btrbk-gui

Introduction

This is a simple GUI for btrbk showing an icon (to be precise: an app-indicator) that indicates the state of the backup:

• successful:
• running:
• error:

An optional window shows the date and time of the last successful backup and the log file of btrbk. It is written for Gnome using GTK and I've tested it on Ubuntu 20.04.

Motivation

My intention for writing this small tool is my experience with Time Machine for macOS. Btrfs and btrbk are great for backups but I missed a simple icon giving me some feedback about the state. I'm not sure if I will extend this tool in future with a lot of other features as this is more or less all I want.

Furthermore, I prefer old-school autotools and C++ so I use this for this tool.

Compile and Install

First install everything we need for compilation:

sudo apt install automake autoconf g++ make libgtkmm-3.0-dev libappindicator3-dev

Now generate files and compile:

aclocal && autoconf && automake --add-missing --foreign && ./configure && make

For debugging you may want to use ./configure 'CXXFLAGS=-O0 -g'.

Now install with:

sudo make install

Note that the executable will not work without installation as it searches for icons etc. in the installation destination.

Usage

A log file written by btrbk is required so that this tool can read it. I assume the log file is /var/log/btrbk.log. Probably your btrbk must be configured to write this log here. You may give another path as a parameter like btrbk-gui /var/log/other-btrbk.log.

Actions Menu

This menu allows you to run the corresponding btrbk actions. By default btrbk-gui assume pkexec and btrbk are in your $PATH and that you have install gnome-terminal. Actually, btrbkgui executes the script /usr/local/share/btrbkgui/execute_btrbk.sh (note the path depends on your installation dir). The default script is:

#!/bin/sh

case "$1" in
    run)
        gnome-terminal -- sh -c 'cd /tmp ; pkexec btrbk run; bash'       
    ;;
    resume)
        gnome-terminal -- sh -c 'cd /tmp ; pkexec btrbk resume; bash'
    ;;
    clean)
        gnome-terminal -- sh -c 'cd /tmp ; pkexec btrbk clean; bash'
    ;;
    kill)
        gnome-terminal -- sh -c 'cd /tmp ; pkexec kill $2; bash'
    ;;
esac

So, you may want to edit this file to match your system. Besides different executables (e.g. for the terminal) you may have, for example, an encrypted file system as your backup device and this must be (un)mounted before and after your backup. Your script could be changed accordingly:

#!/bin/sh

export PID=$2

case "$1" in
    run)
        gnome-terminal -- sh -c ' \
            cd /tmp; \
            pkexec sh -c " \
            	sh mount.sh; \
                btrbk run; \
                sh unmount.sh"; \
            bash'      
    ;;
    resume)
        gnome-terminal -- sh -c ' \
            cd /tmp; \
            pkexec sh -c " \
            	sh mount.sh; \
                btrbk resume; \
                sh unmount.sh"; \
            bash'
    ;;
    clean)
        gnome-terminal -- sh -c ' \
            cd /tmp; \
            pkexec sh -c " \
                sh mount.sh; \
                btrbk clean; \
                sh unmount.sh"; \
            bash'
    ;;

    kill)
        gnome-terminal -- sh -c 'cd /tmp ; pkexec kill $PID ; bash'
    ;;
esac