tiBackup – An intelligent backup system for Linux servers & desktops

Update July 2026: tiBackup 0.9.2 – tiBackup is now a headless daemon with a built-in web UI (the old Qt desktop GUI has been replaced).

tiBackup brings an important feature to Linux desktops and servers: Backup. It runs as a headless root daemon and is configured entirely through a modern, built-in web UI – no desktop GUI required. It is designed around removable/hotplug backup disks, but also handles scheduled backups, rsync-over-SSH pull backups and Proxmox Backup Server integration.

For more background on why this project was started, have a look at my original post.

The main features:

• Hotplug backups – connect a disk and a predefined backup job starts automatically
• Scheduled backups (daily, weekly, monthly)
• Web UI for everything – jobs, disks, mount/unmount, logs and settings, served over HTTPS
• Built-in file browser (incl. folder creation) for picking backup sources and destinations
• rsync backups to local/removable disks with per-folder source → destination mapping
• rsync-over-SSH pull backups from remote servers (host-key pinned)
• Proxmox Backup Server (PBS) integration – restore and repackage VM/CT/host snapshots
• LUKS-encrypted backup target disks
• E-mail notifications – SMTP with STARTTLS / SSL-TLS on a configurable port, a test-mail button and log attachments
• Live log viewer – watch a running backup’s log in real time; per-run and raw rsync logs
• Custom pre-/post-backup scripts (run unprivileged) with dynamic tiBackup variables
• All settings in plain .ini format – fully usable on a terminal-only server

Just open the web UI in your browser to configure everything; on first start you set an admin password. The daemon runs as root because it needs to access system files and devices (mount, LUKS, libblkid, udev).

tiBackup consists of two parts:

1. tiBackupLib – core library providing the shared functionality
2. tiBackup – the backup daemon; it listens for udev/hotplug and scheduled events and serves the web UI

(The separate Qt GUI, tiBackupUI, has been replaced by the embedded web UI.)

Installation (Debian/Ubuntu)

Ready-made packages are available from the iteas APT repository at https://apt.iteas.at:

• tibackuplib – core library (always needed)
• tibackup – the daemon incl. web UI
• tibackuplib-dev – headers / CMake config (only needed to build software against the library)

Source code: https://github.com/theinvisible/tiBackup