Allow disabling of Host/User/Profile etc nesting

[auwsom]

Hi, love Backintime, as it both does incremental backup and has smart retention. One small gripe I have is that it buries files way down in nested directories. Files are 9 directories down just to take a look at them. This is largely because of the Host/User/Profile options in Setting which cannot be left blank for some reason. I understand their purpose, but I am the only user on this single host with only one profile (KISS).

The next set of inception levels are one nested directory for each of the subdirectories a file lives in, even when there is only one base directory needed. Could this also be optional? I dont see a use case for when a user who selects a base dir, needing to have its backup buried in every parent dir to it.

I know this is a minor thing, but I actually went back through evaluating about 20 backup applications I did a year or two ago to land back on backintime, mostly because of my memory of how buried the files are. I'm hoping that somehow helps with the restore process, but this structure could be optional and/or kept in the other backup config files.

Thank you

[buhtz]

Dear @auwsom thank you for your report.

Personally I agree and have the same problem with the folder structure. But it is a minor problem and won't change in the near feature because there are much other things to do.

But I vote for leave it open as a feature request.

Idea: Maybe we can workaround that structure with offering some "smart" symlinks. This would keep the modifications to the code small.

[emtiu]

I've been bothered by the same thing, thanks for the report :)

[emtiu]

I'm giving this a higher priority, because it evidently confuses and annoys many users – see #1001 and #1176 (comment).

[aryoda]

Related to:

• [enhancement] include hostname in backup path #20 (introduced Host/User/Profile)
• "Done, no backup needed" if host/user/profile fields empty #145 (made entries mandatory)
• Entering '.' in profile "host" and/or "user" breaks restore #1001

[aryoda]

Somewhere I saw an old issue or comment in the code (or a commit) for a very old version <= 1.1.x which implemented this feature for a reason (the fields were not mandatory before I guess)...

Perhaps we find this old comment again to understand why it was introduced...

[emtiu]

Somewhere I saw an old issue or comment in the code (or a commit) for a very old version <= 1.1.x which implemented this feature for a reason (the fields were not mandatory before I guess)...

Perhaps we find this old comment again to understand why it was introduced...

Looking through git blame for config.py, it was probably introduced in this commit: 3561d0f

It was released in version 1.0.0, and described like this in the Changelog:

backintime/CHANGES

Line 539 in b4dd2d1

* backintime snapshot folder is restructured to ../backintime/machine/user/profile_id/

During development, there was a faulty implementation, which was reported as Launchpad bug #588393, which also contains a description of the way it's supposed to work.

There used to be an option called "Auto Host/User/Profile-ID" to automatically assign these values (instead of manually inputting them, as currently implemented). This was removed with commit 7de2f02, released in 1.1.0:

backintime/CHANGES

Line 298 in b4dd2d1

* remove 'Auto Host/User/Profile-ID' as this is more confiusing than helping

There also an explanation of this change in the FAQ: Back In Time doesn't find my old Snapshots on my new Computer

[auwsom]

So it looks like Host/User/Profile-ID was still required, but it had an optional disabling of autofill.

There could be an option for "flat" backup. Essentially, user specifies target and destination only.

The restore wizard would just not be used in that scenario, unless a flat restore destination was built in.

[buhtz]

https://www.mail-archive.com/bit-dev@python.org/msg00075.html