them.

--checksum

--delete

--local-backup

--no-local-backup

--only-new

WHAT

WHERE

BACKUP_ID

remove¶

Remove a backup.

--skip-confirmation

BACKUP_ID

prune¶

Remove and keep backups based on "Remove & Retention" policy.

unmount¶

Unmount the profile.

shutdown¶

Shut down the computer after the backup is finished.

check-config¶

Checks the configuration of all profiles. The config file is verified, the backup destination path is created for each profile, and crontab entries are setup for scheduled profiles.

--no-crontab

pw-cache¶

Control the Password Cache for non-interactive cronjobs.

[start|stop|restart|reload|status]