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Show HN: Baxx – Unix-friendly backup service

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Re: Show HN: Baxx – Unix-friendly backup service

#161

Post by y4mi »

bloopernova wrote: post #28

(Alternative product recommendation, please downvote/remove if you feel that isn't appropriate) For Unix/Linux backups, may I suggest Borg Backup? It encrypts and does dedupe astonishingly well. It also works over SSH incredibly fast, and restores are via a mounted FUSE filesystem so they're easy to pick and choose what you need. It prunes really well too, and is a single executable so it's easy to distribute via Ans…

You should make a habit of setting

  set -euo Pipefail
  if "${DEBUG:-false}”; then set -x; fi
The -o Pipefail is irrelevant in this case, as you're not using any.. but better it's there in case you ever extend the script.

As others have pointed out: readability comes right after correctness in shell script, do keeping it simple as you have done is always a good idea.

Re: Show HN: Baxx – Unix-friendly backup service

#162

Post by cyphar »

bloopernova wrote: post #28

(Alternative product recommendation, please downvote/remove if you feel that isn't appropriate) For Unix/Linux backups, may I suggest Borg Backup? It encrypts and does dedupe astonishingly well. It also works over SSH incredibly fast, and restores are via a mounted FUSE filesystem so they're easy to pick and choose what you need. It prunes really well too, and is a single executable so it's easy to distribute via Ans…

I would follow up with a suggestion to also consider restic, which is very similar to Borg Backup -- except it doesn't have the restriction that the server needs to be "clever" (you can upload to S3 or any dumb blob store).

Re: Show HN: Baxx – Unix-friendly backup service

#163

Post by sourcesmith »

yjftsjthsd-h wrote: post #95
zulgan wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used E because € does not render on xterm, maybe I should switch it to EUR to remove the confusion also fixed the $ to E in the blog, thanks for the heads up

> because € does not render on xterm, It does for me?

Yes, no problem rendering a € in an xterm.

Re: Show HN: Baxx – Unix-friendly backup service

#164

Post by Max_aaa »

cyphar wrote: post #162
bloopernova wrote: post #28

(Alternative product recommendation, please downvote/remove if you feel that isn't appropriate) For Unix/Linux backups, may I suggest Borg Backup? It encrypts and does dedupe astonishingly well. It also works over SSH incredibly fast, and restores are via a mounted FUSE filesystem so they're easy to pick and choose what you need. It prunes really well too, and is a single executable so it's easy to distribute via Ans…

I would follow up with a suggestion to also consider restic, which is very similar to Borg Backup -- except it doesn't have the restriction that the server needs to be "clever" (you can upload to S3 or any dumb blob store).

I just run borgbackup and backup to a local folder, and rsync to my home nas if I am connected to my home network.

If I need to force a sync over the internet, there is a small shell script that would rsync the backup folder to the home nas.

This allows me to run hourly backups even if there is no network connection (or limited bandwidth), and then just auto sync when I get home, or force a backup when I get a good connection.

Re: Show HN: Baxx – Unix-friendly backup service

#165

Post by zulgan »

UI_at_80x24 wrote: post #142

I want to thank-you for using a good-name for your service. Too many times some developer will pick a common word to launch their service/product thus making it impossible to search for it. Your name (a) is a single syllable (b) almost hints at what it does in the name (Baxxup?) (c) is not easily confused with other products (d) Your closest competitor from a google SEO standpoint is a tanning salon (single word goog…

thanks! my process is actually much easier than you think i simply do some small transpositions on really cool(for me) names i have seen in world of warcraft :) such as zulgan and juun, judoc; jaxx -> baxx because backups start with b

others I chose are horrible, such as https://scrambled-eggs.xyz which is effectively unsearchable, though you could say it was by design haha

Re: Show HN: Baxx – Unix-friendly backup service

#166

Post by cellularmitosis »

ars wrote: post #132
arendtio wrote: post #109

Two reasons why I do not want to use the service in its current state (meant as constructive criticism): 1. If I would send my backups to some SASS there is no way I would do that without encryption. 2. I like to backup my filesystem and not just the files in it (to make sure I've got everything and make restoring easy). Currently, I just dd my block devices, but I am sure that could be optimized to not upload a comp…

> Currently, I just dd my block devices That's actually not a good idea at all. It's very fragile, the slightest problem and you may lose the entire backup. Silent corruption may get backed up for months and you won't notice until it's too late. Doing a restore means having space for the full file, just to restore a single small file. If you don't know when your file changed you may have to do that multiple times ins…

Rather than "don't do that", I would say "also, backup individual files".

Fragile seems to be a matter of perspective. I do a dd block-device backup before doing anything "risky" with a machine (i.e. upgrading major OS version, etc), because it is by far the most bullet-proof / fail-proof way to go back in time.

Re: Show HN: Baxx – Unix-friendly backup service

#167

Post by throwawaymath »

dchest wrote: post #156
throwawaymath wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you walk me through how AES-GCM or ChaPoly breaks authenticity and confidentiality, but AES-CTR doesn't? I'm not following you. Moreover, I'm pretty sure Borg's developers are actively considering ChaPoly for the future.

GCM/Poly1305 require unique nonces, so if they are repeated, the authenticity is broken. HMAC doesn't need nonces, so authenticity is preserved as long as the key is secret.

I'm aware of that, and mentioned that point in my original comment. What I'm not following is why Borg can't safely use AES-GCM or ChaPoly instead of AES-CTR + HMAC.

Again: the team is actively considering using AES-GCM and ChaPoly in the future. I don't see anything intrinsic to either that preempts their use in Borg.

Re: Show HN: Baxx – Unix-friendly backup service

#168

Post by zoratu »

dmd wrote: post #141
bloopernova wrote: post #28

(Alternative product recommendation, please downvote/remove if you feel that isn't appropriate) For Unix/Linux backups, may I suggest Borg Backup? It encrypts and does dedupe astonishingly well. It also works over SSH incredibly fast, and restores are via a mounted FUSE filesystem so they're easy to pick and choose what you need. It prunes really well too, and is a single executable so it's easy to distribute via Ans…

I evaluated Borg and Restic and found that both of them fall over once you get to (what I consider to be) production level volumes; in my case that's ~1 PB and in the range of a billion files. Sadly, the only thing I've found so far that works at all at those scales is Bacula, and that is file-based -- i.e., if you have a gigabyte file that changes by one byte, it backs up the whole gigabyte again. Not ideal.

In that case, what do you use?

Re: Show HN: Baxx – Unix-friendly backup service

#169

Post by blattimwind »

throwawaymath wrote: post #167
dchest wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

GCM/Poly1305 require unique nonces, so if they are repeated, the authenticity is broken. HMAC doesn't need nonces, so authenticity is preserved as long as the key is secret.

I'm aware of that, and mentioned that point in my original comment. What I'm not following is why Borg can't safely use AES-GCM or ChaPoly instead of AES-CTR + HMAC. Again: the team is actively considering using AES-GCM and ChaPoly in the future. I don't see anything intrinsic to either that preempts their use in Borg.

Yes, in a different construction there would be no problem. And there have been plans since at least 2016 to replace/augment the current construction with something that uses a master key to derive per-chunk encryption keys; it just never has been implemented.

IIRC AES-GCM was kinda low on the list with a preference for just using Chapoly, because Chapoly just works and is also secure on any processor, unlike AES-GCM, which is very nasty to implement without hardware support for the arithmetic over GF(2^128).

Re: Show HN: Baxx – Unix-friendly backup service

#170

Post by ZoomZoomZoom »

TheWiseOne wrote: post #118
garettmd wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does anyone know how it compares to Restic? That's what I've been using and have been pretty pleased. It seems like the main difference is that restic supports integrations with other services, whereas Borg seems uses SSH for its connections

Restic also works on Windows, whereas Borg doesn't (yet), if that's a consideration.

It works very well under Cygwin, so no problem, if you can install that.
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