Backup preconditions (e.g. machine running on wall power - not battery)

[andrew-hardin]

I run periodic Borg backups using a few hand rolled scripts that are executed via systemd. Vorta is almost feature complete for my use case. The only missing feature is the concept of preconditions -- a check that must pass prior to running a backup, for example:

• Is the machine plugged into the wall, or, is it running on battery power? Only run backups on wall power.

Is there any interest in adding a power precondition to Vorta?

[m3nu]

Yes, that would be a nice addition for sure. Have you already tried using a pre-backup command? If it doesn't exit with status 0 then the backup wouldn't run.

We also have preconditions for networks. Under Schedule > Networks "Don't run on metered networks".

For a power precondition, I'd add it under Schedule in the right tab. Implementation wise, we'd need at least Linux and macOS. Usually we do an abstract class and then subclasses for each OS. See the network_status package for an example.

[andrew-hardin]

I haven't tried the pre-backup command, but that looks like it would work -- that's a powerful feature to have arbitrary pre/post backup hooks.

I've taken a quick pass at a notional power tab. The default behavior would be to ignore any power status (i.e. maintain the status quo).

For the implementation, psutil.sensors_battery() can yield the presence of a battery and estimated remaining time. I've verified the method works on Ubuntu, but can't verify on macOS. Perhaps outsourcing that logic to psutil alleviates the need for an interface with per-operating system implementations?