
  Sitback - The SImple Tar BACKup Utility
  ---------------------------------------


    Sitback is actual just another tar/gzip interface. It evolved from
    a bash-script i wrote to handle automated backup's on linux fileservers.

    The script worked ok, but it soon proved difficult and tiresome to make local
    modifications to the script to handle various problems or differences.

    I began searching the web to find a suitable backup tool, and came up with
    some candidates. But they all did not do exactly what i wanted, f.ex.
    is it nice to get a printed report in the morning telling the staff that the
    backup is ok, since I certainly does not have the time to check the backup's
    regularly..

    In the end, i desided that 'homemade is wellmade' and began to put this little
    tool together..



    Tar has been, and is, one of the best archiving utility's around, at least on
    small scale systems (wich is what i work on), so i saw no reason to abandon tar.
    It is known to be stable and produce error-free archives, why should i then
    start all over and invent another file-storage protocol ??.



    Sitback is a kind of super-intelligent script that just need a few instructions
    to be able to compose a script that uses tar the right way...

    Sitback will take care of checking the files, verifying the archive, maintaining
    a little database, so that you, very quickly, can find out on wich tape a certain
    file is located, without using the tape..

    Sitback can run a single backup operation, or you can ask it to fork into the
    background and do automated backups (this is where the printed report is nice to
    have, 'no report...  or... report say's ERROR...  then call for support').



    So..  What is missing..

    Sitback is _not_ a network or distributed systems backup tool, although
    you may very well use nfs or smb shares mounted on your local VFS.
    (all file locations or devices that tar can see is usable)..

    Sitback does not know how to operate advanced backup hardware, such as
    multiple tape stations, cdrom or dvd writers (maybe sometime in the future).

    Sitback does not come with a graphic interface (yet..), but is supposed to
    run from the command-line or from your init script's.



    Why bother..

    Sitback saves you the time you would spend writing and
    tweaking a shell script. It simply gives you a simple way of doing automated backups.

    It helps you to keep track when you have different archives.

    It gives you the good performance of tar along with the well known stability,
    wich ensures that you do not get invalid archives...

    You dont depend on having sitback available to restore an archive.  You can
    bring the archive somewhere else and extract the files. Or you can extract
    the files on a complete newly installed system, f.ex. after a complete crash...
    No need to install extra tools to get access to your emergency backup. Just Tar.

    Sitback can help you doing trivial archiving on your local system, f.ex. daily
    or weekly backup to f.ex. zip disk's.



    In other words, consider sitback as a super-smart tar that takes care of
    things you else would have to code yourself.



    Not to forget, no man page exists for sitback (yet), please look at
    'manual.html' found in the 'sitback/html' sub-directory of the
    sources..



    And not least...   I use Kdevelop for my development work. Go ahead and
    try it out yourself, it is _the_ best IDE available for c/c++ programming..

    'http://www.kdevelop.org' is the place to go and pick it up....



    At the end, I might as well make sure my ass is covered...

    ------------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Whatever happens to your system, your data, you or your cat, mum, wife etc...
    YOU CAN NOT BLAME ME!!!..    Use sitback as you like, but dont come crying to
    me if something goes wrong..    Sitback is work in progress, but still, it
    handles your backup's, so if you make a mistake configuring sitback, has a
    crash and finds your tapes empty..  It is NOT my fault....
    ------------------------------------------------------------------------------


