Comment by brianwski | Hacker News Reader

Comment by brianwski | Hacker News Reader

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We would like to, we just haven't had time to get it done yet. It runs internally, but is lacking an installer and a GUI, and we would need to prioritize and choose one or more Linux distributions to launch with. Ubuntu is an obvious choice (we focus more on desktop backup than on servers). But some people also ask for CentOS and a few others. It bums me out the Linux community has not solved binary compatibility anywhere NEAR the same level that Microsoft or Apple has, and few in the Linux community seem interested in solving this issue which massively, MASSIVELY hinders development and deployment, but that is a side tangent...

Explanation about the "GUI" comment above -> the Backblaze backup client was simultaneously written from the ground up compiling on Mac OS, Windows, and Linux. The same tree and the same source compiles on all three on EVERY SVN CHECKIN. There is one exception, which is the GUI is an extremely simple stand alone process entirely natively written to match the host OS. On Mac OS it is in Objective C in the beautiful Apple GUI layout editor, on Windows we use Visual Studio and C++ and Win32. The firm rule is these GUIs are ONLY allowed to edit one or two simple XML files, and all the real encryption, compression, transmission is done by other cross platform processes. On Linux we configure the XML file with "vi". :-) The X-Windows GUI has not even been started.

As a linux user I wouldn't mind having to edit files by hand.

XML is a pain, but holding up release due to lack of a gui is sorta silly. Plus I imagine, like me, most multi-server users would be rolling out a standard xml config anyway without more than a simple string substitution on a per server basis.

In fact, the only GUI I have running is on my desktop.

I don't know how many other folks feel this way, but I would kill for a GUI-less version of your client. I'd love to configure XML files, or some (any!) analog.

I've been looking for an off-site backup solution for a (nerdy and technically competent) home user for years, and yours is the only one that I could afford (poor recent BA here).

Please?! I would pay $10 a month (probably more, really) for that. Even if you don't want to support it, could you do it just for me? It'll be our little secret!

It sounds like those XML files are already there when you install the windows or mac version. Why don't you just open them up and edit them by hand?

Honestly, the XML files are pretty simple. The one main one the GUI writes out is called bzinfo.xml and is found on any Mac system at /Library/Backblaze/bzdata/bzinfo.xml and on any Windows Vista or later system at C:\ProgramData\Backblaze\bzdata\bzinfo.xml

Backblaze is designed to be used with absolutely no configuration (for many users they have no idea where their Outlook.pst file is and we don't think they should have to know), and the only way we could figure out how to make this work was to backup EVERYTHING on your system unless you explicitly exclude it. So bzinfo.xml is basically a flat list of excluded folders you do not want backed up. There is also a throttle in there if you don't want Backblaze to utterly destroy your network uplink, and a few other small settings. It's pretty straightforward.

With that said, we really pride ourselves on easy to use software, so it goes against everything in our DNA to release software with NO GUI at all, but maybe we'll give that a serious thought. If you are using Linux, you probably aren't the average Mom & Pop user. :-)

To a linux user, editing an xml file is easy to use. And since it's a pretty reasonable default to backup /home, you're likely to be pretty safe with defaults anyway.

Call it alpha, see how much demand there is, and the extra money you bring in might be the motivation to finish up the pretty. :)

we really pride ourselves on easy to use software, so it goes against everything in our DNA to release software with NO GUI at all, but maybe we'll give that a serious thought. If you are using Linux, you probably aren't the average Mom & Pop user. :-)

I just want to join others asking here for a Linux version. Please do release whatever you have. And actually I would prefer a command line tool, so I can use it in my cron.

I think you probably overestimate how much linux users would care about having a GUI. You should ship what you've got.

But even for editing text files you still need - maybe not a GUI, but a layer that checks the file format, gives meaningful error messages on where a syntax error is and why, etc. It's not quite the same amount of work as writing a GUI maybe, and I would also argue that you need this anyway, even when you have a GUI; but I used to think the same until I wrote a few tools that I was going to 'slap a GUI on later' and found that writing/maintaining a command line application also takes time; it's not just a few lines of code that you put before the library that's behind it.

If you provided a good solution for taking backups on Linux-system my guess is that you would get a lot of customers like me. If I could easily apt-get some binaries, setup what folders should be backed up and run backups every X-hour it would be a killer feature. Right now I manage a ton of rdiff-scripts to backup to all my files to remote locations.

I like the way CrashPlan works. I use it to back up both Windows and Solaris. The GUI is Java, but I only run it on Windows; the GUI communicates over TCP to the Solaris machine. This seems to me the best compromise.

Similarly, the CrashPlan service itself is written in Java and for binary compatibility, only relies on a little binary library loaded via JNI to accommodate the differences between Linux and Solaris, not to mention Windows and Mac. It doesn't even support Nexenta (OpenSolaris kernel + Debian userland) directly out of the box, but I was able to hand-combine the bits from Linux and Solaris installs to get something working: the moral being, for OSes targeted towards more technically adept users, you may not need as much work as you think, if your app is self-contained enough.

(Backblaze founder speaking here) - I have always liked the CrashPlan company and they seem like a smart focused team with a solid product. And I've heard other reports that CrashPlan works well on Linux, so people should definitely check them out and give them a fair try.

Any chance of releasing the XML file specs so someone in the community can write an OSS GUI?

See my other post on this. It is extremely simple XML anybody would understand instantly. In fact, some people have already scripted changes to the XML files running on Mac to increase the "throttle" at night and decrease the "throttle" during the day. We'll be giving the Linux client some more thought over the next few days.

Thanks!

For anyone wondering, I just did this on OS X to adjust the throttle overnight:

  > crontab -l
  0  1 * * * sed -E -i .bak 's/net_throttle="[0-9]+"/net_throttle="100"/' /Library/Backblaze/bzdata/bzinfo.xml
  0 10 * * * sed -E -i .bak 's/net_throttle="[0-9]+"/net_throttle="40"/'  /Library/Backblaze/bzdata/bzinfo.xml

Hey Brian, thank you for explaining the reasons of why the Linux version hasn't seen the light yet, I have been keeping an eye on Backblaze since this blog entry you wrote http://blog.backblaze.com/2008/12/15/10-rules-for-how-to-wri..., quite a while now, and it sucks that there's still no Linux version available, so as others have mention please consider releasing something.

PS: I'm already one of your costumers and I'd love to be able to use your service in my linux machines.

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