Personal Backup Version 5.2
	© 2012, J. Rathlev, IEAP, Uni-Kiel

Log file

If you so wish, Personal Backup can maintain a log file of all Backup, Restore and/or Cleanup actions. The basic settings are made in the main menu Preferences ⇒ Log file. These settings will be used for each new backup task and can be adjusted individually for each task in task options.

The log file is very useful for determining the reason behind any possible backup errors. The Extended mode will contain a great deal of additional information and can be used for debugging purposes.

As new logs are added to existing entries, the log files will grow ever larger. The size of these files can be limited under Log settings (see screenshot). On reaching the selected size, the program will rename the current log using the current date (PersBackup yyyy-mm-dd.log) and continue with a new, initially empty, log file.

One of the following log modes can be selected depending on the data you wish to be included:

Short:

Date and time of backup

Destination directories

Error notifications (optionally with warnings)

Backup status with the number of files copied, deleted and checked

Long:

As for Short including warnings

List of all files copied on backup and all files deleted on synchronization

Extended:

As for Long, but with much additional information, such as timestamps, attributes, skipped files (useful only for debugging purposes)

Warnings are generated when the backup copy succeeded but changing the attributes and/or timestamp failed at destination.

Optionally, a printout of the log file can be made to a selected printer after each backup.

  Viewing the log file

A log view window will open. Clicking the appropriate button will print out or delete the log file. Additionally, you can search for the beginning of a backup section (blue arrows), backup errors (red arrows) or any other text. To copy text to the clipboard, no text selection is required for the whole text. For part of the text, select a section and type Ctrl+C or Ctrl+Ins on your keyboard.

Sending the log by mail

Using the task options you can arrange for a mail notification to be sent after backup to one or more recipients. The log file of the last backup can be attached.

Printing the log file

To print only part of the log, the desired text should be selected using the mouse or keyboard. If nothing is selected, the whole log will be printed out.