Obnam-fuse

After much experimenting I've been able to mount an obnam generation back to 20th July 2013, my oldest backup that I have. To do this you need to have python-fuse and fuse-plugin.py installed. It is quite possible that you already have 'fuse-plugin.py' installed as part of your obnam installation. Obnam-fuse gives you the ability to mount a backup generation so that you can browse the backup which means that you can download individual files, or directories. So it would be possible to download all of any directory except for /Music, and then download that separately too.

You need to create /mnt/test/, easiest done with

sudo mkdir /mnt/test/

and then

sudo chown $user: /mnt/test/

to make the $user the directory owner. Backups will still only be shown with 'root' as their owner, so you could omit changing the directory ownership with no problem.

These seem to be the needed requirements to use obnam-fuse -

1. Have the client name in your config.
2. Type the command into your terminal, cut and paste seems to give false reports.
3. Have a separate window of your file manager open as $root for seeing the mounted backup.
4. Be explicit in your paths, don’t use ~/foobar.
5. Use this command -

sudo obnam mount --generation=3405 --config=/home/boudicas/cron/conf/obnam-back4.conf --to /mnt/test

but altering it to suit your setup.

All of this has been developed and tested on a Debian testing machine with a slightly non-standard setup with the obnam conf files being stored in my /home/boudiccas/cron/conf/ directory. In other words, it works on my system, but may not on yours. You'll have to try it and see.

I have tested that it works but I have not done a restore using obnam-fuse, that remains untested at the moment.