Memopal Online Backup

Memopal recently released a
version of its software for Linux, offering an online backup service for
either personal or business users. The business service allows multiuser
access, so it can act as a filesharing as well as a backup service. You can get a free trial access for 7 days, but after that it’s (unsurprisingly!) a paid-for service.

Tip of the Trade: Memopal recently released a Linux version of its online backup service. Should you take it out for a spin?

The Linux version is still in beta and has only a command-line interface.
It’s available for Ubuntu, Debian etch, and Fedora — binaries only, not source
code, as it’s not open source. The online documentation is limited, but
support is available via the Web site, and there’s a community forum that
seems active.

My 5MB test backup took about five min. After it completes the immediate
backup, the program keeps running, and as I understand it, it should watch for
changes and then back those up. However, in practice it didn’t spot my test
file creation until I restarted the backup.

I couldn’t see an automate option — possibly this is part of the GUI and thus
not available for Linux. You could set up a cronjob,
but be wary that it requires your password as plaintext to
run. The command is

memopal -u username -p password --backupFolder /full/path/to/directory

Default output is pretty verbose, outputting a line every second.

For file restore or file access, you can browse your files directly from
the Memopal Web site — a really nice feature, which also enables you to check
your backups straight away.

It’s definitely got promise, and may be worth experimenting with for
essential files — but as an always-on daemon type of backup I don’t think it’s
quite there yet for Linux.