Parrot is a service that backs up files from a monitored file/directory.

Parrot runs as a systemd user service and also as a dbus service. Parrot's dbus service capabilities offer signals and methods that allow you to remotely set up watches to back up files and/or signal on events.

Parrot is a systemd user service, being so means that the DBUS_SESSION_BUS_ADDRESS will not be set to the correct bus address (since none of the environment variables are set in a systemd user instance). To circumvent this, Parrot runs an instance of dbus as a systemd service. There are several files under the systemd directory to set this up. The .socket unit activates the systemd socket for the dbus bus address. The matching .service unit executes the dbus session, while the .conf drop in sets the environment variable bus address name.

The screenshot above shows an instance of Parrot on d-feet (a dbus utility program). Once a Parrot watch is set on a directory, anytime a file in that directory is opened Parrot will make a backup of that file before any changes occur. That way if any mistakes are written to that file and saved, there will be a backup of the file before those changes took place.

In addition to backing up files, Parrot functions in helping log when those changes/accesses in the Parrot'd directory occur. By subscribing to Parrot's accessed signal, Parrot will broadcast a signal in the form of seconds since the epoch whenever a file in the watch directory is accessed. This signal can easily be logged in whatever form needed or some other form of action can be take place such as callbacks to extend any additional functionality that might be called for.

GCC is required to compile, to install run in the base directory:

[user@user ~]$ make
[user@user ~]$ sudo make install
[user@user ~]$ make install-service
[user@user ~]$ make clean

and to uninstall:

[user@user ~]$ sudo make uninstall
[user@user ~]$ make uninstall-service