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Timeshift: System Restore Tool for Linux

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Re: Timeshift: System Restore Tool for Linux

#71

Post by sieve »

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 the boot drive. If I muck something up, the data drives will be offline for a few minutes till I fix the problem. Doing the same with the boot drive is pain I can live without.

Re: Timeshift: System Restore Tool for Linux

#72

Post by Barrin92 »

LorenDB wrote: 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…

openSUSE honestly is so criminally underrated. I've been using Tumbleweed for a few years for my dev/work systems and YaST is just great. Also that they ship fully tested images for their rolling release is just so much saner. OBS is another fantastic tool that I see so few people talking about, despite software distribution still being such a sore point in the linux ecosystem.

Re: Timeshift: System Restore Tool for Linux

#73

Post by bongobingo1 »

pixelmonkey wrote: post #38

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.

Re: Timeshift: System Restore Tool for Linux

#74

Post by bobek »

pixelmonkey wrote: post #38

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 have ended up with something very similar. Restic/rclone is awesome combo. https://bobek.cz/restic-rclone/

Re: Timeshift: System Restore Tool for Linux

#75

Post by hashworks »

bongobingo1 wrote: post #73
pixelmonkey wrote: post #38

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, and I never had problems with any of them. Restic has the advantage that it supports a lot more endpoints than ssh/borg, f.e. S3 (or anything that rclone supports). Also borg might be a little bit more complicated to get started with than restic.

Re: Timeshift: System Restore Tool for Linux

#76

Post by hashworks »

ratorx wrote: post #48
pixelmonkey wrote: post #38

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…

One problem with file based backups is that they are not atomic across the filesystem. If you ever back up a database (or really any application that expects atomicity while it’s running), then you might corrupt the database and lose data. This might not seem like a big problem, but can affect e.g. SQLite, which is quite popular as a file format. Then again, the likelihood that the backup will be inconsistent is fair…

While I do that, is that really the case? I can imagine database snapshots are consistent most of the time, but it can't be guaranteed, right? In the end it's like a server crash, the database suddenly stops.

Re: Timeshift: System Restore Tool for Linux

#77

Post by lmz »

hashworks wrote: post #76
ratorx wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One problem with file based backups is that they are not atomic across the filesystem. If you ever back up a database (or really any application that expects atomicity while it’s running), then you might corrupt the database and lose data. This might not seem like a big problem, but can affect e.g. SQLite, which is quite popular as a file format. Then again, the likelihood that the backup will be inconsistent is fair…

While I do that, is that really the case? I can imagine database snapshots are consistent most of the time, but it can't be guaranteed, right? In the end it's like a server crash, the database suddenly stops.

Your DB is supposed to guarantee consistency even in server crashes. (The Consistency, Durability part of ACID).

Re: Timeshift: System Restore Tool for Linux

#78

Post by lmz »

magicalhippo wrote: post #59
ratorx wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One problem with file based backups is that they are not atomic across the filesystem. If you ever back up a database (or really any application that expects atomicity while it’s running), then you might corrupt the database and lose data. This might not seem like a big problem, but can affect e.g. SQLite, which is quite popular as a file format. Then again, the likelihood that the backup will be inconsistent is fair…

Windows' Volume Shadow Copy Service[1] allows applications like databases to be informed[2] when a snapshot is about to be taken, so they can ensure their files are in a safe state. They also participate in the restore. While Linux is great at many things, backups is one area I find lacking compared to what I'm used to from Windows. There I take frequent incremental whole-disk backups. The backup program uses the Vol…

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

Re: Timeshift: System Restore Tool for Linux

#79

Post by croniev »

Timeshift does not work for me because I encrypted my ssd, decrypt on boot, but linux sees every file twice, once encrypted and once decrypted, thinking that my storage is full, and thus timeshift refuses to make backups due to no storage. At least thats as far as I'm understanding it atm

Re: Timeshift: System Restore Tool for Linux

#80

Post by PhilippGille »

pixelmonkey wrote: post #38

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 only back up your home directory, or also others? I didn't find info about that in your post.
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