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Timeshift: System Restore Tool for Linux

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Re: Timeshift: System Restore Tool for Linux

#111

I've probably spent way too much time thinking about Linux backup over the years. But thankfully, I found a setup that works really well for me in 2018 or so, used it for the last few years, and I wrote up a detailed blog post about it just a month ago: https://amontalenti.com/2024/06/19/backups-restic-rclone The tools I use on Linux for backup are restic + rclone, storing my restic repo on a speedy USB3 SSD. For off…

Do you have much of an opinion on why you went with Restic over Borg? The single Go binary is an obvious one, perhaps that alone is enough. I remember some people having un-bound memory usage with Restic but that might have been a very old version.

I use both to try to mitigate the risk of losing data due to a backup format/program bug[1]. If I wasn't worried about that, I'd probably go with Borg but only because my offsite backup provider can be made to enforce append-only backups with Borg, but not Restic, at least not that I could find.[2] Otherwise, I have not found one to be substantially better than the other in practice.

1 - some of my first experiences with backup failures were due to media problems -- this was back in the days when "backup" pretty much meant "pipe tar to tape" and while the backup format was simple, tape quality was pretty bad. These days, media -- tape or disk -- is much more reliable, but backup formats are much more complex, with encryption, data de-dup, etc. Therefore, I consider the backup format to be at least as much of a risk to me now as the media. So, anyway, I do two backups: the local one uses restic, the cloud backup uses borg.

2 - I use rsync.net, which I generally like a lot. I wrote up my experiences with append-only backups, including what I did to make them work with rsync.net here: https://marcusb.org/posts/ransomware-resistant-backups/

Re: Timeshift: System Restore Tool for Linux

#112
post #33

I prefer using openSUSE, which is tightly integrated with snapper[0], making it simple to recover from a botched update. I've only ever had to use it when an update broke my graphics drivers, but when you need it, it's invaluable. Snapper on openSUSE is integrated with both zypper (package manager) and YaST (system configuration tool) [1], so you get automatic snapshots before and after destructive actions. Also, ope…

for RHEL based distributions you can do the same with an LVM and using boom boot manager.

https://github.com/snapshotmanager/boom-boot

Re: Timeshift: System Restore Tool for Linux

#113

I've probably spent way too much time thinking about Linux backup over the years. But thankfully, I found a setup that works really well for me in 2018 or so, used it for the last few years, and I wrote up a detailed blog post about it just a month ago: https://amontalenti.com/2024/06/19/backups-restic-rclone The tools I use on Linux for backup are restic + rclone, storing my restic repo on a speedy USB3 SSD. For off…

I've been mulling over setting up restic/kopia backups - and recently discovering httm[1] support restic directly in addition to zfs (and) more - I think I finally will.

[1] https://github.com/kimono-koans/httm

Re: Timeshift: System Restore Tool for Linux

#114
post #71

ZFS Snapshots + Sanoid and Syncoid to manage and trigger them is what people should be doing. Unfortunately, booting from ZFS volumes seems to be some form of black art unless things have changed over the last couple of years. The license conflict and OpenZFS always having to chase kernel releases often resulting in delayed releases for new kernels means I cannot confidently use them with rolling release distros on t…

Best option to date: https://github.com/zbm-dev/zfsbootmenu

A shame most distro's installers don't support it natively, but an encrypted rootfs on ZFS is great once you get it setup.

Re: Timeshift: System Restore Tool for Linux

#115
post #113

I've probably spent way too much time thinking about Linux backup over the years. But thankfully, I found a setup that works really well for me in 2018 or so, used it for the last few years, and I wrote up a detailed blog post about it just a month ago: https://amontalenti.com/2024/06/19/backups-restic-rclone The tools I use on Linux for backup are restic + rclone, storing my restic repo on a speedy USB3 SSD. For off…

I've been mulling over setting up restic/kopia backups - and recently discovering httm[1] support restic directly in addition to zfs (and) more - I think I finally will. [1] https://github.com/kimono-koans/httm

I only discovered httm thanks to this thread, and I'll definitely be trying it out for the first time today. Maybe I'll add an addendum to my blog post about it.

Re: Timeshift: System Restore Tool for Linux

#116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem, unfortunately, is that Nix often finds itself in a chicken and egg scenario where nixpkgs fails to provide a lot of important packages or has versions that are old(er). But for there to be more investment in adding more packages, etc. you need more people using the ecosystem.

Nixpkgs is the largest and most up to date package repository according to https://repology.org/ I'm honestly curious what packages you have a problem with

Proprietary package vendors often provide a. deb that assumes Ubuntu. Maybe also a. rpm for RedHat if you're lucky.

Re: Timeshift: System Restore Tool for Linux

#117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In fairness, this app supports snapshotting your home directory as well, and that's not solvable with Nix alone. In fact, I'm running NixOS and I've been meaning to set up Timeshift or Snapper for my homedir, but alas, I haven't found the time.

Is there something about your home directory that you'd want to back up that is not covered by invoking home manager as a nix module as part if nixos-rebuild? https://nix-community.github.io/home-manager/index.xhtml#sec... To me, it's better than a filesystem-backup because the things that make it into home manager tend to be exactly the things that I want to back up. The rest of it (e.g. screenshots, downloads) aren…

Data (documents, pictures, source code, etc.) is not handled by home-manager. Backing up home.nix saves your config, but the data is just as if not more important.

Re: Timeshift: System Restore Tool for Linux

#118
My system is different and simpler:

The root partition / and the home partition /home are different.

There's a /home/etc/ folder with a very small set of configuration files I want to save, everything else is nuked on reinstall.

When I do a reinstall, the root partition is formatted, the /home partition is not.

This allows me to test different distros and not be tied to any particular distro or any particular backup tool, if I test a distro and I don't like it, then it is very easy to change it.

Re: Timeshift: System Restore Tool for Linux

#119
post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

LVM snapshots are copy on write and can be used the same way.

Any backup software that utilizes LVM in this way? Ie automatically creates a snapshot and sends the incremental changes since previous snapshot to a backup destination like a NAS or S3 blob storage.

wyng backup does this. It uses the device mappers thin_dump tools to allow for incremental backups between snapshots, too:

https://github.com/tasket/wyng-backup

edit: requires lvm thin provisioned volumes

There is also thin-send-recv which basically does the same as zfs send/recv just with lvm:

https://github.com/LINBIT/thin-send-recv

it uses the same functions of the device mapper to allow incremental sync of lvm thin volumes.

Re: Timeshift: System Restore Tool for Linux

#120
post #118

My system is different and simpler: The root partition / and the home partition /home are different. There's a /home/etc/ folder with a very small set of configuration files I want to save, everything else is nuked on reinstall. When I do a reinstall, the root partition is formatted, the /home partition is not. This allows me to test different distros and not be tied to any particular distro or any particular backup…

/home/etc or ~/etc?
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