luckyBackup Is A Powerful, Fast and Reliable Backup & Sync Linux Tool

luckyBackup is a backup and sync application running on Linux and Mac OSX, powered by the rsync tool. It is simple to use, fast (transfers over only changes made and not all data), safe (keeps your data safe by checking all declared directories before proceeding in any data manipulation ), reliable and fully customizable.

Installing luckyBackup

Ubuntu Linux users: open a terminal and paste the following commands to add the luckyBackup PPA repository.

sudo apt-key adv --keyserver keyserver.ubuntu.com --recv-keys 62E44DBB
echo "deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/luckybackup-maintainers/ppa/ubuntu `lsb_release -sc` main" | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/luckybackup-maintainers.list

Then install luckyBackup:

sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install luckybackup 

If you don't wish to add the repository, you can just download the .deb files:
-32bit
-64bit

Other Linux distributions & Mac OSX

Fedora rpm download: 32bit or 64bit
Slackware download: txz (i486)

Repositories:

distro	description		maintainer
Debian	Debian Sid		Patrick Matthaei
arch linux	Arch linux User Repositories (AUR)		Tom Tryfonidis (thanos)
openSUSE	openSuse KDE4 Community repo		Stephan Kleine
Mepis	Mepis Community repo		Marcos Del Puerto García
Mac OS X	Fink project		Jack Fink
Gentoo	official Gentoo tree		Theo Chatzimichos

After installing, you will find luckyBackup under Applications > Accessories > luckyBackup. You can also run it as super user, by going to Applications > System Tools > luckyBackup (super user).

How to use luckyBackup

Now you can start creating your back-up: click the Add button, and fill out the Task properties window. Specify a name for the task as well as a source directory (the directory that you want to back up) and a destination directory (the directory where you want luckyBackup to store the backups) (the destination directory can be inside the source directory, but we have to exclude the backup directory from the backup then, because otherwise we'd create a loop - I'll come to that in a minute). Mark the Also create a task for restore purposes to automatically create a suitable restore task for this backup. Then click on Advanced - here you can exclude directories from the backup (e.g. Backup files, Trash). To avoid a backup loop, we have to exclude the backup directory; to do this, click on User Defined and add the backup directory to the exclude list. A Task properties window with the properties of the restore task will open if you have marked Also create a task for restore purposes. Make sure the settings are correct and click on Okay.

Now you will find two tasks in the main window, the backup task and the restore task. We want the backup task to be active (so that it can be run by cron, for example), while the restore task will usually be invoked manually (e.g. in case of data loss), therefore we mark the checkbox of the backup task and click on the floppy disk icon to save our changes to the default profile (so that you don't lose the tasks you've just created when you close luckyBackup).

Manual Back-up

Then to start our first manual backup, make sure that the backup task is checked (and the restore task is not) and click on the Start button:

To restore a backup (e.g. in case of data loss), uncheck the backup task and check the restore task and click on Start.

Automatic Back-up

luckyBackup supports scheduled (automated) tasks (i.e., cron jobs) too. To create such a cron job, click on the clock icon > a new window will pop up (schedule). Click on add to create a new cron job. You can now define when you want luckyBackup to create a backup for you. Click on okay when you're done:

The new cron job should now be listed in the schedule window. Click on cronIT and you're done!

Credits: howtoforge