[rdiff-backup-users] Web Frontend ideas

[Bud P . Bruegger]

Ben,

here are some first ideas what I had in mind with the frontend.  

We consider using rdiff-backup for two purposes:

* backing up certain directories on linux servers
* giving normal (windows) users access to backing up their project directories. 
 

We started only with the first use and added the second since my customers like
rdiff-backup.

For the former case, cli and cron jobs are probably all it needs.  The idea of
the frontend came up when "normal" users entered the picture.  

We are thinking of a web frontend that is implemented using quixote/python.  

I looked into running an rdiff-backup server on windows machines -- but it
seemed an awful lot that needs to be installed for that (cygwin, openssh,
python, rdiff-backup).  If it turned out that this can be packaged and
installed easily, this would probably still be my first choice.  

As an alternative, we considered that for backup and restoring
(directories--single files are restored through a browser download) the backup
server mounts an smb share from the client (windows) machine.  Not good for
network traffic--but in our situation, this seems ok.  

In this scenario, the frontend should offer the following functionality:
(note that what is really needed still has to be decided on our end)

* triggering of backups
* investigating the history of backed up data
  - listing available versions (existing -l option)
  - listing changed files potentially:
    . between some point in time and the mirror version (your new patch)
    . between two points in time
    . in a given version
     files could be marked as new, modified, deleted, unchanged
  - possibly making diffs for text files (I'm almost convinced to avoid this)
* restore
  - single files through browser download
  - directory trees through smb mount
  - directory trees through remote riff-backup server (linux machines)

I'm now starting to think of how to oranize the backup space and access 
control.  

Anyhow, this should give you an overall idea of what I'm (hopefully--subject to
final go ahead) up to.  

best cheers
--bud