Looking forward to find a way to backup clients on the network like we did with NS7
I could port backuppc without thinking myself a lot because it brings many features I need, mostly to backup linux clients and also windows clients with smb shares but I am not sure it is so actively maintained and it looks a bit old now
That is not fair because I love it and you could install cygwind on windows to get rsync
I looked after bareos and bacula but i feel them too much CLI backup system and I love a web page where you could do pretty well everything like for backuppc
Urbackup seem nice but not much experiences with it, the client side is nice because it avoid to open a smb share in the client
And that’s it…not sure where I could find a software client or clientless with a web page to manage the backup…do you have ideas or dreams to share
These ones I tried many years ago but from what I can recall:
UrBackup: good. First backup slowing down user’s computers and network -to be expected- (talking of first releases) but had some parameters to tweak it.
Duplicati: had mixed results, long beta status…, was discarded
Haven’t tried this one but seen it active and gaining traction over the past years:
I’m very happy to see this question from you, Stephdl. I’m a fan of both software. BackupPC might not be updated often, but honestly, it works perfectly. Once set up, it has never failed me once. UrBackup, on the other hand, has made a couple of mistakes when restoring Windows PC images, but all in all, the backup and file restore work well and are very configurable. If I could make a wish, I would want both on NS8.
I started a work on it, with the same we could backup macOS, windows and Linux, I still miss some controls in the UI of kopia itself but I hope to fill the gap with the UI in the cluster of ns8
I will need people with macOS, I can handle the tests on windows and Linux
Kopia looks like a good direction for mixed OS clients. On macOS the usual hurdles are Full Disk Access/TCC permissions and keeping the client running for scheduled snapshots; launchd or KopiaUI can cover scheduling, but server-side policies need to tolerate laptops that sleep. I can help test Linux and Windows, but I don’t have a macOS machine to test with.
Thanks, good points. Here is how I plan to handle them.
Full Disk Access is needed by every backup tool on macOS except Time Machine, so it is not a Kopia limit. I documented it in the README: before running the enrollment script, the user grants Full Disk Access to Terminal (the first snapshot runs from it) and to KopiaUI (it takes the scheduled snapshots). docs: add macOS Full Disk Access steps by stephdl · Pull Request #4 · stephdl/ns8-kopia · GitHub
For scheduling, KopiaUI has its own scheduler, the same as on Windows. The user adds it to the Login Items so it starts at each login. Later I would like to add a launchd agent on macOS, like the systemd timer I already set up on Linux. That way snapshots no longer depend on the tray app. I want a Mac tester before I ship it.
For laptops that sleep, the server does not count missed snapshots. It checks the age of the last one. The owner gets a mail after 48 h without a backup, the admin after 96 h, both configurable. A laptop closed overnight stays quiet. One that has not backed up for days raises an alert.
Help on Linux and Windows is welcome, and the call for a macOS tester is still open.
I was looking for one tool for Windows, Linux and macOS. BackupPC served me well for years, but it is close to dead. The last stable release is 4.4.0 from 2020. Someone picked up the project and published a 4.4.1 release candidate in November 2025, which gave me some hope, but nothing came after. I do not want to build on that.
I also looked at UrBackup. It is mature and still released, but it is mostly a Windows tool, the macOS client lags behind, and the project rests on one developer. Hard to tell what happens next.
I looked around and came back to Kopia. The team is small, but Kopia is the engine behind Kubernetes backup tools like Velero and Kasten. That gives me some confidence that someone would carry it on if the current team stops. Kopia has gaps, mostly in admin features, and I try to fill them with the module UI in the NS8 cluster admin.
The other road was to build everything on top of restic. It would work, but I would have to write the server side, the multi-client part and the UI myself.
One more feature I want: not depending only on local storage. Kopia can copy the repository to an S3 target, a RustFS instance or an S3 bucket in the cloud. Restic can do this too, but Kopia gives it with the rest of the package.
