[needs-packaging] fsarchiver

[habtool]

[needs-packaging] <fsarchiver>

FSArchiver is a system tool that allows you to save the contents of a file-system to a compressed archive file. The file-system can be restored on a partition which has a different size and it can be restored on a different file-system. Unlike tar/dar, FSArchiver also creates the file-system when it extracts the data to partitions. Everything is checksummed in the archive in order to protect the data. If the archive is corrupt, you just loose the current file, not the whole archive.

URL: http://www.fsarchiver.org/Main_Page

License: Fsarchiver is released under the GPL-v2 license.

Notes: This program is similar to partimage, but CLI based. Partimage is no longer maintained and does not
support ext4 FS

Src code:
http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=244682&package_id=298332

Static binary for i386:
http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=244682&package_id=299271

-----
Package uploaded to REVU: http://revu.ubuntuwire.com/p/fsarchiver

[Brian Murray (brian-murray)]

*** This is an automated message ***

This bug is tagged needs-packaging which identifies it as a request for a new package in Ubuntu. As a part of the managing needs-packaging bug reports specification, https://wiki.ubuntu.com/QATeam/Specs/NeedsPackagingBugs, all needs-packaging bug reports have Wishlist importance. Subsequently, I'm setting this bug's status to Wishlist.

[dn (nobled)]

Looks like this depends on libxz for LZMA compression support -- and that still needs to get packaged, too. ( bug 382092 )

[pelle.k (pele2)]

You can compile fsarchiver without lzma support, but if i'm not mistaken you *do* need the AR (Advanced Release) of ntfs-3g to run fsarchiver ( 0.5.7 >= ). That's also a problem, since ntfs-3g in say, jaunty, is the standard version...

[Francois Dupoux (fdbugs)]

1) ntfs-3g-AR is a runtime dependency. So it's possible to compile and install fsarchiver even if ntfs-3g-AR is not available. It's only required when an user runs the command to save an ntfs filesystem. In other words linux users will be able to use fsarchiver on their linux filesystems even if ntfs-3g-AR is not found.

2) xz-utils is an optional dependency: you can compile fsarchiver with "./configure --disable-lzma". Anyway I think xz-utils is a great tool and it's already used by rpm in fedora-11 ("yum install rpm" will install xz-utils)

[Ilya Barygin (randomaction)]

I have prepared a package (it's almost ready, lacks only a manpage), but there seems to be a licensing problem. Fsarchiver is GPL2-licensed, but uses OpenSSL which is GPL-incompatible. See http://www.gnome.org/~markmc/openssl-and-the-gpl.html for an explanation of the issue. I think this may be enough to prevent fsarchiver from being accepted into Ubuntu.

The common solution of GPL-OpenSSL incompatibility is to grant special exception for the program to link with OpenSSL (the page liked above includes a preferred statement to do that). So if Francois could do it this would be great (I'm not 100% sure that it's possible, because files src/uuid.* seem to have been taken from another source; IANAL, though, we could be better off asking someone with expertise, e.g. debian-legal).

An alternative (and IMO inferior) solution would be to disable SSL support. Yet another alternative is to use a different implementation of SSL.

[Ilya Barygin (randomaction)]

I have a package (hopefully) ready, and I'm going to upload it for review with the beginning of the development of Ubuntu 10.04 (that is, in November).

[Ilya Barygin (randomaction)]

The package is available at https://launchpad.net/~randomaction/+archive/ppa for examination and testing.

[habtool (clive-wagenaar)]

Ilya Barygin I tested the package from your PPA.
I installed fsarchiver and it ran fine on my karmic Ubuntu setup

Thanks for your time

[Ilya Barygin (randomaction)]

Michael Biebl's package was accepted into Debian, so it should be available in Lucid.

[Ilya Barygin (randomaction)]

https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/fsarchiver