From Newsgroup: comp.sys.raspberry-pi

Hi.

I've (fairly) recently become the proud owner of a Pi5 running Raspberry
Pi OS. Storage is a 250 Gig NVMe drive.

I also have a Synology NAS.

I'm looking for suggestions on software I can use to back up the Pi5 to
the NAS. I've seen conflicting suggestions on various sites, so thought I would come to the fount of all knowledge that is Usenet.

Any suggestions gratefully received.
--
Brian Howlett
--------------------------------------------------------------
I came home from work the other day and found that someone had
stolen all my furniture, and replaced it with exact replicas...
--- Synchronet 3.21a-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: comp.sys.raspberry-pi

On Sun, 22 Jun 2025 00:29:01 +0100, Brian Howlett wrote:

Hi.

I've (fairly) recently become the proud owner of a Pi5 running Raspberry
Pi OS. Storage is a 250 Gig NVMe drive.

I also have a Synology NAS.

I'm looking for suggestions on software I can use to back up the Pi5 to
the NAS. I've seen conflicting suggestions on various sites, so thought
I would come to the fount of all knowledge that is Usenet.

Any suggestions gratefully received.

rsync.
--- Synchronet 3.21a-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: comp.sys.raspberry-pi

Brian Howlett wrote:

Any suggestions gratefully received.

Forget all BS like rsync etc. except you don't care about disk space.
Borg backup is the best as it uses deduplication.

BR

--- Synchronet 3.21a-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: comp.sys.raspberry-pi

In message <f881ae305c.BrianNews@brianhowlett.me.uk>
Brian Howlett <news-spamtrap@brianhowlett.me.uk> wrote:

Hi.

I've (fairly) recently become the proud owner of a Pi5 running Raspberry
Pi OS. Storage is a 250 Gig NVMe drive.

I also have a Synology NAS.

I'm looking for suggestions on software I can use to back up the Pi5 to
the NAS. I've seen conflicting suggestions on various sites, so thought I would come to the fount of all knowledge that is Usenet.

Any suggestions gratefully received.

rsync

David
--- Synchronet 3.21a-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: comp.sys.raspberry-pi

On Sun, 22 Jun 2025 09:13:52 +0200, Deloptes wrote:

Forget all BS like rsync etc. except you don't care about disk space.

rsync has this nifty option called “--link-dest”, which lets you create incremental backups that look like full backups for restoration purposes,
but with files that were unchanged since the last backup deduped to reduce disk space.
--- Synchronet 3.21a-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: comp.sys.raspberry-pi

In article <64e927315c.DaveMeUK@BeagleBoard-xM>, David Higton <dave@davehigton.me.uk> wrote:

In message <f881ae305c.BrianNews@brianhowlett.me.uk>
Brian Howlett <news-spamtrap@brianhowlett.me.uk> wrote:

Hi.

I've (fairly) recently become the proud owner of a Pi5 running Raspberry Pi OS. Storage is a 250 Gig NVMe drive.

I also have a Synology NAS.

I'm looking for suggestions on software I can use to back up the Pi5 to the NAS. I've seen conflicting suggestions on various sites, so thought I would come to the fount of all knowledge that is Usenet.

Any suggestions gratefully received.

rsync

David

I run multiple backups on multiple machines and OSes from cron using
rsnapshot, which is just a script sitting atop rsync. Easy to configure
if you're used to that sort of thing. Stores a single copy of a file
across multiple backups via inodes. Don't know if that rules out any filesystems, I am archiving to HFS+ and ext4.

Tom
--- Synchronet 3.21a-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: comp.sys.raspberry-pi

On Sun, 22 Jun 2025 22:34:27 -0700, Tom Blenko wrote:

Stores a single copy of a file across multiple backups via inodes.
Don't know if that rules out any filesystems, I am archiving to HFS+
and ext4.

Not sure about HFS+ (Is that still in use??), but hard-linking via the -- link-dest option is a standard POSIX thing.
--- Synchronet 3.21a-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: comp.sys.raspberry-pi

Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:

rsync has this nifty option called “--link-dest”, which lets you create incremental backups that look like full backups for restoration purposes,
but with files that were unchanged since the last backup deduped to reduce disk space.

rsync is good tool, but it is not a backup tool, while Borg Backup is a
perfect backup tool.
the mentioned functionality is meant to reduce traffic and save time more
than reduce disk space.
And I do not know how a restore would look like with rsync. With borg it is
a one liner.
I leave the decision with the OP
--- Synchronet 3.21a-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: comp.sys.raspberry-pi

On Mon, 23 Jun 2025 08:15:18 +0200, Deloptes wrote:

Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:

rsync has this nifty option called “--link-dest”, which lets you create >> incremental backups that look like full backups for restoration
purposes, but with files that were unchanged since the last backup
deduped to reduce disk space.

rsync is good tool, but it is not a backup tool ...

It most certainly is a backup tool, among many other functions.

the mentioned functionality is meant to reduce traffic and save time
more than reduce disk space.

It does that too.

And I do not know how a restore would look like with rsync.

rsync just creates a mirror of the state of the filesystem. Restoration is done with regular file copy commands -- e.g. an rsync in the opposite direction.
--- Synchronet 3.21a-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: comp.sys.raspberry-pi

On 23/06/2025 07:15, Deloptes wrote:

Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:

rsync has this nifty option called “--link-dest”, which lets you create >> incremental backups that look like full backups for restoration purposes,
but with files that were unchanged since the last backup deduped to reduce >> disk space.

rsync is good tool, but it is not a backup tool, while Borg Backup is a perfect backup tool.
the mentioned functionality is meant to reduce traffic and save time more than reduce disk space.
And I do not know how a restore would look like with rsync. With borg it is
a one liner.
I leave the decision with the OP

Rsync is an excellent backup tool. Not the least because it contains an
exact copy of the source.

Restore is simply a question of using it in reverse.
--
Climate Change: Socialism wearing a lab coat.

--- Synchronet 3.21a-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: comp.sys.raspberry-pi

Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:

rsync just creates a mirror of the state of the filesystem. Restoration is done with regular file copy commands -- e.g. an rsync in the opposite direction.

well, I use rsync and borg and borg is much better. Decision what to use is yours!


--- Synchronet 3.21a-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: comp.sys.raspberry-pi

In article <103aplf$12hkb$1@dont-email.me>, Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> wrote:

On Sun, 22 Jun 2025 22:34:27 -0700, Tom Blenko wrote:

Stores a single copy of a file across multiple backups via inodes.
Don't know if that rules out any filesystems, I am archiving to HFS+
and ext4.

Not sure about HFS+ (Is that still in use??), but hard-linking via the -- link-dest option is a standard POSIX thing.

I don't think Apple quite advertises it this way but as a matter of
practice HFS+ is still the preferred filesystem for any external disk
on a (current-era) Apple system. APFS is out there and mentioned more prominently, in my experience, but that is really for internal SSDs.

I have a friend who put APFS on a spinning internal drive (while
working at Apple) with somewhat dated hardware and saw inferior
performance (to HFS+). He reported this to the guy who designed APFS
whose response was, "Of course." I have done modest testing of APFS on
external SSDs and it was markedly slower than HFS+ on the same drive.

Tom
--- Synchronet 3.21a-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: comp.sys.raspberry-pi

On Mon, 23 Jun 2025 09:50:15 +0200, Deloptes wrote:

Decision what to use is yours!

As if we need your permission.
--- Synchronet 3.21a-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: comp.sys.raspberry-pi

On Mon, 23 Jun 2025 08:45:36 +0100, The Natural Philosopher wrote:

Rsync is an excellent backup tool. Not the least because it contains an
exact copy of the source.

And you can rerun the rsync operation to the same destination, and confirm that it does nothing (i.e. nothing got left out). And for extra paranoia,
you can specify the --checksum option, which forces it to reread
everything, just to confirm that the copy was bit-for-bit exact.
--- Synchronet 3.21a-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: comp.sys.raspberry-pi

On Mon, 23 Jun 2025 00:54:45 -0700, Tom Blenko wrote:

I don't think Apple quite advertises it this way but as a matter of
practice HFS+ is still the preferred filesystem for any external
disk on a (current-era) Apple system. APFS is out there and
mentioned more prominently, in my experience, but that is really for
internal SSDs.

Linus Torvalds once described HFS+ as “complete and utter crap” <https://www.zdnet.com/article/horrors-linus-torvalds-calls-hfs-utter-crap/>.

Did you know it cannot represent dates/times past 2040? 32-bit Linux
builds have already fixed their year-2038 problem; when is Apple going
to fix its equivalent?

I have a friend who put APFS on a spinning internal drive (while
working at Apple) with somewhat dated hardware and saw inferior
performance (to HFS+). He reported this to the guy who designed APFS
whose response was, "Of course." I have done modest testing of APFS
on external SSDs and it was markedly slower than HFS+ on the same
drive.

Interesting. In the Linux world, we run the same filesystems (e.g.
ext4) on SSDs as we do on spinning media. The SSDs are supposed to
have elaborate firmware to make them behave just like disks; does the
new Apple filesystem not interact well with this firmware?

Linux also offers specially-designed filesystems, with wear-levelling
built into their storage-allocation algorithms, so that they will run efficiently on raw flash media.
--- Synchronet 3.21a-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: comp.sys.raspberry-pi

On 23/06/2025 at 07:15, Deloptes wrote:

Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:

rsync has this nifty option called “--link-dest”, which lets you create >> incremental backups that look like full backups for restoration purposes,
but with files that were unchanged since the last backup deduped to reduce >> disk space.

rsync is good tool, but it is not a backup tool, while Borg Backup is a perfect backup tool.
the mentioned functionality is meant to reduce traffic and save time more than reduce disk space.
And I do not know how a restore would look like with rsync. With borg it is
a one liner.
I leave the decision with the OP

I use rsync regularly to backup remote systems using ssh, where
known_hosts and authorized_keys are correctly populated (eg):
rsync $OPTIONS remotehost:/ localdir/
to copy a whole remote host to a local directory system.

I can't see a way for borg to do this. Am I wrong?
--
Chris Elvidge, England
A BELCH IS NOT AN ORAL REPORT

--- Synchronet 3.21a-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: comp.sys.raspberry-pi

Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:

As if we need your permission.

why trolling. You have opinion, I have opinion, whats the problem?

--- Synchronet 3.21a-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: comp.sys.raspberry-pi

On 23/06/2025 11:25, Chris Elvidge wrote:

On 23/06/2025 at 07:15, Deloptes wrote:

Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:

rsync has this nifty option called “--link-dest”, which lets you create >>> incremental backups that look like full backups for restoration
purposes,
but with files that were unchanged since the last backup deduped to
reduce
disk space.

rsync is good tool, but it is not a backup tool, while Borg Backup is a
perfect backup tool.
the mentioned functionality is meant to reduce traffic and save time more
than reduce disk space.
And I do not know how a restore would look like with rsync. With borg
it is
a one liner.
I leave the decision with the OP

I use rsync regularly to backup remote systems using ssh, where
known_hosts and authorized_keys are correctly populated (eg):
rsync $OPTIONS remotehost:/ localdir/
to copy a whole remote host to a local directory system.

I also do this with an rsyncd on the far end ...

I can't see a way for borg to do this. Am I wrong?

It wouldn't be the first time a latest and greatest couldn't do the basics.
--
“it should be clear by now to everyone that activist environmentalism
(or environmental activism) is becoming a general ideology about humans,
about their freedom, about the relationship between the individual and
the state, and about the manipulation of people under the guise of a
'noble' idea. It is not an honest pursuit of 'sustainable development,'
a matter of elementary environmental protection, or a search for
rational mechanisms designed to achieve a healthy environment. Yet
things do occur that make you shake your head and remind yourself that
you live neither in Joseph Stalin’s Communist era, nor in the Orwellian utopia of 1984.”

Vaclav Klaus

--- Synchronet 3.21a-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: comp.sys.raspberry-pi

On 23/06/2025 16:04, Deloptes wrote:

Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:

As if we need your permission.

why trolling. You have opinion, I have opinion, whats the problem?

Generally that you only tolerate yours :-)
--
Future generations will wonder in bemused amazement that the early twenty-first century’s developed world went into hysterical panic over a globally average temperature increase of a few tenths of a degree, and,
on the basis of gross exaggerations of highly uncertain computer
projections combined into implausible chains of inference, proceeded to contemplate a rollback of the industrial age.

Richard Lindzen

--- Synchronet 3.21a-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: comp.sys.raspberry-pi

The Natural Philosopher wrote:

Generally that you only tolerate yours :-)

do you need a psychiatrist? I can recommend a good one.


--- Synchronet 3.21a-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: comp.sys.raspberry-pi

On 2025-06-21, Brian Howlett <news-spamtrap@brianhowlett.me.uk> wrote:

Hi.

I've (fairly) recently become the proud owner of a Pi5 running Raspberry
Pi OS. Storage is a 250 Gig NVMe drive.

I also have a Synology NAS.

I'm looking for suggestions on software I can use to back up the Pi5 to
the NAS. I've seen conflicting suggestions on various sites, so thought I would come to the fount of all knowledge that is Usenet.

I think this depends on what is the meaning of "NAS".
In many (most?) cases, NAS means a VFAT file system projected through CIFS/Samba to the LAN. The unit does not have a user-accessible
operating system. In some cases there is Linux under the hood, but no
way to install applications on it.

In such an environment, /rsync/ is not an option.

Things are quite different if we are talking about a full-fledged *nix
system performing the NAS function. In such a case, I would recommend formatting the NAS drives with ext4 and exporting them both with Samba
and NFS and then either running rsync through NFS or over ssh.

So ... if this is really about one of those "hardswired CIFS"type of
NAS, what is the best method?
--- Synchronet 3.21a-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: comp.sys.raspberry-pi

In message <slrn105j7cj.v5sv.lars@cleo.beagle-ears.com>
Lars Poulsen <lars@cleo.beagle-ears.com> wrote:

On 2025-06-21, Brian Howlett <news-spamtrap@brianhowlett.me.uk> wrote:

Hi.

I've (fairly) recently become the proud owner of a Pi5 running Raspberry Pi OS. Storage is a 250 Gig NVMe drive.

I also have a Synology NAS.

I'm looking for suggestions on software I can use to back up the Pi5 to the NAS. I've seen conflicting suggestions on various sites, so thought I would come to the fount of all knowledge that is Usenet.

I think this depends on what is the meaning of "NAS". In many (most?)
cases, NAS means a VFAT file system projected through CIFS/Samba to the
LAN. The unit does not have a user-accessible operating system. In some
cases there is Linux under the hood, but no way to install applications on it.

In such an environment, /rsync/ is not an option.

My NAS runs OpenMediaVault. It happens that mine is on a Raspberry Pi,
but it's available (at zero cost) for many platforms. It's Linux under
the bonnet, and the file systems in my case are ext4 - I can't imagine
anyone would choose VFAT for use under Linux.

And rsync most definitely /is/ an option; I use it.

David
--- Synchronet 3.21a-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: comp.sys.raspberry-pi

Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> wrote at 03:43 this Monday (GMT):

On Sun, 22 Jun 2025 09:13:52 +0200, Deloptes wrote:

Forget all BS like rsync etc. except you don't care about disk space.

rsync has this nifty option called “--link-dest”, which lets you create incremental backups that look like full backups for restoration purposes, but with files that were unchanged since the last backup deduped to reduce disk space.

Neat. I personally use restic as my backup and don't want to risk
breaking it, but its cool that it's a builtin feature of rsync!
--
user <candycane> is generated from /dev/urandom
--- Synchronet 3.21a-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: comp.sys.raspberry-pi

On 2025-06-23, David Higton <dave@davehigton.me.uk> wrote:

My NAS runs OpenMediaVault. It happens that mine is on a Raspberry Pi,
but it's available (at zero cost) for many platforms. It's Linux under
the bonnet, and the file systems in my case are ext4 - I can't imagine
anyone would choose VFAT for use under Linux.

I looked up OpenMediaVault, and it kinda looks like it is an Ubuntu
spin optimized for media serving.

In my own case, I tend to just run a Fedora box, and let it serve media
with Samba. And for that I use an (older, hence cheap) desktop tower. I
don't quite see why one would buy a second box and allow that to only
run file service. But if you did, what is a good hardware package to run
it on?
--- Synchronet 3.21a-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: comp.sys.raspberry-pi

On 23 Jun, Lars Poulsen <lars@cleo.beagle-ears.com> wrote:

o ... if this is really about one of those "hardswired CIFS"type of
NAS, what is the best method?

It's a Synology DS115J box - the backups of my other devices go to 2
external USB drives which are formatted to EXT4.

I can access it via a browser, and it does allow me to install software on
it, so I will investigate if there is anything available that will allow
me to back up my Pi5 from that end.

Thanks for the various suggestions up-thread, BTW.
--
Brian Howlett
-----------------------
Procrastinate tomorrow!
--- Synchronet 3.21a-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: comp.sys.raspberry-pi

In message <slrn105jd57.v5sv.lars@cleo.beagle-ears.com>
Lars Poulsen <lars@cleo.beagle-ears.com> wrote:

On 2025-06-23, David Higton <dave@davehigton.me.uk> wrote:

My NAS runs OpenMediaVault. It happens that mine is on a Raspberry Pi,
but it's available (at zero cost) for many platforms. It's Linux under
the bonnet, and the file systems in my case are ext4 - I can't imagine anyone would choose VFAT for use under Linux.

I looked up OpenMediaVault, and it kinda looks like it is an Ubuntu spin optimized for media serving.

In my own case, I tend to just run a Fedora box, and let it serve media
with Samba. And for that I use an (older, hence cheap) desktop tower. I
don't quite see why one would buy a second box and allow that to only run file service. But if you did, what is a good hardware package to run it on?

That's like asking "how long is a piece of string?" The answer depends
on your needs. How fast? How much storage capacity? How much
redundancy?

I don't need anything very fast, nor do I need lots of storage space, so
a Raspberry Pi with two 1TB USB portable drives meets my needs. The second drive is updated from the first via rsync every day at 2am, which is enough redundancy for me. Other people scoff at this very modest NAS. Horses
for courses.

David
--- Synchronet 3.21a-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: comp.sys.raspberry-pi

On 23 Jun, Lars Poulsen <lars@cleo.beagle-ears.com> wrote:

o ... if this is really about one of those "hardswired CIFS"type of
NAS, what is the best method?

On 2025-06-23, Brian Howlett <news-spamtrap@brianhowlett.me.uk> wrote:

It's a Synology DS115J box - the backups of my other devices go to 2 external USB drives which are formatted to EXT4.

I can access it via a browser, and it does allow me to install software on it, so I will investigate if there is anything available that will allow
me to back up my Pi5 from that end.

I looked it up. It seems to be an ARM CPU in an enclosure that has only room for one drive. For a NAS, I would be looking for an enclosure that could
hold 4 drives, but those are getting rarer. The secondhand market has
plenty of small form factor desktops with low-end x86 or AMD64
processors and room for 2 drives for less than what this costs.

If you need to put the drives externally in a stack of USB enclosures,
you might as well use an RPI4 in a CanoKit box.

I don't get the attraction of this type of device.
--- Synchronet 3.21a-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: comp.sys.raspberry-pi

On Mon, 23 Jun 2025 18:51:18 +0100, The Natural Philosopher wrote:

On 23/06/2025 11:25, Chris Elvidge wrote:

I use rsync regularly to backup remote systems using ssh, where
known_hosts and authorized_keys are correctly populated (eg):
rsync $OPTIONS remotehost:/ localdir/
to copy a whole remote host to a local directory system.

I also do this with an rsyncd on the far end ...

I’ve never found a use for rsyncd. All my network-based rsyncs have
been point-to-point connections via SSH.

Regarding the --link-dest option, here’s how you might use it.

First backup:

rsync «options» «remotehost»:«dir» «local-backup-root»/«backup1»/

(This will be a full backup.)

Next backup:

rsync «options» --link-dest=«local-backup-root»/«backup1»/ \
«remotehost»:«dir» «local-backup-root»/«backup2»/

This avoids re-copying any files that haven’t changed since the
previous backup, so the additional disk space needed would be the same
as for an incremental backup. However, the clever thing is, the result
still looks like a full backup for restoration purposes.

Typically the names «backup1», «backup2» etc will have a timestamp somewhere in them, as an obvious way to have unique names that also
mean something.

And so on:

rsync «options» --link-dest=«local-backup-root»/«backup2»/ \
«remotehost»:«dir» «local-backup-root»/«backup3»/

When you get to 7 backups (or whatever your desired limit of old
versions is), you can get rid of the oldest remaining one as you do a
new one:

rm -rf «local-backup-root»/«backup1»/

and continue from there. Files that were superseded in later backups
will disappear, while those that were not will remain.

--- Synchronet 3.21a-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: comp.sys.raspberry-pi

On 23 Jun, Lars Poulsen <lars@cleo.beagle-ears.com> wrote:

I looked it up. It seems to be an ARM CPU in an enclosure that has only room for one drive. For a NAS, I would be looking for an enclosure that could
hold 4 drives, but those are getting rarer. The secondhand market has
plenty of small form factor desktops with low-end x86 or AMD64
processors and room for 2 drives for less than what this costs.

I have a couple of old x86 boxes lying around which could be put to this
type of use, but they're fairly large, and space is limited. Possible
solution for future consideration though.

If you need to put the drives externally in a stack of USB enclosures,
you might as well use an RPI4 in a CanoKit box.

I don't get the attraction of this type of device.

I've been using this one for years - the internal SATA HDD is only about 200GB, and the USB drives I mentioned are connected to the USB ports. It's ideal for my simple requirements for keeping back-ups of the various
devices on my LAN, but I'm a bit of a noob when it comes to Raspberry Pi
OS, I have limited (and not recent) experience running various flavours of Linux on x86 boxes, but rather feeling my way with this Pi 5.

When I have a bit more time I'll look in to connecting the two USB drives
to the Pi5 and see if I can use rsynch to make a manual backup for the
time being.

Thanks for the suggestions.
--
Brian Howlett
---------------------------------------------------------
Now is the time for all good men to come to. (Walt Kelly)
--- Synchronet 3.21a-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: comp.sys.raspberry-pi

On Mon, 23 Jun 2025 22:58:18 +0100, David Higton wrote:

That's like asking "how long is a piece of string?"

I never understood the assumption that there is some difficulty with that question.

The answer is simple: hold it taut and measure the distance between the
ends.
--- Synchronet 3.21a-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: comp.sys.raspberry-pi

On 23/06/2025 19:31, Lars Poulsen wrote:

I think this depends on what is the meaning of "NAS".
In many (most?) cases, NAS means a VFAT file system projected through CIFS/Samba to the LAN.

Not in comp.sys.raspberry-pi
--
“I know that most men, including those at ease with problems of the greatest complexity, can seldom accept even the simplest and most
obvious truth if it be such as would oblige them to admit the falsity of conclusions which they have delighted in explaining to colleagues, which
they have proudly taught to others, and which they have woven, thread by thread, into the fabric of their lives.”

― Leo Tolstoy

--- Synchronet 3.21a-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: comp.sys.raspberry-pi

Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> wrote:

On Mon, 23 Jun 2025 18:51:18 +0100, The Natural Philosopher wrote:

On 23/06/2025 11:25, Chris Elvidge wrote:

I use rsync regularly to backup remote systems using ssh, where
known_hosts and authorized_keys are correctly populated (eg):
rsync $OPTIONS remotehost:/ localdir/
to copy a whole remote host to a local directory system.

I also do this with an rsyncd on the far end ...

I’ve never found a use for rsyncd. All my network-based rsyncs have
been point-to-point connections via SSH.

I wouldn't recommend rsync:// protocol because it's unencrypted, although I suppose on a LAN there could be higher throughput for not having to
en|decrypt data if your machines aren't particularly speedy.

Theo
--- Synchronet 3.21a-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: comp.sys.raspberry-pi

On 24 Jun 2025 13:11:11 +0100 (BST), Theo wrote:

I wouldn't recommend rsync:// protocol because it's unencrypted ...

I think Bitsavers offer it for those who want to grab a copy of their
entire collections. That’s a public service, so no need for
confidentiality. But authenticity would still be a requirement, that
they’re hand-waving away for now.
--- Synchronet 3.21a-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: comp.sys.raspberry-pi

On 23/06/2025 08:45, The Natural Philosopher wrote:

Rsync is an excellent backup tool. Not the least because it contains an exact copy of the source.

Restore is simply a question of using it in reverse.

I set up my backup system specifically for Raspberry Pi's using (at the
time) unreliable SD cards, and making recovery to a new SD card as quick
as possible.

Each time I create a new Raspberry Pi I set it up and then take a copy
of the SD card with dd on to Networked storage. Each night this image is
then mounted and rsync commands issued to update any changes files in
each partition. That way if a card fails, I have a day old image I can
dd straight to a new SD card and have the Pi backup and running. The
only mildly involving bit was specifying the list of exclude directories
of things which don't need to be backed up.

At the start or each week and month, I use zerofree on the latest image
to clear any unused space so it compresses well with gzip, and keep
those compressed versions in case any SD card corrupted creeps in to the
daily image, so I can restore to a week or month ago if needed. I also
keep the last backup before changing major OS versions in case of things
like Bookworm updates causing problems.

All the stuff on the network storage is mirrored to several other on
site and off site discs, again using rsync.

I've got nice graphs produced by the logs, so I can see that last night
my 16 active Linux Raspberry Pi's backed up a total 1402MB of changed
data in 2188 files in 425 seconds. The last time I updated the OS on all
of them in May it was 25GB, 389,436 files in 1:01:04.

---druck


--- Synchronet 3.21a-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: comp.sys.raspberry-pi

Chris Elvidge wrote:

I can't see a way for borg to do this. Am I wrong?

well, I have done this several times, so yes, you are wrong.

I backup all systems on a borg backup server.
I boot from a usb stick and let borg restore from the backup server.

This can also be done with external hard drive of course. One just needs to save the encryption keys (if encryption is used).

But I see people here advocating the use of a hammer in all cases and being rude, only because one has a different opinion, so ... perhaps you try to
learn something new that is more flexible and much better.
And again - it is just my opinion from several years of experience with
borg.

--- Synchronet 3.21a-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: comp.sys.raspberry-pi

On 25/06/2025 at 17:46, Deloptes wrote:

Chris Elvidge wrote:

I can't see a way for borg to do this. Am I wrong?

well, I have done this several times, so yes, you are wrong.

Example?
--
Chris Elvidge, England
I WILL NOT DO THE DIRTY BIRD

--- Synchronet 3.21a-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: comp.sys.raspberry-pi

Chris Elvidge wrote:

Example?

Example for what?

I already explained.

I backup all systems on a borg backup server.
I boot from a usb stick and let borg restore from the backup server.

Do you mean example how to do it?

1. I do lvm snapshots of the running system and mount them to a directory (/backup)
2. I do the borg backup
3. umount and remove snapshots

I scripted this, so it is done automatically. Snapshots solve issue with changing files while system is running.

To restore (full restore - for example replacing disk after failure or
whatever reason)
1. I boot from usb
2. I create the lvms and mount them (/backup)
3. restore from backup
4. (optional if disk is new) chroot, fix disk ids and install grub etc.

Deduplication and compression which are featured by borg make huge
difference in the disk size side. It is about 1:10 or even higher ratio.




--- Synchronet 3.21a-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: comp.sys.raspberry-pi

On Thu, 26 Jun 2025 10:07:36 +0200, Deloptes wrote:

Snapshots solve issue with changing files while system is running.

What happens if the file change is not complete when the snapshot is
taken?
--- Synchronet 3.21a-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: comp.sys.raspberry-pi

Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:

What happens if the file change is not complete when the snapshot is
taken?

The purpose of snapshot is exactly to prevent this situation. Read about LVM snapshots.
--- Synchronet 3.21a-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: comp.sys.raspberry-pi

On Thu, 26 Jun 2025 18:22:12 +0200, Deloptes wrote:

Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:

What happens if the file change is not complete when the snapshot is
taken?

The purpose of snapshot is exactly to prevent this situation. Read about
LVM snapshots.

But the snapshotting system has no idea what updates applications might be
in the progress of doing to their data files.
--- Synchronet 3.21a-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: comp.sys.raspberry-pi

Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:

But the snapshotting system has no idea what updates applications might be
in the progress of doing to their data files.

Well, I do not know what a given application might or might not do. In any
case it is not relevant (only) to borg, but to any backup system incl.
rsync, so I do not know why this question is asked in the context of borg.

If you want to backup your application data, then dump or persist the data first. This is what I've seen/used and AFAIK is the standard in various
backup solutions. However it is irrelevant question in the borg context.


--- Synchronet 3.21a-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: comp.sys.raspberry-pi

On Fri, 27 Jun 2025 14:17:45 +0200, Deloptes wrote:

Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:

But the snapshotting system has no idea what updates applications might
be in the progress of doing to their data files.

Well, I do not know what a given application might or might not do. In
any case it is not relevant (only) to borg, but to any backup system
incl. rsync, so I do not know why this question is asked in the context
of borg.

You were the one making a big deal out of some kind of special
snapshotting system. Is that statement inoperative now?
--- Synchronet 3.21a-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: comp.sys.raspberry-pi

Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:

You were the one making a big deal out of some kind of special
snapshotting system. Is that statement inoperative now?

I do not think so. Everything is valid. I am afraid you either lack the capacity or the experience to understand.

I happened to work with Veritas Appliances in one of the projects couple of years ago. Veritas bought it from Symantec. The appliances cost hundreds of tausands. Have nice GUI and various modules for databases, VMWare
integration etc. It also uses snapshots to backup systems. And I personally
did test complete restore of a whole production environment: 10 blade
servers with 40+ VMs, 3 bare metal servers, varios databases, etc. etc. ...
I think I know something about backup systems and requirements for use in critical infrastructure.
When looking for a system to use at home that does deduplication and can be easily used to restore 2-3 machines I discovered borg. Reviewed, installed tested. Works great. Why not recommend to someone who is asking for backup solution?
However the discussion that emerged is for me a bit surprising.
I do not want to insult anybody, but ... anyway, I stop here.

You know, at the end may be it is better for you to stick to rsync.
Simple minds - simple tools.

BR

--- Synchronet 3.21a-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: comp.sys.raspberry-pi

On 28/06/2025 07:19, Deloptes wrote:

You know, at the end may be it is better for you to stick to rsync.
Simple minds - simple tools.

Or even 'simple situations, simple tools'

When all you have is a digger, it gets hard to pull one weed from the garden

There seems to be a lot of 'well it worked for me in situation X
therefore it's correct for you in situation Y' going on, mostly from
people whose life experience is moderately narrow.

In my situation rsync is perfectly fine. I am not enforcing it on anyone
else.

In fact is barely worth even mentioning it for fear of getting involved
in competitive religions, when you hppen to be at best, an agnostic...
--
"Nature does not give up the winter because people dislike the cold."

― Confucius

--- Synchronet 3.21a-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: comp.sys.raspberry-pi

On Sat, 28 Jun 2025 08:19:07 +0200, Deloptes wrote:

Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:

You were the one making a big deal out of some kind of special
snapshotting system. Is that statement inoperative now?

I do not think so. Everything is valid. I am afraid you either lack the capacity or the experience to understand.

You were the one asking me to look at LVM snapshots, as though they had
some relevance to the discussion. Do you backpedal from that now?

And I personally did test complete restore of a whole production
environment: 10 blade servers with 40+ VMs, 3 bare metal servers,
varios databases, etc. etc. ...

Presumably you were relying on the applications themselves (e.g. DBMSes)
to recover from inconsistencies in their data. Things are always easier
when they’re Someone Else’s Problem, aren’t they?

You know, at the end may be it is better for you to stick to rsync.
Simple minds - simple tools.

Fun fact: Andrew Tridgell, who originally created rsync, did his PhD
thesis on the algorithm it uses that allows two processes on different machines to compare two files, one on each side, without having to copy
the bulk of either one of them over the network to the other side.

Veritas Appliances never had anything like that, did they?
--- Synchronet 3.21a-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: comp.sys.raspberry-pi

Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:

You were the one asking me to look at LVM snapshots, as though they had
some relevance to the discussion. Do you backpedal from that now?

I "like" people who take it personally .... did you measure your blood pressure?
I wrote look at snapshots (in case you are not familiar). But yeah ... you somehow take it as personal attack. Pathetic!

And I personally did test complete restore of a whole production
environment: 10 blade servers with 40+ VMs, 3 bare metal servers,
varios databases, etc. etc. ...

Presumably you were relying on the applications themselves (e.g. DBMSes)
to recover from inconsistencies in their data. Things are always easier
when they’re Someone Else’s Problem, aren’t they?

Irrelevant.

You know, at the end may be it is better for you to stick to rsync.
Simple minds - simple tools.

Fun fact: Andrew Tridgell, who originally created rsync, did his PhD
thesis on the algorithm it uses that allows two processes on different machines to compare two files, one on each side, without having to copy
the bulk of either one of them over the network to the other side.

Veritas Appliances never had anything like that, did they?

Nooo never ... they grew up in the jungle.
And again irrelevant.
If you need to troll ... find a better place.

Perhaps it is hard to accept the fact that someone has different preferences that does not match yours. Childish and stupid.

Andrew Tridgell PhD is an example of western decline. The topic can not be a subject of PhD ... but hey ... with so many PhDs you can now produce just
crap.
My blood pressure is getting up. Will ignore you personally in the feature. Stay safe in the cave!


--- Synchronet 3.21a-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: comp.sys.raspberry-pi

On 29/06/2025 08:26, Deloptes wrote:

Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:

Don't feed the troll!
--
Chris
--- Synchronet 3.21a-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: comp.sys.raspberry-pi

On Sun, 29 Jun 2025 09:26:37 +0200, Deloptes wrote:

I "like" people who take it personally .... did you measure your blood pressure?
I wrote look at snapshots (in case you are not familiar). But yeah ...
you somehow take it as personal attack. Pathetic!

You are the one who seems to be trying to make it personal. I was just pointing out things you said -- things you seem to be trying to distract
from, now.
--- Synchronet 3.21a-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: comp.sys.raspberry-pi

In article <f881ae305c.BrianNews@brianhowlett.me.uk>,
Brian Howlett <brian@brianhowlett.me.uk> wrote:

I've (fairly) recently become the proud owner of a Pi5 running Raspberry
Pi OS. Storage is a 250 Gig NVMe drive.

I also have a Synology NAS.

I'm looking for suggestions on software I can use to back up the Pi5 to
the NAS. I've seen conflicting suggestions on various sites, so thought I >would come to the fount of all knowledge that is Usenet.

Depending on what's being backed up, I use either duplicity or rclone for online storage. Both of them will back up to S3-compatible object storage.

At work, we have a Synology RS3621RPxs on which MinIO is running in a Docker container to provide local object storage. It holds archived VM data stored with rclone, among other things.
--
_/_
/ v \ Scott Alfter (remove the obvious to send mail)
(IIGS( https://alfter.us/ Top-posting!
\_^_/ >What's the most annoying thing on Usenet? --- Synchronet 3.21a-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: comp.sys.raspberry-pi

On 7 Jul, scott@alfter.diespammersdie.us (Scott Alfter) wrote:

In article <f881ae305c.BrianNews@brianhowlett.me.uk>,
Brian Howlett <brian@brianhowlett.me.uk> wrote:

I've (fairly) recently become the proud owner of a Pi5 running Raspberry
Pi OS. Storage is a 250 Gig NVMe drive.

I also have a Synology NAS.

I'm looking for suggestions on software I can use to back up the Pi5 to
the NAS. I've seen conflicting suggestions on various sites, so thought I >>would come to the fount of all knowledge that is Usenet.

Depending on what's being backed up, I use either duplicity or rclone for online storage. Both of them will back up to S3-compatible object storage.

At work, we have a Synology RS3621RPxs on which MinIO is running in a Docker container to provide local object storage. It holds archived VM data stored with rclone, among other things.

Thanks for the suggestion.

I bought a USB drive and formatted it to ext4 and used rsync to back up
the Pi 5.
--
Brian Howlett ----------------------------------------------------------------------
There is more money being spent on breast implants and Viagra today
than on Alzheimer's research. This means that by 2040, there should
be a large elderly population with perky boobs and huge erections and absolutely no recollection of what to do with them...
--- Synchronet 3.21a-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: comp.sys.raspberry-pi

On Mon, 07 Jul 2025 16:58:38 +0100, Brian Howlett wrote:

I bought a USB drive and formatted it to ext4 and used rsync to back up
the Pi 5.

Don’t forget the tips on how to keep a rolling set of timestamped backups, without needing space for extra copies of files which haven’t changed.
--- Synchronet 3.21a-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: comp.sys.raspberry-pi

Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> wrote:

On Mon, 07 Jul 2025 16:58:38 +0100, Brian Howlett wrote:

I bought a USB drive and formatted it to ext4 and used rsync to back up
the Pi 5.

Don’t forget the tips on how to keep a rolling set of timestamped backups, without needing space for extra copies of files which haven’t changed.

rsnapshot does that for you, using rsync and hard links.

Theo
--- Synchronet 3.21a-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: comp.sys.raspberry-pi

On 07 Jul 2025 23:47:57 +0100 (BST), Theo wrote:

Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> wrote:

On Mon, 07 Jul 2025 16:58:38 +0100, Brian Howlett wrote:

I bought a USB drive and formatted it to ext4 and used rsync to back
up the Pi 5.

Don’t forget the tips on how to keep a rolling set of timestamped
backups, without needing space for extra copies of files which haven’t
changed.

rsnapshot does that for you, using rsync and hard links.

Sure, these convenient wrappers around rsync handle some common cases
with less work. But they still don’t offer the full power and
generality of rsync itself.

Also, rsnapshot refers to this article <http://www.mikerubel.org/computers/rsync_snapshots/>, which has been
obsoleted by the addition of --link-dest to rsync. Does rsnapshot make
use of that to simplify things?
--- Synchronet 3.21a-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: comp.sys.raspberry-pi

Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> wrote:

On 07 Jul 2025 23:47:57 +0100 (BST), Theo wrote:

Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> wrote:

On Mon, 07 Jul 2025 16:58:38 +0100, Brian Howlett wrote:

I bought a USB drive and formatted it to ext4 and used rsync to back
up the Pi 5.

Don’t forget the tips on how to keep a rolling set of timestamped
backups, without needing space for extra copies of files which haven’t >> changed.

rsnapshot does that for you, using rsync and hard links.

Sure, these convenient wrappers around rsync handle some common cases
with less work. But they still don’t offer the full power and
generality of rsync itself.

Also, rsnapshot refers to this article <http://www.mikerubel.org/computers/rsync_snapshots/>, which has been obsoleted by the addition of --link-dest to rsync. Does rsnapshot make
use of that to simplify things?

That page is 20 years old!

The rsnapshot utilitiy will take care of rotating your snapshots (keeping
N daily/weekly/monthly etc) which pure rsync won't do.

It looks like it can optionally use --link-dest with a config option:

link_dest 1

If your version of rsync supports --link-dest (2.5.7 or newer), you can
enable this to let rsync handle some things that GNU cp or the built-in
subroutines would otherwise do. Enabling this makes rsnapshot take a
slightly more complicated code branch, but it's the best way to support
special files on non-Linux systems.

Theo
--- Synchronet 3.21a-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: comp.sys.raspberry-pi

On 09 Jul 2025 12:50:27 +0100 (BST), Theo wrote:

That page is 20 years old!

Precisely.

The rsnapshot utilitiy will take care of rotating your snapshots
(keeping N daily/weekly/monthly etc) which pure rsync won't do.

Interesting how we were talking about “rsync” before, now it has suddenly become “pure rsync” ...
--- Synchronet 3.21a-Linux NewsLink 1.2