IntroductionKBackup is a program that lets you back up any folders or files, whereby it uses an easy to use folder tree to select the things to back up. It lets you save your settings in so-called “profile” files, where a profile is a simple text file containing definitions for folders and files to be included or excluded from the backup process. Also, it lets you define where the backup shall be saved to. The target can be either a local folder (e.g. a locally mounted device like a ZIP drive, USB stick, etc.) but it can also be any remote URL (e.g. smb://remote/some_path) to back up your data to some central server, etc.
The program can also run an automated backup without using a graphical user interface. One can simply create a profile and use these settings to tell KBackup what to do when running in non-interactive mode, e.g. by starting it from a cron job.
The program was designed to be very simple in its use so that it can be used by non-computer experts.
The storage format is the well known TAR format, whereby the data can still be stored in compressed format (xz, bzip2 or gzip).
The current implementation features only the backup step. To restore data back into your system, you currently have to use, e.g., Dolphin to open the TAR backup files and drag/drop the files back to your file system. This is also an advantage of the usage of the well known and well supported TAR file format.
If the files are compressed, you can uncompress all files from the current folder recursively down with the following command:
find . -name \*bz2 -print0 | xargs -0 bunzip2
Alternatively you can use Ark to extract a full backup or just a few files from a backup.