Which is Most TimeMachine-like Backup Program for Ubuntu?

You can use Cronopete. Cronopete is a backup utility for Linux, modeled after Apple's Time Machine. It aims to simplify the creation of periodic backups.^Launchpad.

To install, just press Ctrl+Alt+T on your keyboard to open Terminal. When it opens, run the command(s) below:

sudo apt-add-repository ppa:rastersoft-gmail/cronopetedev
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install cronopete

To install from source, see Here

Or you can try Back In Time. Back In Time is a simple backup tool for Linux inspired from FlyBack and "TimeVault".^{Back In Time / Launchpad}.

To install just press Ctrl+Alt+T on your keyboard to open Terminal. When it opens, run the command(s) below:

sudo apt-add-repository ppa:bit-team/stable
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install backintime-qt4

On a personal note, I use Systemback for all my backups, archiving, and imaging. To install it, just press Ctrl+Alt+T on your keyboard to open Terminal. When it opens, run the command(s) below:

sudo add-apt-repository -y ppa:nemh/systemback
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install systemback

If you don't mind working with the console try backup-manager, it comes along with the distribution. The handling is done with one config file sitting in /etc.

sudo apt-get install backup-manager

To modify the file you could use nano in the console.

sudo nano /etc/backup-manager.conf

You won't need most of it. What I personally like is, that no additional packages are needed.

Here is a small example of a backup.

Where to store the files?

##############################################################
# Repository - everything about where archives are
#############################################################

# Where to store the archives
export BM_REPOSITORY_ROOT="/var/archives"

choose your Directory, where to put the files.

Pay close attention to the following settings there

# For security reasons, the archive repository and the generated
# archives will be readable/writable by a given user/group.
# This is recommended to set this to true.
export BM_REPOSITORY_SECURE="true"

# The repository will be readable/writable only by a specific
# user:group pair if BM_REPOSITORY_SECURE is set to true.
export BM_REPOSITORY_USER="root"
export BM_REPOSITORY_GROUP="root"
# You can also choose the permission to set the repository, default
# is 770, pay attention to what you do there!
export BM_REPOSITORY_CHMOD="770"

If you backup something like /home or /movie you might leave this option on, so only root and the root group might be able to access the backup

For a server backup (e.g. a multi user server and/or folders like /var/www/ /opt/ /etc/ /var/) you might consider setting this option to false to preserve ownership/accessability of the files after a restore. Otherwise you'll need to manually set them after a restore.

Choose your backup-method

##############################################################
# Archives - let's focus on the precious tarballs...
##############################################################

# The backup method to use.
# Available methods are:
# - tarball
# - tarball-incremental
# - mysql
# - pgsql
# - svn
# - pipe
# - none
# If you don't want to use any backup method (you don't want to
# build archives) then choose "none"

choose

export BM_ARCHIVE_METHOD="tarball-incremental"

Choose the directories to backup

Further info can be found in the section

 ##############################################################
 # Section "TARBALL"
 # - Backup method: tarball
 #############################################################

Here I checked the following options

export BM_TARBALL_FILETYPE="tar.bz2"
export BM_TARBALL_DIRECTORIES="/etc /var/www /home/wikibackup"

Choose rotation of master and incrementals

##############################################################
# The tarball-incremental method uses the same keys as the 
# tarball method, plus two others.
#############################################################

I've choosen to do weekly full backups on monday (first day of the week). That means every monday I get a full backup and the rest of the week will be saved in different smaller incremental files. So restoring them would mean. Resotre the full backup and after that the incremental files, to get back the latest backup of your data.

export BM_TARBALLINC_MASTERDATETYPE="weekly"
export BM_TARBALLINC_MASTERDATEVALUE="1"

Cronjob

Use a simple cronjob to do the backup automatically

sudo -i

crontab -e

Enter the following

00 03 * * * /usr/sbin/backup-manager >/dev/null 2>&1

If you need a notification email remove this part

>/dev/null 2>&1

TimeShift

It has a simple graphical interface but you can also use it from the terminal.

sudo apt-add-repository -y ppa:teejee2008/ppa
sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install timeshift -y

linux-timemachine is POSIX compliant bash script that aims to mimic the behavior of OSX's timemachine. It uses rsync to incrementally back up your data to a different directory, hard disk or remote server via SSH. All operations are incremental, atomic and automatically resumable:

# Recursive, incremental and atomic backup (locally)
$ timemachine /source/dir /target/dir

# Recursive, incremental and atomic backup (via ssh)
$ timemachine /source/dir user@host:target/dir

Backups are always done incrementally using rsync's ability to hardlink to previous backup directories. You can nevertheless always see the full backup on the file system of any incrementally made backup without having to generate it. This will also be true when deleting any of the previously created backup directories. See the Backups section for how this is achieved via rsync.

I add it as a cron from webmin - a Web GUI for administering any linux box - which is under System -> Scheduled CRON Jobs. I like to have it run every 6 hours.

Put ionice nice in front will keep your machine responsive and quieter. Run iotop to see disk bandwidth. AFAIK macOS would also run very niced and also pause for around 10 seconds on activity somehow: I kinda like Apple's over the top polish here.

I do not recommend Deja-dup because it is not close to Time-Machine in features, and is unstable with many filesystems. I have not managed to get proposals of Mitch sufficient in features for my needs. They break too much.

Niceness of the Process

Nice will lower the cpu priority, freeing cpu power for other processes, ionice will reduce the disk priority, freeing the disk i/o for other processes). Use tar czf with nice as described here separately for the system and home such that you can easily work vertical with your systems in many projects

# http://unix.stackexchange.com/a/291720/16920
sudo nice tar czf /media/masi/ntfsDisc/backup_system_24.6.2016.tar.gz --exclude=/home \
    --exclude=/media --exclude=/dev \
    --exclude=/mnt --exclude=/sys \
    --exclude=/run --exclude=/proc /

sudo nice tar czf /media/masi/ntfsDiscSami/backup_home_24.6.2016.tar.gz $HOME/

Limit CPU consumption of the Process

Assume you have a limited system etc ultrabook with 20 Mb/s read/second. If you do not know it, use

# http://unix.stackexchange.com/q/291713/16920
tar cf - $HOME/ | pv | gzip > media/masi/ntfsDisc/testbackup.tar.gz

Then, limit your CPU and do

# http://unix.stackexchange.com/a/292659/16920
tar cf - $HOME/ | pv -L 10m | gzip > /media/masi/ntfsDisc/testbackup.tar.gz

Move Computation to GPU

TODO Future

This is certainly not the most TimeMachine-like program you ask for, but a solution that works, and because implemented as bash scripts, modifiable and extendable:

Create backup of your directory using the Zaloha.sh synchronizer:

$ Zaloha.sh --sourceDir="test_source" --backupDir="test_backup"

Then create a hardlink-based snapshot of your backup directory using Zaloha_Snapshot.sh:

$ Zaloha_Snapshot.sh --backupDir="test_backup" --snapDir="test_backup_20200101"

Official repository is here: https://github.com/Fitus/Zaloha.sh

The official repository contains simple working demos and a comprehensive documentation that explains how it works.