conserve 0.6.10

A robust backup tool.
Documentation 
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54
55
56
57
58
59
60
61
62
63
64
65
66
67
68
69
70
71
72
73
74
75
76
77
78
79
80
81
82
83
84
85
86
87
88
89
90
91
92
93
94
95
96
97
98
99
100
101
102
103
104
105
106
107
108
109
110
111
112
113
114
115
116
117
118
119
120
121
122
123
124
125
126
127
128
129
130
131
132
133
134
135
136
137
138
139
140
141
142
143
144
145
146
147
148
149
150
151
152
153
154
155
156
157
158
159
160
161
162
163
164
165
166
167
168
169
170
171
172
173
174
175
176
177
178
179
180
181
182
183
184
185
186
187
188
189

# Conserve: a robust backup program

<https://github.com/sourcefrog/conserve/>

[![Rust](https://github.com/sourcefrog/conserve/workflows/Rust/badge.svg?branch=master)](https://github.com/sourcefrog/conserve/actions?query=workflow%3ARust)
[![Windows build status](https://ci.appveyor.com/api/projects/status/uw61cgrek8ykfi7g?svg=true)](https://ci.appveyor.com/project/sourcefrog/conserve)
[![crates.io](https://img.shields.io/crates/v/conserve.svg)](https://crates.io/crates/conserve)
![Maturity: Beta](https://img.shields.io/badge/maturity-beta-yellow.svg)

<!-- [![Join the chat at https://gitter.im/sourcefrog/conserve](https://badges.gitter.im/Join%20Chat.svg)](https://gitter.im/sourcefrog/conserve?utm_source=badge&utm_medium=badge&utm_campaign=pr-badge&utm_content=badge) -->

Conserve's [guiding principles](doc/manifesto.md):

- **Safe**: Conserve is written in [Rust][rust], a fast systems programming
  language with compile-time guarantees about types, memory safety, and
  concurrency. Conserve uses a
  [conservative log-structured format](doc/format.md).

- **Robust**: If one file is corrupted in storage or due to a bug in Conserve,
  or if the backup is interrupted, you can still restore what was written.
  (Conserve doesn't need a large transaction to complete for data to be
  accessible.)

- **Careful**: Backup data files are never touched or altered after they're
  written, unless you choose to purge them.

- **When you need help now**: Restoring a subset of a large backup is fast,
  because it doesn't require reading the whole backup.

- **Always making progress**: Even if the backup process or its network
  connection is repeatedly killed, Conserve can quickly pick up where it left
  off and make forward progress.

- **Ready for today**: The storage format is fast and reliable on on
  high-latency, limited-capability, unlimited-capacity, eventually-consistent
  cloud object storage.

- **Fast**: Conserve exploits Rust's _fearless concurrency_ to make full use of
  multiple cores and IO bandwidth. (In the current release there's still room to
  add more concurrency.)

- **Portable**: Conserve is tested on Windows, Linux (x86 and ARM), and OS X.

## Quick start guide

Conserve storage is within an _archive_ directory created by `conserve init`:

    conserve init /backup/home.cons

`conserve backup` copies a source directory into a new _version_ within the
archive. Conserve copies files, directories, and (on Unix) symlinks. If the
`conserve backup` command completes successfully (copying the whole source
tree), the backup is considered _complete_.

    conserve backup /backup/home.cons ~

`conserve versions` lists the versions in an archive, whether or not the backup
is _complete_, the time at which the backup started, and the time taken to
complete it. Each version is identified by a name starting with `b`.

    $ conserve versions /backup/home.cons
    b0000                      complete   2016-11-19T07:30:09+11:00     71s
    b0001                      incomplete 2016-11-20T06:26:46+11:00
    b0002                      incomplete 2016-11-20T06:30:45+11:00
    b0003                      complete   2016-11-20T06:42:13+11:00    286s
    b0004                      complete   2016-12-01T07:08:48+11:00     84s
    b0005                      complete   2016-12-18T02:43:59+11:00      4s

`conserve ls` shows all the files in a particular version. Like all commands
that read a band from an archive, it operates on the most recent by default, and
you can specify a different version using `-b`. (You can also omit leading zeros
from the backup version.)

    $ conserve ls -b b0 /backup/home.cons | less

`conserve restore` copies a version back out of an archive:

    $ conserve restore /backup/home.cons /tmp/trial-restore

`conserve validate` checks the integrity of an archive:

    $ conserve validate /backup/home.cons

## Exclusions

The `--exclude GLOB` option can be given to commands that operate on files,
including `backup`, `restore`, `ls` and `list-source`.

A `/` at the start of the exclusion pattern anchors it to the top of the backup
tree (not the root of the filesystem.) `**` recursively matches any number of
directories.

At the moment exclusion patterns must always start from the root, so you need
`**/*.swp` to exclude `.swp` files anywhere in the tree.

The syntax is comes from the Rust
[globset](https://docs.rs/globset/0.2.1/globset/#syntax) crate.

## Install

To build Conserve you need [Rust][rust] and a C compiler that can be used by
Rust.

To install the most recent release from crates.io, run

    cargo install conserve

To install from a git checkout, run

    cargo install -f --path .

[rust]: https://rustup.rs/
[sourcefrog]: http://sourcefrog.net/

On nightly Rust only, you can enable a potential speed-up to the blake2 hashes
with

    cargo +nightly install -f --path . --features blake2_simd_asm

### Arch Linux

To install from from available
[AUR packages](https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/?O=0&SeB=nd&K=Robust+portable+backup+tool+written&outdated=&SB=n&SO=a&PP=50&do_Search=Go),
use an [AUR helper](https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/AUR_helpers):

    yay -S conserve

## More documentation

- [A comparison to other backup systems][comparison]

[comparison]: https://github.com/sourcefrog/conserve/wiki/Compared-to-others

- [Software and format versioning](doc/versioning.md)

- [Archive format](doc/format.md)

- [Design](doc/design.md)

- [Release notes](NEWS.md)

## Limitations

Conserve can reasonably be used for backups today: the format is stable, in my
use it's reliable, and the basic features are complete.

Be aware that Conserve is developed as a part-time non-commercial project and
there's no guarantee of support.

Some other limitations:

- `conserve diff` exists, [but is not yet very useful][21].
- [Permissions and ownership are not stored](https://github.com/sourcefrog/conserve/issues/46).

For more future features, see
<https://github.com/sourcefrog/conserve/wiki/Ideas>.

Prior to 1.0, data formats may change on each minor version number change (0.x):
you should restore using the same version that you used to make the backup.

[5]: https://github.com/sourcefrog/conserve/issues/5
[8]: https://github.com/sourcefrog/conserve/issues/8
[21]: https://github.com/sourcefrog/conserve/issues/21
[32]: https://github.com/sourcefrog/conserve/issues/32
[41]: https://github.com/sourcefrog/conserve/issues/41
[42]: https://github.com/sourcefrog/conserve/issues/42
[43]: https://github.com/sourcefrog/conserve/issues/43

For a longer list see the [issue tracker][issues] and [milestones][milestones].

[issues]: https://github.com/sourcefrog/conserve/issues
[milestones]: https://github.com/sourcefrog/conserve/milestones

Windows Defender and Windows Search Indexing can slow the system down severely
when Conserve is making a backup. I recommend you exclude the backup directory
from both systems.

## Licence and non-warranty

Copyright 2012-2020 [Martin Pool][sourcefrog], mbp@sourcefrog.net.

This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under
the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software
Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or (at your option) any later
version.

This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY
WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A
PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details.