Sunday 16 August 2009

Introducing Bonkey

Bonkey is a simple to use backup system. It can backup to most storage devices, but it is specifically designed to be used with Amazon S3, which provides cheap online storage. You choose which files need to be backed up, select how often, set the destination and voila! your files are backed up. It runs on Windows and Mac OSX. It's open source, so you can download the code and tinker if you so desire.

Bonkey can:
  • backup to multiple locations, including Amazon S3, SFTP, FTP, Windows shares, and local disks;
  • backup Microsoft SQL Server databases;
  • backup automatically at a set interval and at a set time if desired;
  • backup only modified files, or a snapshot of the files you select;
  • compress and encrypt files during backup;
  • be configured to email any errors during backup to you;
  • allow drag and drop transfers between different locations; and
  • show built-in help.
More details:
  • runs as a Windows service: no need to login for it to start; uses less memory; and is invisible;
  • summary screen shows you all you need to know and makes managing your backup groups easier;
  • file transfer mode for easier drag and drop transfers;
  • synchronisation to remove out of date files from backup targets;
  • built-in restore wizard to restore to a folder or original locations.
Other things worth mentioning:
  • no spyware, adware, ads, viruses, spam, trojans or STDs. Just the backup software;
  • runs on Java;
  • S3 is run by Amazon - I have nothing to do with it and no responsibility for it. I use it though, and it ain't bad (it's cheap, which can't be bad); and
  • thanks to Eclipse for the framework, Apache for a number of libraries, Eclipse for icons, and superconnected604 for the chain-smoking briefcase bearing primate.
Here's a simple screenshot of the summary page.

18 comments:

Unknown said...

Hi, I've tried to find your source code at Source Forge but there's only a NOTICES.TXT file.

Can you please upload the source code? I'm interested in analyzing the application and maybe enhancing it too.

bonkey said...

Click on the develop link (http://sourceforge.net/projects/bonkey/develop) and you'll see the details for the SVN repository with the source code.

Biskits said...

Hi, I need help.

I installed Bonkey on Vista-SP2, and I now have scheduled 8 different daily backup groups at various times.

When I initially set up each backup group, they successfully ran without error. However, now I believe that Bonkey is failing to execute the scheduled daily backup jobs.

Task Manager indicates that Bonkey Service is "running" - but I wonder if I also need to have bonkey.exe open at all times. I just realized that I have been doing File > Exit and not File > Mimimize to Tray after configuring backups.

Is scheduling managed by the service or by the .exe ? Can you please clarify this? And if I should add bonkey.exe to the startup folder, how can I get it to open minimized in the tray instead opened on my desktop?

Thank you.

bonkey said...

The service will keep running backups when they are due, regardless of whether you have the UI open. The best way to check that the backups are happening as desired is to wait until one should have run, open the UI, open the backup group and look at the history. There should be an entry in the history table indicating a backup took place. If you double click on this, you can view the details.

Biskits said...

I apologize bonkey, let me re-phrase the problem....

1. I setup a scheduled backup, and then I close the UI.

2. The job FAILS to run at the scheduled time.

3. The next time I manually re-open the UI, all failed backup jobs auto-run instantly.

For some reason, the Service isn't running the scheduled jobs when the UI is closed. Thanks!

bonkey said...

That's a bit strange. Presuming you're on Windows, take a look at the list of services running on your machine and make sure that Bonkey is among them.

Other than that, it may be that your firewall is blocking Bonkey (try scheduling a local backup to test this).

Biskits said...

My OS is Vista/SP2.

I set up a local backup job (Documents to Desktop) to run every 2 minutes. With Bonkey UI open, it works, but it stops when I close the UI.

The Bonkey Service is "Started" and "Automatic". Logon as Local System Account, Allow service to interact with desktop is unchecked. (I tried checking this, - it made no difference.) I stopped and re-started the service several times, to no avail.

My firewall logs show nothing blocked. I use Online Armor, which includes a HIPS. I shut it down, but still no Bonkey backups when the UI is closed.

If you have any other ideas, please advise. Thanks.

bonkey said...

I've never run Bonkey on Vista unfortunately. I'll dust off my XP machine and check where the logs for the service are, and see if I can point you to those - they may help. I'll get back to you here.

Unknown said...

Hi!

Thanks for this software, bonkey seems to be exactly what I want. However I cannot get it to work with buckets stored in EU. I get access denied errors when trying to create them or upload to them. US buckets works fine, both to create and upload to.

I first thought it was an error with the S3 service, but I downloaded cloudberry explorer and using that I was able to create and upload to EU buckets.

Is there anything I might be missing?

Once again thanks for your efforts!

bonkey said...

Hi Andre - EU buckets were deployed after Bonkey was developed. It wouldn't take much to add support for them, but I don't have much bandwidth at the moment. If you tinker with code, feel free to fix it! Otherwise, I'm afraid EU buckets won't be supported any time soon. Sorry about that!

Unknown said...

Hi, I am having the exact same behaviour with Vista ...

the scheduled backup are not processed if the UI is closed ...

Service is running and firewall is disabled.

did you have a chance to look into it?

bonkey said...

Unfortunately I don't have a machine running Vista.

Can you please send wrapper.log from the directory you installed Bonkey to thebackupmonkey@gmail?

Unknown said...

Hi, I have strange problem with Bonkey. Even when I check the "Modified files only" option, it seems to copy all the files.

Unknown said...

Also, I was wondering if there is some way to map a group directly to a directory.

For example, I have a group called "Softwares" and a directory on my computer call "Softwares". If I drag the directory to the group, then in the backup disk, it creates a directory with the same name as the group first, and then the directory name inside. So I end up with something like J:\Softwares\Softwares\allfiles.

The alternative would be to drag all the files in the Softwares directory to the group. But then if I add a new directory to the Softwares directory, I'd have to add it to the group manually. Any way to do this?

Thanks.

Btw, Bonkey is great. Except for the couple of things mentioned above, it is just what I was looking for for my local backups.

bonkey said...

Hi Trex,

Glad to hear you find Bonkey useful. Re the nesting directories, there's no way to avoid that at the moment, but I'll put it on the todo list (ie some time in 2012 ;) ).

Modified files uses a very simple mechanism of checking the date of the backup against the date of the file, so it should work in Windows 7 as well. It will backup everything the first time, and thereafter should only back up modified files. I have no way to test on Windows 7 at the moment though.

Bonkey

bonkey said...

Gerald, I've worked with Biskits to get Bonkey running on Vista (thanks Biskits!). For instructions, see http://thebackupmonkey.blogspot.com/2009/09/bonkey-on-vista.html.

Anonymous said...

Can bonkey be designed to run on http 80 port only for sync with Amason S3? Since many of my computers are behind company firewall, I really need some application using only Http80 like teamviewer and evernote.

Thanks.

bonkey said...

Bonkey communicates with S3 using HTTPS. Since many websites use HTTPS, it's hard to imagine that it would be blocked by your firewall. So it should work fine.