Let’s enumerate its features as of version 1.3.0:

• Server mode runs on Unix-based systems.
• Client mode runs on Windows and Unix-based systems.
• Windows Volume Shadow Copy Service (VSS) support (Windows XP R2 and newer).
• Windows 32bit and 64bit support.
• Delta differencing with librsync.
• Network backups.
• Backs up and restores files, directories, symlinks, hardlinks, fifos and nodes.
• Storage and network compression using zlib.
• Ability to continue interrupted backups.
• Client/server communications encryption with SSL.
• Client side file encryption – (note: this turns off delta differencing).
• Scheduling.
• Email backup success/failure notifications.
• A single daily backup summary email.
• A live ncurses monitor on the server.
• Fifo read/write support.
• Pre/post backup/restore client scripts.
• Backups of Solaris ZFS snapshot send/receives.
• Linux and FreeBSD acl/xattr support.
• Multiple retention periods (e.g, keep 1 backup per day for 7 days, 1 backup per week for 4 weeks, 1 backup per 4 weeks for a year).
• Network rate limiting.
• Storage data deduplication.
• Automatic client upgrade.

Sounds good and this project is only 1 year old!

Author claims that setup is much easier than with Bacula. Let’s find out is that truth

Since we’ve got this software in Debian installing it on unstable is as simple as `apt-get install burp`.
Both client and server came from the same binary package.

Now let’s configure server side. Well… in fact we just have to run it, so just change RUN=no to RUN=yes in /etc/default/burp and launch it using `/etc/init.d/burp start`.

Now the client side. If the client is on the same machine then… you’re ready. Yes you’re ready!

Let’s do our first backup:

backup ~ # burp -a b
2012-02-22 17:53:03: burp[30584] Listing configured paths:
2012-02-22 17:53:03: burp[30584] include: /home
2012-02-22 17:53:03: burp[30584] Listing starting paths:
2012-02-22 17:53:03: burp[30584] /home
2012-02-22 17:53:03: burp[30584] before client
2012-02-22 17:53:03: burp[30584] begin client
2012-02-22 17:53:03: burp[30584] auth ok
2012-02-22 17:53:03: burp[30584] Compression level: 9
2012-02-22 17:53:03: burp[30584] do backup client
2012-02-22 17:53:03: burp[30584] Phase 1 begin (file system scan)
 
ddwdffffddffdfdfdddfffffdddfffffffdfffdfdfffffdfdfdffdddddfffddff 64
[...a lot of output...]
 
2012-02-22 17:53:03: burp[30584] Phase 1 end (file system scan)
2012-02-22 17:53:03: burp[30584] Phase 2 begin (send file data)
 
ffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffff 64
[...a lot of output...]
 
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Start time: 2012-02-22 17:53:03
  End time: 2012-02-22 17:53:07
Time taken: 00:04
                             New   Changed Unchanged     Total |  Scanned
                       --------------------------------------------------
                Files:       100         0         -       100 |      100
          Directories:         -         -         -         - |       76
           Soft links:         -         -         -         - |        1
          Grand total:       100         0         -       100 |      177
                       --------------------------------------------------
 
             Warnings:             1
 
      Bytes estimated:      17628946 (16.81 MB)
      Bytes in backup:      17628946 (16.81 MB)
       Bytes received:             0
           Bytes sent:      17628946 (16.81 MB)
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
2012-02-22 17:53:07: burp[30584] Phase 2 end (send file data)
2012-02-22 17:53:07: burp[30584] backup finished ok
2012-02-22 17:53:07: burp[30584] after client
backup ~ #

Yes. By default it is so extremely simple!

Of course this way we can make backup of /home (that’s default) to /var/spool/burp (also default location) but you can easily change this.
For the simplest scenario (backing up laptop to remote server) all I had to change was “server = 127.0.0.1″ in /etc/burp/burp.conf on the client side.

Burp comes with handy tool called burp_ca and it simplifies setting up encrypted backups. In fact there is step by step howto in documentation.
Other options are quite self explanatory and well documented in both client and server config files that came with the package.

Happy backuping!

It downloads and apply Bluetooth patch, RC6 patch, Sentelic drivers, fixes DSDT table, and helps doing compilation of all of that.

Hope it’s going to be helpful for someone.

Here it goes. Should work on most Debian based distros, but as usual. There is NO warranty

Happily there’s chance that this patch is going to be included in 3.3.x mainline kernel.

Beware that i915.i915_enable_rc6=1 kernel option means something different with patched and vanilla kernel.

Just start from scratch and package it again. It’s easier than fixing all lintian warnings and apply its suggestions.

Caution marked red at the beginning of this article is the way I bricked my laptop.

Maybe they should change the name of that option from EasyFlash to EasyBrick.

Tell me if I should upgrade it or not…

Let’s see how many sudden shutdowns will be on that kernel

Of course you have to change every occurence of linux-3.2.4 to whichever version you’re going to install.
Just make sure that all commands are entered in the correct directories, prompts should look similar to these from examples.
You will need about 10GB of free disk space.

Let’s install some dependencies first:

fenio@zenbook ~ $ sudo apt-get install build-essential kernel-package fakeroot libncurses5-dev git iasl

Now let’s download and unpack the latest kernel (3.2.4 at the time it was written):

fenio@zenbook ~ $ mkdir kernel
fenio@zenbook ~ $ cd kernel
fenio@zenbook ~/kernel $ wget http://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/v3.0/linux-3.2.4.tar.bz2
fenio@zenbook ~/kernel $ tar jxvf linux-3.2.4.tar.bz2

Now we take current kernel configuration and put in the kernel tree:

fenio@zenbook ~/kernel $ cp /boot/config-`uname -r` linux-3.2.4/.config

Now we have to download the latest driver for Sentelic touchpad (this is why we needed git as a dependency):

fenio@zenbook ~/kernel $ git clone git://github.com/saaros/sentelic.git
fenio@zenbook ~/kernel $ cp sentelic/src/sentelic.* linux-3.2.4/drivers/input/mouse/

It’s time to fix broken DSDT table (part of ACPI). This is why we had iasl in dependencies.

fenio@zenbook ~/kernel $ wget http://files.benesovi.eu/ux31e/ux31e_dsdt.dsl
fenio@zenbook ~/kernel $ iasl -tc ux31e_dsdt.dsl

And include it in our kernel configuration:

fenio@zenbook ~/kernel $ sed -ie 's/# CONFIG_ACPI_CUSTOM_DSDT is not set/CONFIG_ACPI_CUSTOM_DSDT=y/g' linux-3.2.4/.config 
fenio@zenbook ~/kernel $ sed -ie "s@CONFIG_ACPI_CUSTOM_DSDT_FILE.*@CONFIG_ACPI_CUSTOM_DSDT_FILE=\"`pwd`/ux31e_dsdt.hex\"@g" linux-3.2.4/.config

Now ensure that all our options are set up correctly (you can change some other options if you want).
If you don’t want to change anything then simply exit saving configuration.

fenio@zenbook ~/kernel $ cd linux-3.2.4/
fenio@zenbook ~/kernel/linux-3.2.4 $ make menuconfig

We’re ready to start compilation now!

fenio@zenbook ~/kernel/linux-3.2.4 $ fakeroot make-kpkg clean
fenio@zenbook ~/kernel/linux-3.2.4 $ fakeroot make-kpkg --jobs=4 --initrd --append-to-version=-fenio --revision=20120204 kernel_image kernel_headers modules_image

Of course you can change “append-to-version” option for something own.

In the meantime (kernel compilations takes about one hour) you can modify Grub options to enable powersaving features RC6:

fenio@zenbook ~ $ sudo sed -ie 's/GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX=.*/GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX="i915.powersave=1 i915.semaphores=1 i915.i915_enable_rc6=1"/g' /etc/default/grub

Be sure to do that before installation of kernel, otherwise you will have to run update-grub.

After compilation you can finally install your new kernel:

fenio@zenbook ~/kernel/linux-3.2.4 $ sudo dpkg -i ../*.deb

Reboot and you’re done!

Feel free to comment this tutorial if something went wrong.

Assuming you’re using recent kernel and usual hardware available on the market at that time.

Thank you for your attention.