How to Install Simple Backup Suite (SBackup) in Ubuntu?

In GNU/Linux, when it comes to backup your data there are two main methods. One is the oldest method of using command-line tools and scripts which is quite a hassle (although experts and administrators still prefer it) but if you're a newbie or even someone with a decent knowledge of GNU/Linux who's looking for an easy to use, yet a powerful backup tool, then after using for a while, I can say than in my experience that Simple Backup Suite (also known as Sbackup) is one of the best out there without a doubt!.

Sbackup is basically a collection of above mentioned command-line scripts/programs that comes with a integrated GUI (designed using GTK+ and written using Python) that lets us easily access those command-line tools with ease.

Main features...

Main Window...

*. Make automatic or manual backups.

*. Add compressions to your back-up data to save some space (although sometimes it might take few more minutes while restoring, depending on the compression level).

*. Restore backups pretty damn easily!.

*. Notification support - When you start a backup session it gives you update information via the notification demon.

*. Split backups.

*. Add or exclude certain files types or folders/partitions or files with certain size, etc. 

*. Change backup directory or upload directly to a remote location.

*. Delete older backups (manually or automatically).

*. Create logs.

*. Create profiles.

*. Save backup jobs and reload them later... are just a few of its awesome features to mention!.

Since it's in the Ubuntu's official repositories, you can install SBackup in Ubuntu 11.04 Natty Narwhal, 10.10 and 10.04 by using the below command in your Terminal window.

sudo apt-get install sbackup

How can I make a backup with it?

Although I wouldn't go into all the details but say that all you want is a simple back-up of your "Home" folder then let's use the awesome Sbackup ;-) to get it done in minutes.

1. After installing, press "Alt" + "F2" keys on your keyboard and put the below command to start its GUI.

sbackup

2. Now since we only want the data on our "Home", we have to remove/exclude 2 or 3 other locations that Sbackup add automatically.

1

2

From it's Tabs, choose: "Include" and from that window simple choose the folder that you don't want and click on the "remove" button at the bottom of the window until the "Home" is the only one left in the list as shown in the above screenshot.

3. Now say that you have individual file-types that you'd like to skip. For instance let's say that you have like 100 video files with ".avi" extension that you'd like to skip, then click on the "Exclude" tab and from its window click on the "File types" and then make sure the "AVI Video" is on the list.

 
You can also exclude any file type you want and if your file type is not listed, then you can click on the "Add" button and manually assign your own file type to add to the exclude list using its extension.

Add extensions manually with ease...

4. Now click on the "Destination" tab and from its window you can set the output location or the backup save folder wherever you want (as a general rule, it's always best to not to choose the folder/destination that you're gonna make the backup, for instance, since we're backing up the "Home" folder, then don't choose "Home" as your save-location).

For this example I'm gonna use the default location which is "var/backup".

5. By default it's set to make daily backups and to delete backups that are older than 30 days... personally I'll manually override the "daily backup" to "No schedule backups" and disable the manual deletion as well (but that's just me and according to your needs you can change these settings).

6. Check everything just to make sure and when done, hit the "make a backup now" button OR from the menu choose: "Tools" -> "Make a backup now".

When the data backup process is taking place you'll be able to click on the Sbackup's notification icon which displays things like the current percentage of the process, size of the backup, cancel the process, etc as shown in the below screenshot.

And when it's done backing up your data, you'll see a message saying the backup was successfully finished.

Restoring your backups...

For restoring the backups, Sbackup has a separate tool that has to be launched by pressing "Alt" + "F2" keys (as above) and insert the below command into the box and press "Run".

sbackup-restore

1. Now from the window that you get, simply open your backup location and click on the "Apply" button. The rest will be taken care of (yikes! :D).

Well that's about it actually. And as a final note, although I'm not a frequent data backup dude but certainly Simple Backup Suite is one of the best backup software under Ubuntu that I've ever used.

But to be fair (oh oh ;-) ) there is a slight disappointment however, SBackup does not allow us to encrypt the data, otherwise, it's just about perfect.