Mixtape Backup
Practical backups. The Unix toolkit way.
Features
Mixtape is aimed at replacing tar or rsync for general backups. It
automatically deduplicates and compresses files upon backup, making the
backup process fast and space-efficient.
Mixtape is written in Bash, using the standard GNU/Linux toolkit (tar,
awk, grep, sort, etc). This means that you can easily check, inspect
or extract data from the backups using the tools already on your system.
See the full list of features for reasons to use or avoid Mixtape for your backups.
Usage
Mixtape is provided as a set of command-line tools:
| Command | Description |
|---|---|
| mixtape-backup | Stores files into the backup |
| mixtape-gc | Removes expired backups |
| mixtape-list | Lists backups and content |
| mixtape-restore | Restores files from the backup |
| mixtape-search | Searches for matching files |
| mixtape-status | Prints a backup status summary |
Please check the backup storage structure documentation to better understand the terminology and file structure.
Requirements
- GNU Bash (4.2 or higher)
- XZ Utils (5.2 or higher)
- GNU/Linux command-line environment (no BSD support yet)
Related Tools
Mixtape backups are stored to the local filesystem. For a complete solution, the backup directory should be cloned to another server or to cloud storage (preferably as an encrypted copy). Here are some useful tools:
- Rclone - rclone.org
- Rsync - rsync.samba.org
Alternative deduplicating backup tools exist aplenty today. At the time of writing, here are some of the most promising (in no particular order):
- Duplicity — duplicity.nongnu.org
- Borg Backup — borgbackup.readthedocs.io
- ZBackup — zbackup.org
- BUP — bup.github.io
- rdedup — github.com/dpc/rdedup
You should probably give one or more of the above a try before using Mixtape.