Areca: Linux desktop backups made easy

There are some desktop backup tools available for Linux, but most of them are not developed anymore. Areca however is under constant development and also provides a user friendly GUI.

Backups and Linux are a twofold thing: if you have hundreds or thousands of computers backups are not a problem at all: Amanda, Bacula, Restore and others are your friends. Also, if you want to create backups on single machines, there are many tools available: rsync, tar, and many, many more.
However, all these solutions are not suitable for the average user.

In the last years several projects were started to provide user friendly solutions for the backup of Linux desktop machines. A year ago I already reported about SBackup. Also, the Ubuntu team developed the solution TimeVault and last but not least there is flyback which I used for several months to keep a backup of my thesis. But despite their advantages they all suffer from stalled development: all mentioned projects are effectively dead at the moment.

There is only one exception: the little known Areca. This in Java programmed backup solution provides a user friendly GUI and is even suited for desktop users who have a quite complex idea of backup systems.

Despite some current bugs (it chokes on large numbers of files, you have to use several backup rules in such cases) and some shortcomings (the file choose dialog only allows to mark one single file each time) the program has matured over the time and can easily be used in a productive environment. Besides the usual backup/restore it also features statistics, the ability of merging backups, different backup profiles, encryption and other gimmicks. But be sure to quickly read through the documentation so that you understand what backup groups and backup targets are before you start!

The only problem I now have is that it is not packed for Fedora - or any other bigger distribution besides Ubuntu. The download section provides pre-compiled tar.gz packages, however I would prefer a rpm I could automatically fetch with yum.

VirtualBox 1.6: new features

VirtualBox has released the newest version of its virtual machine software. Among the features is seamless window support for Linux guests and MacOS and Solaris host support.

The new version is the first majoer release of VirtualBox since the company behind, Innotek, was acquired by SUN. And this release comes along with a set of new features:

• Solaris and Mac OS X host support
• Seamless windowing for Linux and Solaris guests
• Guest Additions for Solaris
• A webservice API
• SATA hard disk (AHCI) controller
• Experimental Physical Address Extension (PAE) support
• GUI: added accessibility support (50
• VMM: many fixes for VT-x/SVM hardware-supported virtualization
• Linux installer: support DKMS for compiling the kernel module
• Linux additions: several fixes, experimental support for RandR 1.2
• Linux host: compatibility fixes with Linux 2.6.25

The changelog lists numerous additional changes. Among them are notes that the general system has been improved speed and power wise. This is reflected by a new file format: after the update VirtualBox asks to update the file system from linux-1.2 to linux-1.3.
Additionally the download section now has precompiled binaries for more distribution versions. There are even rpms available for the fugure Fedora 9.

The new release is again an evolutionary improvement which again introduces a set of new supported machines. The new ownvership of SUN can only be seen by numerous improvements in the Solaris support. Otherwise, the development of VirtualBox seems to be just like usual: evolving, stable but always with a set of new features.

Using Dell’s D/Dock docking station with Linux

Dell is shipping docking stations for it’s Latitude Laptops. I’ve tested a D/Dock and it does work with Linux. The only real problems have their roots in Linux’ shortcomings.

My new laptop has docking station support, and since these docking stations can be bought second hand at very reasonable prices I got myself a D/Dock.

It worked out of the box: the laptop, plugged to the docking station, just works. External devices connected via USB or the external monitor also work as they would be plugged directly to the laptop. I didn’t test the media bay, the DVI connector or the additional PCI slot, so I’m not sure if they would work. However, since there were no other problems I would at least be confident in trying these.

Hotplugging is also not an issue: the laptop can be plugged on or off the docking station while it is running. Of course, mounted USB devices connected to the docking stations should be unmounted before plugging off! But besides that there are no real problems.

The only real disadvantages of the docking station itself I was so far able to recognize are that it has too few USB ports and that it is a bit noisier than I would have expected.
There are just 3 USB slots at the back plus one at the side (which is a bit extended to work with Dell stuff, but still works as a normal USB slot), but I would have preferred to have at least 6. Mouse, keyboard, external hard disk, webcam, USB stick and a MP3 player are not uncommon devices these days.
The other problem is the noise of the docking station fan: while it is not really disturbing and far away from the fan of my former laptop it is at least noisier than the laptop’s fan. But since the docking station was quite cheap I might open it to check if I can do anything about it.

So basically everything works very well - however, there is one problem due to the shortcoming of Linux - or X to be more specific - itself: the external monitor is not detected and activated automatically. And the other way around, if the external monitor is activated alone and the laptop is unplugged, the laptop screen stays blank and there is no way to bring it back.
So the actual shortcoming is that, while the basic hotplugging support is available, there is too little automation there: X should make clear that at least one connected output device is active all the time! Also, there should be easy ways to define specific situations: if monitor xyz is connected, switch to xyz only, if monitor abc is connected, switch to abc and laptop monitor. The first one would be the external monitor of the docking station, the second one could be a projector.

But again, this is a problem due to Linux, not due to the docking station. I guess this will have to wait until the proprietary drivers deliver XRandR 1.2 support and until the distributions ship XRandR 1.2 GUIs at a larger scale and really implement these into the system. Fedora 9 will ship with a Gnome interface, and afaik KDE 4 has basic XRandR 1.2 support anyway. Still, I’m not aware of any demon like capabilities to enable automatic device selection as mentioned above…

Short Tip: Real web page zoom in KDE 4’s Konqueror

In Konqueror the font in web pages could always be increased directly by pressing Ctrl and move the mouse wheel. But since it just increased the font size, not the graphics size, and therefore destroyed the layout of the web pages totally.

With KDE 4 this behaviour has changed: the images are now zoomed as well, so the entire layout is kept and showed to the viewers as expected.

This is one of the smaller hints you do not know until someone tells you

KDE SOC projects published

The list of the Google Summer of Code projects for KDE was published. The list has several interesting entries to make the life for KDE users much easier.

The results for this year’s Google Summer of Code are out, and several KDE ideas were picked up.

Going through the list I found some items which immediately rouse my interest:

• Media Device Support in Amarok 2 with Collections - This will bring support for collections/playlists to different media devices.
• Amarok and UPnP - UPnP is used in today’s media streamers, and native support for it in Amarok would help integrating such media servers with KDE.
• Notes and Presenter View Support for KPresenter - All big proprietary solutions have such a presentation view and even OOo works at it. So developing one for KPResenter is just sensible to do.
• Easy monitor hot-plug support in KDE - The presentation view requires a second video output device, but to setup such is not easy on KDE - yet.
• Integrate Decibel into the KDE 4 environment - Decibel is so far in a basic shape, but not integrated with KDE atm: think of Plasma applets, KRunner support and similar “glue” to make communication on KDE possible everywhere.
• Jingle video and voice chat in Kopete. - I had great hopes for jingle, and for certain reasons I still think that it is essential to support it everywhere in the FLOSS world.
• KMail enhancements and porting to native Qt4 - KMail is one of the most important apps on the KDE desktop for many users. Therefore having a fully ported, well polished version of KMail is essential for a good user experience on KDE.
• Integration of the QtWebKit based KPart - It is helpful to switch between two engines without a big hassle to compare these or to use one engine when the other doesn’t work.
• Integration of WebKit SVG library with KHTML - Sharing code between KHTML and WebKit does make sense when it is productive and helps both. And that’s the aim of this project.
• StepGame: educational game based on Step - The Incredible Machine as a native KDE game would be awesome!

Of course this is just a small list of the accepted applications - and an accepted application doesn’t necessarily mean that the project will be a success. Additionally, this year the process around the applications and slots wasn’t perfect, but maybe the KDE e.V. can step up there to make the rejected projects possible nevertheless?
An idea would be to collect money through the KDE e.V. to sponsor other applicants, given that KDE finds their applications worth a try. I would be willing to donate some money for a stand-alone, KDE integrated browser based on WebKit, for general video input device support in Phonon or for a full featured Sonnet.