Amazon adds file versioning to AWS

It always makes me a happy monkey when I get things for free. Amazon has added versioning to AWS. You can enable it on a per-bucket basis, and instead of overwriting existing files it will save every version. For more information, see their blog post.

Bonkey 3.4.1, Windows and OS X

A new version to fix a couple of bugs:

• backing up from CloudFiles should now work (thanks to Savvas for the bug report!);
• temporary files used in backups were being left in the user's temp directory if a backup failed - these are now removed.

Bananas bananas bananas. Find them in the usual place: Bonkey 3.4.1 for Windows and Bonkey 3.4.1 for Mac OSX.

Bonkey 3.4 - CloudFiles support! And more...

As the saying goes, monkeys never sleep. Wait. Monkeys never forget? Whatever.

Bonkey has been updated to version 3.4, with support for RackSpace CloudFiles. It's a cheap, solid alternative to S3.

There are a few other improvements as well:

• native SFTP and FTP support, meaning more speed and less (or less durable) bugs;
• support for passive mode in FTP transfers;
• version number in the About dialog;
• lots of internal rearchitecting to allow new features;
• removed .enc extension for encrypted files, and fixed a bug with decrypting from local files.

There are bound to be a few bugs, so let me know as you run into them. With all the internals updated, stamping them out should be as easy as catching monkeys. Or something.

Download version 3.4 for Windows or download version 3.4 for OS X.

Building Bonkey from source

If you've looked through the subversion repository for Bonkey to see the source, you might be scratching your head and wonder how it all gets bundled up into a monkey-laden application. Essentially, the build system is Eclipse, using the tools for RCP development.

I've put some basic details in a short help article. Let me know if you have difficulties or tips, so that I can flesh it out a bit.

Backup history

Something that was left out of the help: Bonkey records all the details of previous backups (and backup attempts) for each backup group. Open the backup group and double click on any of the entries in the history table for the following information:

• a list of the files included in the backup
• the size of the backup and of each folder and file within it
• whether they were transferred or skipped
• whether the transfer was successful
• detailed error messages if a transfer was unsuccessful

Bonkey + Windows 7 = happy monkey

I've finally got hold of a Windows 7 Pro machine. I installed Bonkey in an administrator account and everything seems to work fine. So I'm giving Bonkey an all clear on Windows 7.

Let me know if you run into any difficulties.

Bonkey, SQL Server and Java 1.6+

I've just updated the instructions for using Bonkey with SQL Server.

If you are using version 1.6 or higher of the Java runtime and want to backup an SQL Server database, you will need to use the most recent version of the JDBC library (available on the same page). When downloaded, this is named sqljdbc4.jar. Rename it to sqljdbc.jar and then follow the instructions as before.