rfc or suggestion--save backups function for gnucash

[John C. Martin]

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On Thursday 22 July 2004 08:40 am, Jean-David Beyer wrote:
> Linas Vepstas wrote:
> > On Tue, Jul 20, 2004 at 06:26:34PM -0400, John C. Martin was heard to
> >
> > remark:
> >> world of large scale business systems that I am accustomed to, we use
> >
> > ... highly paid sysadmins who know how to set that stuff up.
> >
> > GnuCash user's are not highly paid sysadmins, and I'll be dollars to
> > donuts that ...
> >
> >> (you do have a backup plan, right?)
> >
> > ... they don't.
>
> I agree. I know between 5 and 10 people who have computers. NOT ONE OF
> THEM EVER MAKES BACKUPS. Only a few have anything more suitable than
> floppy disks on which to make backups. One has a 100MByte Zip drive that
> he never uses; another three have CD-ROM burners that they never use for
> backups. Of course, none of them use GnuCash, so perhaps it does not
> matter. They seem to accept blue screens of death and losing all their
> data and programs as part of the computing scene and even though I explain
> (sometimes) that there are better ways, they will not consider it. They do
> not back up their stereo, refrigerator, stove, toaster. They will not back
> up their other appliance: their computer. ;-) In my circle of
> acquaintances, I am the only one who makes backups: I do a _full_ disk
> backup every morning when I am asleep (cron does it, actually).
>
> It appears that my GnuCash file will not fit on a floppy: Mine takes a
> little over 3 Megabytes, though my other user's database is about 1/2
> megabyte.

I admit I was being facetious.  This is, as I see it, a growing problem.  Most 
of the troubleshooting calls I get from friends/family/neighbors are of the 
sort that could easily be dealt with if backups were available, but nobody 
ever has backups.  Some of the businesses I have worked with don't make 
backups either.  It amazes me that people will take what they consider to be 
valuable and potentially irreplaceable data and place it on volatile storage 
media with no backup.  I don't backup my toaster either, but I have several 
slices of bread lying around :-).

In any event, adding special "backup" features to an application program like 
GnuCash is not going to compensate for someone's lack of a basic backup plan.

- -- 
John C. Martin
Small Bear Technical Consulting
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