© 2004
Canonical Ltd.
•
Terms of use
•
Data privacy
•
Contact Launchpad Support
•
Blog
•
Careers
•
System status
•
bbfa235
demo site
(Get the code!)
I think the point with Deja Dup is to be simple and have such defaults, that users very seldom need to change them. There is already the possibility for advanced users to run "deja-dup --backup" in the command line and schedule that command with some graphical cron tools if they wish.
Before making the Deja Dup GUI more complex, we should first think trough if deja-dup-monitor can be improved to solve the use cases presented here. NetworkZones mentioned by Terry could be useful, but they have been dropped for Gnome 3.3: https:/
Deja-dup-monitor could apply these rules to postpone backing up:
- CPU/mem/hd/network shows high load (comment #6)
- ACPI shows laptop is running on battery (comment #5)
However, we don't want to postpone backing up forever, so there the user should be shown notifications when a too long time since last backup has passed (comment #7), e.g. "Warning: Deja Dup is set to backup weekly. However the last successful backup was 9 days ago. Please leave the computer idle, power plugged in and networked so that the backup can be run." After this notification the deja-dup-monitor should obviously check with a higher density (every minute?) if there are conditions to backup. Also the notification could at first come once a day for a week, then three times a day for a week, then hourly etc..
Also, for advance users there should be a log available where we can check what deja-dup-monitor has done. The natural place for a log file would be under ~/.cache/deja-dup/ since that is also where other apps like gwibber, zeitgeist, ubuntuone and shotwell keep this kind of logs. In the log deja-dup-monitor should save at least all times a backup succeeded or failed, what time it was and how long it took to complete.
After this is implemented, the log could be used to make an more "intelligent" algorithm to schedule backups. For example, if the successful backups are really fast on evenings between 18-22 (indicating that the user is at home close to his NAS appliance), then deja-dup-monitor could favour that time. This last paragraph of course needs more design, maybe I'll write down some more ideas later.