[[!meta title="Obnam - backup program"]]
[[!tag program]]

NOTE! NOTE! NOTE! NOTE! NOTE! NOTE! NOTE! NOTE! NOTE! NOTE! NOTE!

The Obnam project is retired. See
<https://blog.liw.fi/posts/2017/08/13/retiring_obnam/>
for more information. Please use another backup solution
instead.

NOTE! NOTE! NOTE! NOTE! NOTE! NOTE! NOTE! NOTE! NOTE! NOTE! NOTE!

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

[[!img sticker.png alt="Obnam sticker" link=no class=sticker]]

Obnam is an **easy, secure backup program.**
Backups can be stored on local hard disks, 
or online via the 
[SSH SFTP](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SSH_File_Transfer_Protocol) protocol.
The backup server, if used, does not require any special software,
on top of SSH.

Some **features** that may interest you:

* **Snapshot** backups. Every generation looks like a complete snapshot,
  so you don't need to care about full versus incremental backups, or
  rotate real or virtual tapes.
* Data **de-duplication**, across files, and backup generations. If the
  backup repository already contains a particular chunk of data, it will
  be re-used, even if it was in another file in an older backup
  generation. This way, you don't need to worry about moving around large
  files, or modifying them. (However, the current implementation
  has some limitations: see [[faq/dedup]]).
* **Encrypted** backups, using GnuPG.

See the [[tutorial]], and below for links to the manual, which has
examples of how to use Obnam.

Obnam can do **push** or **pull** backups, depending on what you
need. You can run Obnam on the client, and push backups to the server,
or on the server, and pull from the client over SFTP. However, access
to live data over SFTP is currently somewhat limited and fragile, so it
is not recommended.

* [[1.0 release announcement|1.0]]
* [[Status and support|status]]
* [[Download]]
* [[Contact]]
* [[Bugs]]
* [[Donate]]

Documentation
-------------

* The full manual (currently a work in progress): available as:
    - [CI versions](http://code.liw.fi/obnam/manual/ci/), built from
      git, but not yet released, are also available.
    - The Obnam test suite is also meant to be useful for the more
      technical users of Obnam to read:
      [web page](http://code.liw.fi/obnam/yarns.html),
      [PDF](http://code.liw.fi/obnam/yarns.pdf).
    - See also manuals built automatically from version control
      by Jan Niggemann:
      <http://hz6.de/obnam-downloads/> 
* [README](http://git.liw.fi/cgi-bin/cgit/cgit.cgi/obnam/tree/README)
* [NEWS](http://git.liw.fi/cgi-bin/cgit/cgit.cgi/obnam/tree/NEWS)
* obnam manual page: 
  [English](http://code.liw.fi/obnam/obnam.1.txt),
  [German](http://code.liw.fi/obnam/obnam.1.de.txt).
* [[FAQ]]
* [[Development]] stuff

New repository format GREEN ALBATROSS
------------------------------------------------------------------------

A new repository format, [[format-green-albatross]], is being
developed. Its goal is to make Obnam faster than than it currently is.
See [[roadmap-ga]] for a rough roadmap finishing it.

Note that the main Obnam developer already uses GREEN ALBATROSS, but
incompatible on-disk format changes are still possible. If you use
GREEN ALBTROSS and a format change happens, you'll need to start over
with a new backup repository. Once the new repository format is
stable, backwards incompatible changes won't happen anymore. Also,
given very few people use GREEN ALBATROSS so far, it has a higher risk
of bugs than the default repository format. If you're curious, please
try GREEN ALBATROSS, but be aware of the risks.


Sponsored by Bytemark
---------------------

[[!img bytemark-ff3270c4.svg alt="Bytemark logo" link=no class=bytemark]]

Obnam development is partly sponsored by [Bytemark][] by providing
[BigV][] virtual machines for development and benchmarking.

[Bytemark]: https://www.bytemark.co.uk/r/liw
[BigV]: http://www.bigv.io/

Sponsored by the FUUG foundation
--------------------------------

The [FUUG foundation] gave a grant in September, 2015, for buying a
fast machine with lots of disk space for development and benchmarking
of Obnam.

[FUUG foundation]: http://fuug.fi/saatio/

Links
-----

* [Cache Directory Tagging Standard](http://www.bford.info/cachedir/)
* [Backup with obnam and encfs](http://sanskritfritz.wordpress.com/2014/04/24/backup-with-obnam-and-encfs/)