bak

usage: bak [-h] [-a APPEND] [-d] [-f] [-u] Source

Backup a file or directory, defaults to same path with suffix .bak

positional arguments:
  Source                file to backup

optional arguments:
  -h, --help            show this help message and exit
  -a APPEND, --append APPEND
                        characters to append to source file instead of .bak
  -d, --date            add the date .YYYYMMDD to the end of the file
  -f, --force           overwrite backup if exists
  -u, --unbak           Unbak a file to its original location, force overwrite
                        (if your filesystem supports extended file attributes)

unbak

usage: unbak [-h] Source

Restore a file created by bak, this is the same as bak -u

positional arguments:
  Source      bak file to restore

optional arguments:
  -h, --help  show this help message and exit

Install

Install using pip https://pypi.org/project/bak/

# See if pip is install
python3 -m pip --version
# Try and install it
python3 -m ensurepip --default-pip
# Install bak
python3 -m pip install bak

unbak, bak -u

bak -u allows you to restore a file backed up using bak.

By default bak creates metadata on the .bak file https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extended_file_attributes

bak would then try to restore to the path stored in the metadata, if the metadata is removed, this wont work.

Notes

It is really easy to lose the metadata, and you need to take active measures to preserve metadata if moving/copying the backup file.

http://www.lesbonscomptes.com/pages/extattrs.html

mv preserves xattrs cp will only preserve xattrs if given the option --preserve=xattr rsync 3.0.9 with option -X or --xattrs will preserve attributes

If copying to a filesystem that does not support metadata (tmpfs for example) metadata will be lost