Mephisto Backup

I’ve recently ran across a unique little backup utility called Mephisto. The program is a command line tool written in Java that incorporates rsync and tar to do filesystem backups to a remote filesystem or local image. Of course utilities like this are great for doing system duplication, and especially great when you roll your own LiveDVDs for disaster recovery or general backups. To backup to a remote server you’ll first need to copy over your ssh id (the utility has a little information on that when you go to create a configuration file), and then create a configuration file with the specs for your remote fileserver. I had a chance to test the remote sync feature from my laptop to a ssh server, and while the utility is a little rough around the edges it does function well. One thing that drove me a little nuts was the lack of a status bar during file transfer. While the utility does have a little room to grow, I think this is a pretty good starting point and definitely a great piece of Java code to disect.

You can grab a copy from the blog site in two flavors: one including a JRE or one with just the base program. Check it out, and let us know what you think!