[[!tag obnam announcement]]

I have just released version 1.19 of Obnam, the backup program. See the website at http://obnam.org for details on what the program does. The new version is available from git (see http://git.liw.fi) and as Debian packages from http://code.liw.fi/debian, and uploaded to Debian, and soon in unstable.

The NEWS file extract below gives the highlights of what's new in this version.

NOTE: Obnam has an EXPERIMENTAL repository format under development, called green-albatross. It is NOT meant for real use. It is likely to change in incompatible ways without warning. Do not use it unless you're willing to lose your backup.

Version 1.19, released 2016-01-15

Bug fixes:

• Backup no longer ignores a closed SSH connection. This means it won't keep trying to use it, forever. Instead, it crashes and terminates the backup.

• The Paramiko SSH implementation, which Obnam uses, changed the interface to the prefetch method in its 1.16 version. Obnam can now deal with either variant of the method. Found and reported by Kyle Manna, who provided a patch that Lars Wirzenius rewrote to be backwards compatible to older versions of Paramiko.

Improvements to the manual:

• The manual now has an appendix listing all Obnam errors, with codes and explanations. This will need to be updated manually from time to time.

• The manual now has sections on turning on full debug logging and reporting problems.

Improvements to functionality:

• The output of obnam generations now show time zone. Lars Wirzenius implemented based on suggestion by Limdi.