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Backups Aren't Simple

filipovski.net

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Re: Backups Aren't Simple

#171

Post by cuvert »

cm2187 wrote: post #138
cuvert wrote: post #134

For my small library photos, keepass passwords, etc around 30gb, I use syncthing, which will backup on my pc, on my parents pc (they live in another country), on my sisters pc and on my phone. They also use this triangular mode to backup their stuff. Syncthing is setup to only sync through tailscale or home routers network.

So you delete a file by mistake and it replicates within seconds? Not exactly a backup. And a malware will do that to all of your files.

Yes, but I setup syncthing's file versioning to 25, in case of keepass, for example. Also, I set it up that only my PC can send, all other PCs, smartphones, can only receive. Sure, there are still many ways to attack this system, but I still prefer it.

Re: Backups Aren't Simple

#172

Post by CountGeek »

baxtr wrote: post #79
publlus_enigma wrote: post #20

There are four times in my life I have suffered regrettable data loss incidents. The first was when the telephone pole outside our house was struck directly by lightning. Not only was it the loudest thing I have ever heard, the current surged through the telephone line, into the internal fax modem, and fries everything within its vicinity. I was 10. I did have backuos, but only only floppy and they didn't cover every…

Since we’re talking about it: anyone backing up their iCloud photos? If so, how?

I have successfully used this about 2 years ago from a Synology to perform a one-time backup (download) of about 380GB of photos and videos from my iCloud account - https://github.com/icloud-photos-downloader/icloud_photos_do...

Re: Backups Aren't Simple

#173

Post by close04 »

sfn42 wrote: post #160
BLKNSLVR wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OneDrive... So much fail in one single product.

Man i absolutely hate how windows insists that my various personal folders need to be OneDrive and then complains that there's not enough space. I've tried to just disable/remove onedrive but if it's possible it's certainly not easy. I'm pretty sure there's a bunch of stuff I've lost due to the same thing the other guy described, limit was reduced and files just deleted. Either give me unlimited space or get out of m…

I have the paid OD, and think I know what I'm doing, and still got burned on occasions, luckily with little consequence due to other mechanisms in place. But when I really didn't want to deal with OD's crap, I went all nuclear on it. Uninstall. When MS insisted to reinstall it, I replaced the executable and went for file system permissions. I twisted them so hard that even MS couldn't (or at least didn't try to) overwrite my fake OD executable.

I stopped running Windows wherever I can not because the tools or OS are that bad but because a machine should come with sane defaults but should respect my wishes if I want to go against those defaults. When it starts to override me, it's not my machine anymore and whoever "owns" it (MS in this case) can shove it.

Re: Backups Aren't Simple

#174

Post by dsego »

torton wrote: post #76
dsego wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For digital media we really need a good stable archival storage solution. Nothing on the market right now for ordinary people.

There's plenty of backup services and cloud solutions. The article mentions Borg and Restic, others like Backblaze are more consumer friendly. Which needs do you have that aren't met by any of these tools?

Backups are not archival storage. If you stop paying for service, say goodbye to your data.

Re: Backups Aren't Simple

#175

Post by cm2187 »

cuvert wrote: post #171
cm2187 wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So you delete a file by mistake and it replicates within seconds? Not exactly a backup. And a malware will do that to all of your files.

Yes, but I setup syncthing's file versioning to 25, in case of keepass, for example. Also, I set it up that only my PC can send, all other PCs, smartphones, can only receive. Sure, there are still many ways to attack this system, but I still prefer it.

As long as you have different credentials on all of your machines. I have witnessed first hand that once a malware infects a machine, any machine with shared credentials in the vicinity is infected within seconds.

Re: Backups Aren't Simple

#176

Post by mrheosuper »

Dylan16807 wrote: post #149
mrheosuper wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And harm a lot too, you phone can't deep sleep since it has to wake up periodically to process data from bluetooth stack. Combined with slow transfer speed, that gonna eat your battery like nothing.

Playing audio over bluetooth also wakes things periodically, but it uses almost no power. With a similarly competent design photo transfer should be very battery efficient.

No, most(if not all) bluetooth controller has audio offload, basically the cpu does not involve(or very little) when transfering data from storage to radio.

Re: Backups Aren't Simple

#177

Post by crabbone »

Some complexity levels not mentioned in the article:

* Consistency groups. The article kinda almost gets there, but stops right before it realizes there's a problem. If you have multiple programs accessing the storage, s.a. a database (that you are snapshotting) and the application using the database, then you are risking an inconsistent snapshot when the database state you wrote is ahead or behind the application state. You need a mechanism to freeze all I/O beside the snapshot in order to ensure that the snapshot data is useful.

* ACLs. And similar external mapping to the storage being used, eg. what if the users come from an LDAP server? Similar problem with symlinks coming from/going to ouitside the snapshot.

* Sparse file support. Let's say you have a few VM images in your snapshot: if your tool doesn't support sparse files, it will likely greatly inflate the image sizes.

Bottom line, either use the product's own snapshot functionality (ZFS has those), or switch to the product that does.

Re: Backups Aren't Simple

#178

Post by cuvert »

Oxodao wrote: post #135
cuvert wrote: post #134

For my small library photos, keepass passwords, etc around 30gb, I use syncthing, which will backup on my pc, on my parents pc (they live in another country), on my sisters pc and on my phone. They also use this triangular mode to backup their stuff. Syncthing is setup to only sync through tailscale or home routers network.

sync is not backup Also why you sync through LAN only?

I was in a vacation and I couldn't connect to a remote pc. And since then I set up wireguard in all routers and I also changed syncthing LAN only.

Re: Backups Aren't Simple

#179

Post by mrngld »

undebuggable wrote: post #95
baxtr wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Since we’re talking about it: anyone backing up their iCloud photos? If so, how?

From iPhone into local machine through LocalSend or AirDrop, then your usual favorite backup pipeline.

That's tedious. Can't believe nobody mentioned Parachute Backup yet. It had a moment in the sun earlier this year or last year when it first started getting traction.

I have a Mac, so not just an iPhone, so I use Arq there, it materializes the iCloud stuff as necessary for backup. But if all you have is an iPhone or iPad along with an external disk, NAS or whatever, Parachute Backup will do backups to a variety of destinations.

Re: Backups Aren't Simple

#180

Post by afilipovski »

crabbone wrote: post #177

Some complexity levels not mentioned in the article: * Consistency groups. The article kinda almost gets there, but stops right before it realizes there's a problem. If you have multiple programs accessing the storage, s.a. a database (that you are snapshotting) and the application using the database, then you are risking an inconsistent snapshot when the database state you wrote is ahead or behind the application st…

Thanks for the input. These things never crossed my mind, even the first one which in hindsight should have been obvious to me. I will update the article to include these.
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