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Messages - apankrat [ switch to compact view ]

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126
Announce Your Software/Service/Product / Re: Bvckup
« on: March 17, 2011, 12:41 AM »
Please fix this.

Yup, will do, it is already on a list.

127
Announce Your Software/Service/Product / Re: Bvckup
« on: February 28, 2011, 07:56 PM »
Great feature list. And... great Blog ! (I told you that already in your forum, but it deserves to be said again. :))

The Pipelined IO is intriguing. I can't wait to test V2 (..snip..)

Me too... :D

BTW : does the File and directory move detection also mean... File and directory renaming detection?

Yes, it does. Modified the post to reflect that.

128
Announce Your Software/Service/Product / Re: Bvckup
« on: February 28, 2011, 06:57 PM »
Bump.

I have started the work on Version 2 of Bvckup. Please forward yourself to this post for the list of features (neatly arranged for your convenience into three piles from sysadmin-boring to nerdy-cool) - http://bvckup.com/blog/version-2-in-broad-strokes

Also, while I have you here, may I also persuade you to have a look at this marvelous blog footer? I (rather unwisely) spent almost 6 weeks of my time on it, but I think it's my best design work to date. Gotta learn the ropes, you know... pretty and functional beats just functional :)

In any case, if you guys have any thoughts on the feature set, nothing is set in stone just yet and I am all ears.

129
Announce Your Software/Service/Product / Re: Bvckup
« on: December 09, 2010, 11:46 AM »
> Web site page looks great too! On small laptop screen, maybe a bit wide...?

It's a bit wide, because it's an image :) The width of the central part is standard 960px.

> pretty normal for a sketch !

LOL. Welcome to the club :) There was an excellent practical joke when one would take a screenshot of a bare Windows desktop with a lone Minesweeper window on it, then set it as a wallpaper and observe the victim going nuts trying to close that window. Worked every time.

130
Announce Your Software/Service/Product / Re: Bvckup
« on: December 08, 2010, 07:19 PM »
If anyone's interested, here's a summary of changes for the next version (scheduled for Jan '11) -
http://www.bvckup.co...opic_show.pl?tid=157

Let me know if this works, if it doesn't... or if it doesn't matter :-)

131
Announce Your Software/Service/Product / Re: Bvckup
« on: October 31, 2010, 04:23 PM »
@Deozaan - Bvckup runs all its copying activity at lowered CPU priority, meaning that it yields to other programs that need CPU. The slowdown you saw most likely meant that Minecraft was saturating CPU on its own, so there was virtually no CPU time left for anything else. I am not familiar with SpiderOak, but Bvckup does need some CPU time to generate supporting data for servicing delta copying later on. I am also guessing that generating new world translates into creating large amount of data, which in turn means lots of things to copy during the initial backup. The incremental (delta) updates afterwards should be fairly painless as per your previous experience.

132
Announce Your Software/Service/Product / Re: Bvckup
« on: October 29, 2010, 12:29 AM »
Got some work done on further improving copying speed - both bulk and delta copying. Also added special handling of empty files (like locks, lingering temps and such) - speed improvement is 5-fold.

133
I ran some tests and I managed to get Bvckup's bulk copying performance on par with that of FastCopy, e.g. copying 500 meg file within the same SSD drive now runs in 10 seconds instead of 15 as before. Also improved the speed of copying empty files (oddly enough) by a factor of five. There is some really odd things that helps with improving OS cache behavior... like in one case setting SEQUENTIAL_SCAN flag when reading a source file improved the write speed of the destination file. Stay tuned for the next version, it's going to be a beauty :)

134
Announce Your Software/Service/Product / Re: Bvckup
« on: October 21, 2010, 01:52 PM »
Alright, so there appears to be a bug in filtering logic and I am going to track it down next.

There is a workaround for your case though and it is as simple as deleting the second filter, i.e. just keep the "exclude .bmx".

135
Announce Your Software/Service/Product / Re: Bvckup
« on: October 21, 2010, 12:42 AM »
Let me test this exact setup and get back to you tomorrow. Looks like a bug to me.

136
Mini-Reviews by Members / Re: Bvckup (Beta) :: A first look review.
« on: October 20, 2010, 01:54 AM »
If anyone's interested, we might have a start of an epic UI discussion over at the Support forums -
http://www.bvckup.co...ow.pl?tid=143#pid306

:-)

137
Mini-Reviews by Members / Re: Bvckup (Beta) :: A first look review.
« on: October 19, 2010, 12:31 PM »
@ldarrambide - you have a valid opinion indeed, no one is arguing with that. I explained my point of view of the same thing, which happens to be different, but that does not really constitute "fighting with the developer". Very far from it :)

138
Mini-Reviews by Members / Re: Bvckup (Beta) :: A first look review.
« on: October 19, 2010, 11:43 AM »
If you are set on using the same software to copy stuff back, you can always set another backup job with source and destination swapped. And that will be just as restorative as a dedicated restore function :)

I hear you, but hear me too... the restore functionality is needed in a fraction of percentage of all usage, and it is just a trivial file copy, so IMO making it a feature of a backup software makes latter look needlessly complicated. That is, of course, unless this is a system backup with boot sectors, MBRs and other specialized stuff that goes beyond simple file copying, then - yes, the restore function is fully justified.

139
Mini-Reviews by Members / Re: Bvckup (Beta) :: A first look review.
« on: October 19, 2010, 11:31 AM »
Bvckup can do manually initiated backups. Or scheduled ones. The continuous backup is just a default of these three options. When you are creating a new job, click on More and there'll be a section in the middle that control when the backup is run.

140
Announce Your Software/Service/Product / Re: Bvckup
« on: October 19, 2010, 09:55 AM »
@andhar - add an exclusion filter for .bmx and then add an inclusion filter for *.bmx after (below) it. Filters are scanned from top to the bottom and first one will match the folder, but not the files, and second will match the files only.

141
Mini-Reviews by Members / Re: Bvckup (Beta) :: A first look review.
« on: October 19, 2010, 01:07 AM »
^ Noted, thanks.

142
Announce Your Software/Service/Product / Re: Bvckup
« on: October 18, 2010, 07:37 PM »
I will do it... just need to figure out the UI bit.

143
Heh, this hits right at home. I've been denied a listing for my program on one of the download sites, because it did not have "enough features".

On Windows people actually do expect complex UI. If it's simple, they feel cheated. Likewise the website cannot be clean, it must have at least two feature lists, preferably a dozen items long, set in 7px font with half of words in bold and one third - in italic. That is obviously a true sign of the program that has so much to offer it is just bursting on the seams... That's the state of the affairs that leads to very specific if unfortunate expectations.

Keeping it simple is a major uphill battle. Ideal situation is where 37 signals are - they have the momentum, people come to them for the simplicity because they know that it actually works. That last part is what takes an effort - trying to convince average users that "less is more" and that they don't really need to 100s of configuration options to get the job done. Windows users that is, of course. On the Mac the situation is very different.

144
Announce Your Software/Service/Product / Re: Bvckup
« on: October 18, 2010, 12:41 PM »
@jaden - Ah, I see. I would rather not add this to this product, and here is why.
I wonder if I should trademark this ^ response ... :D ... I feel like I am going to be using it a lot in this thread.

@sajman99 - B-D-cup then... that should get them clicking on those ads... lol
Though you are totally right regarding the delta

@andhar - thanks, great to hear that

@ecaradec - thanks, and I would happily accept your money :)

145
Announce Your Software/Service/Product / Re: Bvckup
« on: October 18, 2010, 12:39 PM »
@Armando - I had a look at the renaming/moving thing. There are at least four ways it can be done.

One is with the file system driver that monitors all FS activity. This something that I can actually write, but would rather not to due to much increased support load. Also this will require admin privileges and may require reboots in some cases, again something that I'd like to avoid.

Second is to hook either the Windows Explorer (apparently it implements some sort of move/rename notification/vetoing mechanism) or to hook the Win32 API through injection. I personally get willies even thinking of integrating with Windows Explorer. The API hooking is interesting, but it is prone to the same set of support problems as the first option.

Third is to simply look at the timestamps and sizes and see if any of the disappeared files have reappeared elsewhere under a different name. This will obviously not work if the file is not only moved, but also modified between the backups.

Fourth is the same but to also account for the file contents through hashing. This is similar to what delta copying does, and it would mean scanning and re-hashing the candidate (new) file to determine if it's a match to a disappeared one.

Based on the numbers you posted, other backup programs are likely to be doing either #1 or #3. SyncToy documentation mentions in passing their use of SHA1 hashes, but I can't really see how they can re-hash a large file in mere milliseconds, so they must in the end be doing #3 as well.

I will try and put together a version that implements rename/move detection, but it might take me a week or so to do that. Stay tuned :)

146
Mini-Reviews by Members / Re: Bvckup (Beta) :: A first look review.
« on: October 17, 2010, 10:20 PM »
Stephen, appreciate the review, thanks.

147
Announce Your Software/Service/Product / Re: Bvckup
« on: October 16, 2010, 04:45 PM »
I have just noticed on the website, that there is an inactive "Purchase Now" button.

Just click on it... or follow this link - http://bvckup.com/perks - and note the paragraph at the bottom :)

148
Announce Your Software/Service/Product / Re: Bvckup
« on: October 16, 2010, 03:27 AM »
If anyone's interested, I have reworked the opening post of this thread into a Tell Me More page on the program's website. Had to tone it down a bit though...

149
Announce Your Software/Service/Product / Re: Bvckup
« on: October 16, 2010, 02:12 AM »
(1) Files in the crc-* folders are the delta copying hashes. If these are deleted, then Bvckup will rebuild them the next time respective file will require copying (and it will copy the file in full). If you don't want these files to be created at all, switch from delta to full copying in backup job's

   Properties => Backup What section => Change Details => Copy What.

The .dat files hold the last seen state of the source directory files - file names, timestamps and sizes. If these are deleted,
Bvckup will copy all files the next time backup is run regardless of the setting in

   Properties => Backup What section => Change Details => What Is Considered Modified

The .ini files are the backup configs. Bvckup does not use any, but one registry entry and keeps all its configuration data in the disk files. So, no, you cannot completely opt-out of using config files, but you can however move them into another directory and tell Bvckup to load them from that directory by using "-c <path_to_config_folder>" command line option.

(2) If you mean bit-by-bit comparison, then - yes, I considered it and just couldn't see it being a popular option to justify the inclusion. Also, considering that delta copying essentially does the same, but at the block level, it seemed a bit redundant.

I am open to be convinced otherwise though :)

150
Announce Your Software/Service/Product / Re: Bvckup
« on: October 15, 2010, 08:47 PM »
@Deozaan - the scrolling bug - I can reproduce it, but it appears to be a quirk of a standard RichEdit control. Should be easy to fix, thanks for the report. Hamachi + Diabolo --- lol, yeah, that was one hell of a combo :)

----

@MerleOne - with regards to backing up into an archive file - I am very reluctant to add this. Another person asked for a similar feature over an email, let me just copy-paste my reply here:

It is indeed a nice feature, and you are not the first one to ask for it. I can see how it can be useful and how it is related to what the program does at the moment. However it complicates the program. Not in terms of complexity of the code, or even the complexity of the UI. It's all about making the software that does just one thing and does it really well. Right now it is very easy to explain what the program does - it makes a copy of a folder. Once advanced options are added, like the one you are suggested, the program starts to turn into a Swiss Army Knife. Its scope blurs, it becomes harder to understand what it is for exactly. It sure becomes more featureful and could potentially accommodate the needs of a wider variety of users, but at the same time it will become less and less appealing to those who just need to just copy a folder. In the end by adding a feature the program may gain less users than it would loose - loosing those who view major unwanted features as a bloat or unneeded complexity.
 
One option would be to make another, separate program that would backup into the compressed archived. And do only that.


With regards to the "can't set ownership on dest files" issue - I saw this before, and it was triggered by a file being initially copied from another machine or created by another user. So bvckup ended up making a copy of the file not owned by the user whose account it was running under. The first copy would succeed, and the second copy will fail, because the destination machine will (quite reasonably) refuse bvckup full access to the file owner by another user.

I was wrecking my head on how to properly handle this setup, and I think the most sensible thing to do is to detect files that are NOT owned by current user and make Bvckup ask the user if it should copy the ownership information...

--

On editing filters - http://www.bvckup.com/support/forums/topic_show.pl?pid=265
On backslash - it's not needed

----

@jaden - thanks for the kind words, appreciate them.

"Across remote machines" - do you mean that you would have a UI here, but the actual backup process will run over there? If so, then this is very closely related to running Bvckup as a service. Latter requires splitting Bvckup into the UI process and the engine process (service), and making them talk to each other. Once the split is done (the hardest part), they can technically talk to each other over a TCP connection, so it should be simple to run the UI on a separate box.

However, see the quote in my reply to MerleOne above. There is a principal matter of needlessly complicating the program to make it do something that is useful to a fraction of its user base.

--

With regards to the portable version - yep, as Perry said, it can run without being installed. It can even update itself when run that way. And here is the .zip and here is the thread on the subject :)

----

@Nod5 - I have no idea :) B-vee-kup sounds about right.

----

@Armando - rename/move detection is on my ToDo list, it has been suggested before and I think it's a great feature to have. I will see what I can do... perhaps over the weekend ;)

With regards to further improving speed - there is a number of things that bvckup doesn't currently do, and that I am going to tackle in a bit. Specifically, the bypass of OS cache, using one IO thread per device, etc. That's why it is still in beta.

----

Stephen66515 - Same here, using it mostly for in-LAN chat and RD'ing to my wifey's laptop :) The last thing I wrote for Hamachi was the engine (service) part of the 2.0 client, it was around 2 years ago. The guys who took over are really good, one of the best devs I ever worked with. They took out my easter egg from the About dialog box though... :-|

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