Pale Moon profile backup tool

[Moonchild]

For people wanting an easy way of backing up their Pale Moon profiles (single click), I've created a simple profile backup tool.

Development of this tool is very slow. I'm working on trying to make a proper encryption for it, but it's proving to be tricky because of limits of the compression tool. MozBackup was supposed to add support for Pale Moon but that tool seems all but abandoned by now.

The program uses Igor Pavlov's 7-zip Open Source compression tool to compress the backups (by default, but compression can be disabled). There is no password protection built into this tool.

It's meant for basic desktop installations only. Portable browser users don't need it, they can simply copy their browser&profile somewhere safe.
People with custom profile paths probably don't need it, they are likely to have profiles stored in an easy to use/copy location already anyway.
Once again: this will only work for default, desktop installations!

Options:

• Compression: uses 'normal' 7z compression, decent speed and not too power-hungry. No compression if disabled (very fast copy).
• Overwrite: Overwrites/updates the backup if one was already made that day. When checked, only one (_00) backup per date will be stored. When unchecked, will number backups incrementally.
• Show command window: When checked, it shows the command window of the 7-zip packer as it works. This is disabled by default and included mainly for people wanting extensive detail or for troubleshooting.

Interface:

• Refresh icon: refreshes the list with backups.
• Folder icon: opens an explorer window in the folder where the backups are stored (to delete, manage, etc.).
• Backup: simply hit the button to make a backup.
• Restore: select one of the backups in the list, and hit restore to restore the profile.
• Set backup path, Options, Exit: self-explanatory.

NOTE: at the time of this writing, some AV programs may flag this program as a "Generic trojan". These are false positives on the rapid application builder package used to create this tool.

Download from: https://www.palemoon.org/backuptool.shtml

Simply save it in a write-enabled location (it won't work from read-only media) and run it. No install/uninstall is needed - once you're done with it you can simply delete it.
Upon first run, it will extract the 7-zip packer, and create a settings file to remember the options you choose (including backup path).

Technical note: *.pmbackup files are regular 7-zip archives, but given this extension to keep the program from offering restores of non-backup archives. If you want to manually work with these in 7-zip, rename them to *.7z

[dark_moon]

Nice job. Works fine under win7 x64

[jumba]

Thanks, very handy tool to create a profile backup!

I have used winrar to create backups of my pm and thunderbird profiles with a batch file. Here's the batch file if anyone needs a command line version. It can also be used to update the backup files to synchronize the contents between profile and archive. Paths and file names are defined at the beginning and of course it only works with WinRAR installed!

Code: Select all

@echo off
set BackupPath=C:\Backups
if not exist "%BackupPath%" mkdir "%BackupPath%"
set ProfilePath1=C:\Users\administrator\AppData\Roaming\Moonchild Productions\Pale Moon
set ProfilePath2=C:\Users\administrator\AppData\Roaming\Thunderbird
set BackupFile1=%BackupPath%\Palemoon_profile.rar
set BackupFile2=%BackupPath%\Thunderbird_profile.rar

if not exist "%ProfilePath1%" (
echo Path for profile1 not set or incorrect!
goto profile2
)
if exist "%BackupFile1%" (
echo Updating backup file for profile1 ..
) else (
echo Creating backup file for profile1..
)
start /wait winrar a -u -as -ep1 -r -ibck "%BackupFile1%" "%ProfilePath1%"\*
echo done.
:profile2
if not exist "%ProfilePath2%" (
echo Path for profile2 not set or incorrect!
goto end
)
if exist "%BackupFile2%" (
echo Updating backup file for profile2..
) else (
echo Creating backup file for profile2..
)
start /wait winrar a -u -as -ep1 -r -ibck "%BackupFile2%" "%ProfilePath2%"\*
echo done.
:end
pause

[dark_moon]

I have a batch too, but without so much code:

Code: Select all

@echo off
F:\7-Zip\7zG a "%temp%\Pale Moon_%date%.7z" "C:\Users\username\AppData\Roaming\Moonchild Productions\Pale Moon\Profiles\random.default"
copy /V "%temp%\Pale Moon_%date%.7z" "X:\Backup">nul

7-Zip is better then winrar and opensource

[Moonchild]

7-Zip is better then winrar and opensource

Even more so, WinRAR is commercial, you have to buy a license after the trial period has ended if you continue using it.

[jumba]

interesting.. 7-zip's "7zG u -uq0" should be equivalent to winrar's "winrar a -u -as", which does the synchronous updating. Time to move to use 7-zip!
It still lacks some of few features that I miss from winrar, though..

[Moonchild]

Updated the to to 1.1.1 for better naming of the backup files (leading zeroes and now handling proper naming of more than 10 backups/day, if you're that paranoid about data corruption )

[Moonchild]

Updated to 1.2.0 to include a much more modern version of the 7-zip archiver. otherwise this is unchanged.

SHA256: 37fd7a83c215922073ea5b9bf1def940ea3e44a1192af280a71092fb6a0e2941
Size: 2,437,436 Bytes

Note: code-signing was not possible because current code signing techniques apparently break the way the rapid application builder works (data overlays of .exe files break)

[therube]

Download link:

Above download link is no longer valid.

Guess you'll want, (direct) http://rm-eu.palemoon.org/tools/pmbackup.exe or (webpage) Pale Moon profile backup tool.

[Moonchild]

Yeah updated the first post to be more generic.