backup/README.md

Go Backup Utility

A simple yet powerful command-line utility written in Go for creating and restoring backups of files, directories, and block devices (like disks). It supports standard gzip compression for files/disks and tar.gz for directories.

The key feature of this tool is the ability to stream backups directly over the network, allowing you to create a backup on one machine and restore it on another without storing intermediate files.

Features

• File, Disk, and Directory Backup: Create backups of individual files, entire directories, or full block devices (e.g., /dev/sda).
• Network Streaming: Directly stream backups between two machines over a TCP connection.
  • create acts as a network client, sending data.
  • restore acts as a network server, receiving data.
• Compression: Uses gzip for efficient compression. Directories are archived using tar before compression.
• Interactive Progress Bars: Displays a real-time progress bar for both creating and restoring, so you always know the status of the operation.
• Cross-Platform: Written in Go, it can be compiled for Linux, macOS, and Windows.

Installation

To build the utility from source, you need to have Go installed on your system.

1. Clone the repository (or download the source code).
2. Navigate to the project directory.
3. Build the binary:

   go build
   

4. This will create an executable file named backup (or backup.exe on Windows) in the current directory. You can move this file to a directory in your system's PATH (e.g., /usr/local/bin) to make it accessible from anywhere.

Usage

The utility has two main commands: create and restore.

Local Backup and Restore

1. Backup a Directory

This will create a tar.gz archive of the specified source directory.

./backup create -s /path/to/source/directory -t /path/to/backup.tar.gz

2. Restore a Directory

This will extract the contents of a tar.gz archive into the specified target directory. If the target directory is omitted, it defaults to the current working directory.

./backup restore -s /path/to/backup.tar.gz -t /path/to/restore/location

3. Backup a File or Disk

This will create a compressed gz file from a source file or a block device.

# Backup a file
./backup create -s /path/to/largefile.log -t /path/to/largefile.log.gz

# Backup a disk partition (use with caution!)
./backup create -s /dev/sdb1 -t /path/to/sdb1_backup.img.gz

4. Restore a File or Disk

This will decompress a .gz file to a target file or write the uncompressed data to a block device.

# Restore a file
./backup restore -s /path/to/largefile.log.gz -t /path/to/restored_largefile.log

# Restore a disk partition (use with extreme caution!)
./backup restore -s /path/to/sdb1_backup.img.gz -t /dev/sdb1

Network Backup and Restore

This is the most powerful feature. It allows you to pipe a backup from a source machine (client) to a target machine (server).

Step 1: On the receiving machine (Server)

First, run the restore command. It will start listening on the specified IP address and port, waiting for a connection. Use 0.0.0.0 to listen on all available network interfaces.

# The server waits for data on port 8080 and will restore it to /mnt/data
./backup restore -s 0.0.0.0:8080 -t /mnt/data

The command will print Waiting for connection on 0.0.0.0:8080... and will pause until the client connects.

Step 2: On the sending machine (Client)

Now, run the create command, pointing the target (-t) to the IP address and port of the server machine.

# This will back up the /home/user/documents directory and send it directly
# to the server at 192.168.1.100 on port 8080.
./backup create -s /home/user/documents -t 192.168.1.100:8080

The backup process will start, and you will see a progress bar on both the client and server terminals.

Command-line Flags

• create:
  • -s, --source: The source file, directory, or disk to back up (required).
  • -t, --target: The target backup file or network address (ip:port) (required).
• restore:
  • -s, --source: The source archive file or network address (ip:port) to restore from (required).
  • -t, --target: The target file, disk, or directory. Required for network sources and file/disk restores. Defaults to the current directory for local archive restores.

License

This project is licensed under the MIT License. See the LICENSE file for more details.