On Tuesday 20 May 2008 10:45:42 Mark Rogers wrote:
If I "only" lost the files that my user account has write access to, then I would be very upset and would be no worse off than facing a bare-metal re-install.
Yes, executables and libraries are easily recoverable from installation media/network repositories. Losing customised configuration files (from /etc etc.) would be slightly annoying.
Maybe consumer distros like Ubuntu, when faced with a big hard disk to install on, should default to creating a large backup partition onto which /home is backed up regularly in the background (by root, so the backups can't be deleted by a user level program). Sure, allow it to be turned off, but as a default that would be very good in my view, and a better use of background CPU than search indexing or anti-virus scanning.
There is Mondo http://www.mondorescue.org/ which is in Debian (and Ubuntu universe). It creates backups as bootable images and can store them on various media including HD partitions. A cron job running its archive tool would be feasible (though note: http://www.mondorescue.org/docs/mondorescue-howto.html#BACKUP-CRON-PROBLEM). Ubuntu could be set up with such a cron job, a spare HD partition for the Mondo image, and a GRUB boot option for booting from it. Maybe it would also need a GTK config tool. I wonder how well it would handle things like efficiency (maybe it could be incremental?) and interruptions (user switches his computer off while it's backing up because he neither knows nor cares).
Cheers, Richard