I’ve been looking at my backup strategy, and came to the conclusion that it’s pretty much all rsync…
Rsync /home + /mnt/* to Client-side External Drive
Rsync /home + /mnt/* to NAS
Rsync NAS to Client-side External Drive
Synology Hyperbackup to encrypted cloud repo.
Synology Hyperbackup to encrypted NAS-side USB drive.
Is there anything I’m missing? There’s versioning on the hyperbackup jobs which covers off corruption.
(My only issue is Timeshift fails to see any snapshots after chrooting in, even after manually specifying the device, but again, worst case, yep… I can always rsync root folders if needed) Do I even need timeshift…? Maybe vorta+borg makes more sense here. Interested to know your strategies for system backup on ext4-based filesystems. I’m not yet at the stage of snapshotting all the things
I use Timeshift + Rsync for my system directories — so it’s just for system restores, which I got to test 4 times in the last 7 days due to an issue with iwd. Thankfully, the restorations worked successfully each time.
And I use Unison for some specific user directories which sync to an external drive as a backup, as well as a few app settings to and from my Ubuntu installation. This also works successfully each time.
I used to be religious with the TImeshifts/gpgs/Restic/Vorta but it’s quite liberating to stop giving a sh**. I didn’t need every byte and every setting preserved. Probably never did.
Regularly rsync your valuables only. Linux likes to burn itself down every so often (your own hand or update) and it’s quite awesome to do a fresh install and be operable in 2 hours. You can try new stuff, break old habits.
All the little tweaks you did and loved will come back in the next few days with no stress.
two pennies here
You’re absolutely correct. Anything (or setting) can be downloaded and reinstalled quite easily and quickly. I can get a running system up in about 15 minutes. Though remembering specific apps that aren’t needed often may take a day or two.
I have backups of files I have created in two places to several places, and that’s all that needs a backup.
You know, this is one of those posts that genuinely made me just stop and think, - “huh, that’s actually… a reasonable response!” I back up my dot files separately, so I guess the rest can just be nuked and paved if needed. One thing I realised is, - I know how to chroot, it’s not rocket science, but beyond that, I can figure the rest out and get things where I need them to be within an hour at most. Thanks for this, - that’s actually not a bad call!
