Ask HN: How do you backup your linux system? • Hacker News Board

Re: Ask HN: How do you backup your linux system?

#21

Post by sliken » Fri, Jul 07, 2017, 8:58 PM UTC

b_emery wrote: post #2

No workflow, we just use BackupPC ( http://backuppc.sourceforge.net/ ) - cant recommend it enough. Restores are easy, monitoring and automation on different schedules is all built in. It's really great.

Love backuppc, especially 4.X where they replace the somewhat ugly hack of using hardlinks with checksums. Recommended if you have a collection of systems, if it's just a single system I'd use rdiff-backup (if you have remote storage) or duplicity if you want to pay for remote storage (amazon, rackspace, or similar).

Re: Ask HN: How do you backup your linux system?

#22

Post by icebraining » Fri, Jul 07, 2017, 8:59 PM UTC

I sync data using git-annex to a home server (atom with a couple of drives) and a hosted dedicated server. Technically not "backup" since I don't store old versions.

My work files are kept in git repos which I push to the same servers.

I use Ansible to configure my machine, so that I don't have to backup system files, just the playbooks.

Re: Ask HN: How do you backup your linux system?

#23

Post by brensmith » Fri, Jul 07, 2017, 9:01 PM UTC

For both windows/linux/macOS boxen we use burp. Replaced a propietary program used for over 15 years. http://burp.grke.org/ I highly recommend it.

Re: Ask HN: How do you backup your linux system?

#24

Post by icebraining » Fri, Jul 07, 2017, 9:01 PM UTC

blfr wrote: post #19

I don't back up the system. Drive failures are so rare nowadays that I will reinstall more often because of hardware changes. The important stuff (projects, dotfiles) I keep on Tarsnap. I also rsync my entire home directory to an external drive every other week or so. Similar for servers but I do back up /etc as well.

Why would you reinstall due to hardware changes? My Debian installation has survived the move from two laptops already without any glitches.

Re: Ask HN: How do you backup your linux system?

#25

Post by gorkonsine » Fri, Jul 07, 2017, 9:06 PM UTC

blfr wrote: post #19

I don't back up the system. Drive failures are so rare nowadays that I will reinstall more often because of hardware changes. The important stuff (projects, dotfiles) I keep on Tarsnap. I also rsync my entire home directory to an external drive every other week or so. Similar for servers but I do back up /etc as well.

>I also rsync my entire home directory to an external drive every other week or so.

This is what I do as well, just not quite as often. Sometimes I wonder if I should switch to something like rdiff-backup to get snapshots, but that would only really be useful if I accidentally deleted a file and didn't notice for a while, for instance, which in practice is not a serious problem.

If I had more time and inclination, I might set up a small 2-drive RAIDed NAS box, and do automated regular backups to that. But for my laptop PC, just doing regular syncs to an external HD seems to be fine for now.

Re: Ask HN: How do you backup your linux system?

#26

Post by blfr » Fri, Jul 07, 2017, 9:07 PM UTC

icebraining wrote: post #24

blfr wrote: post #19

I don't back up the system. Drive failures are so rare nowadays that I will reinstall more often because of hardware changes. The important stuff (projects, dotfiles) I keep on Tarsnap. I also rsync my entire home directory to an external drive every other week or so. Similar for servers but I do back up /etc as well.

Why would you reinstall due to hardware changes? My Debian installation has survived the move from two laptops already without any glitches.

My installation of Ubuntu is so standard that I'm one apt install and rsync (of the home directory) away from the same result and don't have to manually configure LVM, encryption, etc.

Re: Ask HN: How do you backup your linux system?

#27

Post by atmosx » Fri, Jul 07, 2017, 9:12 PM UTC

pmoriarty wrote: post #12

I use rdiff-backup.[1] "rdiff-backup backs up one directory to another, possibly over a network. The target directory ends up a copy of the source directory, but extra reverse diffs are stored in a special subdirectory of that target directory, so you can still recover files lost some time ago. The idea is to combine the best features of a mirror and an incremental backup. rdiff-backup also preserves subdirectories,…

Me too and I'm pretty happy with it. My retention period is 1Y for most systems.

Re: Ask HN: How do you backup your linux system?

#28

Post by zeep » Fri, Jul 07, 2017, 9:14 PM UTC

I have a script that checks which external drives are connected and when it finds the correct ones it backups to them using rsync. (Only /home is backed up but it varies depending on which external drive is connected)

Re: Ask HN: How do you backup your linux system?

#29

Post by aorth » Fri, Jul 07, 2017, 9:15 PM UTC

Tarsnap for documents (rotated with tarsnapper), S3 reduced redundancy for Pictures (JPG + RAW).

Re: Ask HN: How do you backup your linux system?

#30

Post by scottLobster » Fri, Jul 07, 2017, 9:22 PM UTC

Crashplan for docs/media. As for the system, I've been meaning to set up proper automatic btrfs snapshots/rsync but haven't gotten around to it yet. Worst case scenario all the docs/media are on their own RAIDZ array, so if some weird system corruption ever happens I can just reformat/reinstall.