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I think most devs here learn to keep their laptops relatively stateless. All important files gets offloaded to Dropbox / Github / S3, whichever service makes th

I think most devs here learn to keep their laptops relatively stateless. All important files gets offloaded to Dropbox / Github / S3, whichever service makes the most sense. Frankly, whatever I lose if my laptop HDD dies must not have been that important if it never made it to one of those services. Implementing and maintaining whole-disk backup procedures and media? Shoot me now.

chm 11y ago
I erased my disk before installing El Capitan. I wanted to force myself into good habits. I'm currently learning how to manage all my dotfiles, vim plugins etc with git. I'm not quite there yet however. I read his article before erasing my disk, but found it way overkill for my needs. Depends on the user.
- ggsp 11y ago
  Any suggested reading to become a better person and manage dotfiles sanely?
  - gknoy 11y ago
    I like to make a repo, and then have subfolders for each thing -- emacs configs, bash configs, etc -- and then symlink them in. Bonus would be to write a script that automated doing the symlinks (e.g. ~/.bashrc -> dev/gk-config/bash/.bashrc , ~/bin -> dev/gk-config/bin), which I have yet to do. Then, commit changes regularly. I have no idea how to handle multiple __different__ machines well, though.
    - deleted 11y ago
      [deleted]
    - vinceguidry 11y ago
      GNU Stow does the symlinking for you. https://www.gnu.org/software/stow/ https://www.gnu.org/software/stow/ What I do with different machines, (just OSX / Ubuntu atm) is a bash function to check which type of system I'm on and conditionally execute .profile / .bashrc code on that basis. Also I look for a .bashrc-local file and source it if present. That lets me add truly machine-local code.
  - Brajeshwar 11y ago
    There are lots of articles written, samples, et al. One such simpler article that I read recently was http://www.anishathalye.com/2014/08/03/managing-your-dotfiles/ http://www.anishathalye.com/2014/08/03/managing-your-dotfile...
  - leni536 11y ago
    I suggest that you pack them into a git repo and use GNU stow to deploy them.
    - falcolas 11y ago
      Started doing this myself, it's a fantastic solution to a common problem.
  - chm 11y ago
    What I found the most useful for my use case are the git submodules documentation[1] and this blog post[2]. Read them and you'll have a basic setup in no time. Some people want to automate everything and have modular configurations depending on the environment. That's just a bit more involved, but not much, and there are plenty of tools to help you with that. I have just pushed my dotvim folder to github if you want to take a look[3]. [1]: https://git-scm.com/book/en/v2/Git-Tools-Submodules https://git-scm.com/book/en/v2/Git-Tools-Submodules [2]: http://blog.smalleycreative.com/tutorials/using-git-and-github-to-manage-your-dotfiles/ http://blog.smalleycreative.com/tutorials/using-git-and-gith... [3]: https://github.com/belmarca/dotvim https://github.com/belmarca/dotvim
ssmoot 11y ago
My work computer is also my home computer. So not losing photos and videos is pretty critical. Everything else is replaceable. I just bought a cheap Seagate Backup Plus 4TB last year. I think it was $130. Then I just let Time Machine do it's thing. So that's 2 copies of the important stuff. Then $50 annually for Backblaze. I've got no real use for Dropbox and it costs twice as much for less storage. I could totally see using it in a media company. That's just not a problem I have. I pretty much never need to share a personal file that's too big for iMessage (photos/videos) or Email (spreadsheets). Anyways, that's a third copy. Then I've got iCloud to share photos/music/videos on our Family Sharing. That's a fourth copy. So everything is pretty much always in sync. Wether it's my wife's iPad, my laptop, either of our phones, etc. Into the second year it's cheaper than just having Dropbox alone. But the best part: It takes... I dunno. 10 minutes of one time setup effort. You don't have to know anything but how to click "Next" or "OK" in a wizard, and it's zero maintenance. Nothing to baby-sit. And it's a little slow, but if I really need an individual file off Backblaze, I can get it. Just takes a couple minutes to use their web based backup browser and selectively download something. I've had to do that a total of one time though. Beyond that setting up a new machine for me for development is just pulling my .bashit theme, installing homebrew, installing IntelliJ, running brew install sbt git and I'm pretty much good to go. It was really surprising how quick setting up my Macbook for Scala development was compared to setting up previous machines for Ruby development.
- zyxley 11y ago
  > Backblaze The basic problem with Backblaze is that they delete remote files 30 days after they're deleted locally... which means that if something important is intentionally or accidentally wiped and you don't notice for a month, it's gone forever. That's why I stick with Crashplan, despite the general annoyances of their non-native desktop apps.
  - samastur 11y ago
    Problem with Crashplan is the limited pipe they have. If you have few T of data like I do it will literally take you months to back it up or restore.
  - 11y ago
aluhut 11y ago
TIL: Backups to the cloud are still a solution in the Snowden-Era.
- emsy 11y ago
  You can and should encrypt them.
  - aluhut 11y ago
    Yeah that helps if your machine or something in between is not compromised and the other side is not too interested. If this is not the case, your off-line data is still off-line and not reachable while data in the cloud is easy obtainable by the attacker so he can do with it whatever he wants.
    - emsy 11y ago
      Afaik at least Crashplan uses strong asymetric encryption so you can store your decryption key offline. If a party is really interested in your data they might as well obtain it with a wrench. Don't get me wrong, I do think you're right about this. It's a tradeoff between convenience and security. Or viewed from a different angle: Is it worse that your data might be read by a third party or that you lose your data because you forgot your manual backup. And which scenario is more likely?
      - aluhut 11y ago
        I don't dare to speculate about the likeness of security breaches anymore. But I have a pretty good backup routine.
asteli 11y ago
I think you're underestimating how long it takes to set up workflows, tools, device drivers, system configurations, path variables, and so forth from scratch. If you rely solely on project repositories, I reckon you could spend multiple man-days getting your machine back to a pre-dataloss state. I just had a laptop stolen. Even with Time Machine backups, you still spend many hours setting configs after a restore.
- ghaff 11y ago
  I've found things easier than that with Time Machine, but in any case, I agree with your basic point. (Time Machine has the added bonus of turning the setup of a new system into something that takes a couple hours rather than a couple days--at least unless you want to take the opportunity to start clean.) Should you have additional on-site and off-site/cloud backups? Sure. I also use Backblaze as well as having a periodic on-site data files backup. (Plus whatever incidental backup is provided by Flickr and iCloud.) But, from my perspectivem it doesn't hurt to start with a whole disk backup, especially given how easy Time Machine makes it.
- togusa 11y ago
  When I had a Mac I used Carbon Copy Cloner to image the disks solving that entire problem. It creates bootable backups then which you can restore to exactly the original state. Time machine was a veritable pain in my arse on numerous occasions including one that nearly shafted everything I had. I genuinely don't trust it or HFS+ and never would ever again. TBH I've moved to Windows as a primary platform now and I'm just using Beyond Compare to sync my data by hand to bitlocker encrypted USB sticks (3x 128Gb Corsair Survivor) and keep one on my keyring, one in the car and one at home. Takes about 2 hours to build a windows machine from scratch now including OS, Office, dev tools, updates onto an SSD. I imagine that would work reasonably well on a Mac too if you skipped half the junk that appeared in the user's profile.
- bradleyland 11y ago
  > Even with Time Machine backups, you still spend many hours setting configs after a restore. But how many hours do you spend establishing, testing, and maintaining a backup plan that mitigates the risk of spending a few hours getting back to working status after a restore? In my experience, TimeMachine is wonderfully effective at restoring system state (including things like shell customizations, dotfiles, etc). The marginal return on investment in more comprehensive backup setup just doesn't pay dividends. Of course, there's the issue of offsite backups, which typically aren't as comprehensive as TimeMachine. The point I'm making is that technical folks often have a hard time making value judgements as it relates to technology. Having a backup of your data is 100% necessary. No argument there. Having a backup of your system state? That's not as high a priority, because you're mitigating a future time investment with a current time investment. You have to weigh the two against each other: time spent today versus potentially time spent in the future.

chm 11y ago

I erased my disk before installing El Capitan. I wanted to force myself into good habits. I'm currently learning how to manage all my dotfiles, vim plugins etc with git. I'm not quite there yet however. I read his article before erasing my disk, but found it way overkill for my needs. Depends on the user.

ggsp 11y ago
Any suggested reading to become a better person and manage dotfiles sanely?
- gknoy 11y ago
  I like to make a repo, and then have subfolders for each thing -- emacs configs, bash configs, etc -- and then symlink them in. Bonus would be to write a script that automated doing the symlinks (e.g. ~/.bashrc -> dev/gk-config/bash/.bashrc , ~/bin -> dev/gk-config/bin), which I have yet to do. Then, commit changes regularly. I have no idea how to handle multiple __different__ machines well, though.
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
  - vinceguidry 11y ago
    GNU Stow does the symlinking for you. https://www.gnu.org/software/stow/ https://www.gnu.org/software/stow/ What I do with different machines, (just OSX / Ubuntu atm) is a bash function to check which type of system I'm on and conditionally execute .profile / .bashrc code on that basis. Also I look for a .bashrc-local file and source it if present. That lets me add truly machine-local code.
- Brajeshwar 11y ago
  There are lots of articles written, samples, et al. One such simpler article that I read recently was http://www.anishathalye.com/2014/08/03/managing-your-dotfiles/ http://www.anishathalye.com/2014/08/03/managing-your-dotfile...
- leni536 11y ago
  I suggest that you pack them into a git repo and use GNU stow to deploy them.
  - falcolas 11y ago
    Started doing this myself, it's a fantastic solution to a common problem.
- chm 11y ago
  What I found the most useful for my use case are the git submodules documentation[1] and this blog post[2]. Read them and you'll have a basic setup in no time. Some people want to automate everything and have modular configurations depending on the environment. That's just a bit more involved, but not much, and there are plenty of tools to help you with that. I have just pushed my dotvim folder to github if you want to take a look[3]. [1]: https://git-scm.com/book/en/v2/Git-Tools-Submodules https://git-scm.com/book/en/v2/Git-Tools-Submodules [2]: http://blog.smalleycreative.com/tutorials/using-git-and-github-to-manage-your-dotfiles/ http://blog.smalleycreative.com/tutorials/using-git-and-gith... [3]: https://github.com/belmarca/dotvim https://github.com/belmarca/dotvim

ssmoot 11y ago

My work computer is also my home computer. So not losing photos and videos is pretty critical. Everything else is replaceable. I just bought a cheap Seagate Backup Plus 4TB last year. I think it was $130. Then I just let Time Machine do it's thing. So that's 2 copies of the important stuff. Then $50 annually for Backblaze. I've got no real use for Dropbox and it costs twice as much for less storage. I could totally see using it in a media company. That's just not a problem I have. I pretty much never need to share a personal file that's too big for iMessage (photos/videos) or Email (spreadsheets). Anyways, that's a third copy. Then I've got iCloud to share photos/music/videos on our Family Sharing. That's a fourth copy. So everything is pretty much always in sync. Wether it's my wife's iPad, my laptop, either of our phones, etc. Into the second year it's cheaper than just having Dropbox alone. But the best part: It takes... I dunno. 10 minutes of one time setup effort. You don't have to know anything but how to click "Next" or "OK" in a wizard, and it's zero maintenance. Nothing to baby-sit. And it's a little slow, but if I really need an individual file off Backblaze, I can get it. Just takes a couple minutes to use their web based backup browser and selectively download something. I've had to do that a total of one time though. Beyond that setting up a new machine for me for development is just pulling my .bashit theme, installing homebrew, installing IntelliJ, running brew install sbt git and I'm pretty much good to go. It was really surprising how quick setting up my Macbook for Scala development was compared to setting up previous machines for Ruby development.

zyxley 11y ago
> Backblaze The basic problem with Backblaze is that they delete remote files 30 days after they're deleted locally... which means that if something important is intentionally or accidentally wiped and you don't notice for a month, it's gone forever. That's why I stick with Crashplan, despite the general annoyances of their non-native desktop apps.
- samastur 11y ago
  Problem with Crashplan is the limited pipe they have. If you have few T of data like I do it will literally take you months to back it up or restore.
- 11y ago

aluhut 11y ago

TIL: Backups to the cloud are still a solution in the Snowden-Era.

emsy 11y ago
You can and should encrypt them.
- aluhut 11y ago
  Yeah that helps if your machine or something in between is not compromised and the other side is not too interested. If this is not the case, your off-line data is still off-line and not reachable while data in the cloud is easy obtainable by the attacker so he can do with it whatever he wants.
  - emsy 11y ago
    Afaik at least Crashplan uses strong asymetric encryption so you can store your decryption key offline. If a party is really interested in your data they might as well obtain it with a wrench. Don't get me wrong, I do think you're right about this. It's a tradeoff between convenience and security. Or viewed from a different angle: Is it worse that your data might be read by a third party or that you lose your data because you forgot your manual backup. And which scenario is more likely?
    - aluhut 11y ago
      I don't dare to speculate about the likeness of security breaches anymore. But I have a pretty good backup routine.

asteli 11y ago

I think you're underestimating how long it takes to set up workflows, tools, device drivers, system configurations, path variables, and so forth from scratch. If you rely solely on project repositories, I reckon you could spend multiple man-days getting your machine back to a pre-dataloss state. I just had a laptop stolen. Even with Time Machine backups, you still spend many hours setting configs after a restore.

ghaff 11y ago
I've found things easier than that with Time Machine, but in any case, I agree with your basic point. (Time Machine has the added bonus of turning the setup of a new system into something that takes a couple hours rather than a couple days--at least unless you want to take the opportunity to start clean.) Should you have additional on-site and off-site/cloud backups? Sure. I also use Backblaze as well as having a periodic on-site data files backup. (Plus whatever incidental backup is provided by Flickr and iCloud.) But, from my perspectivem it doesn't hurt to start with a whole disk backup, especially given how easy Time Machine makes it.
togusa 11y ago
When I had a Mac I used Carbon Copy Cloner to image the disks solving that entire problem. It creates bootable backups then which you can restore to exactly the original state. Time machine was a veritable pain in my arse on numerous occasions including one that nearly shafted everything I had. I genuinely don't trust it or HFS+ and never would ever again. TBH I've moved to Windows as a primary platform now and I'm just using Beyond Compare to sync my data by hand to bitlocker encrypted USB sticks (3x 128Gb Corsair Survivor) and keep one on my keyring, one in the car and one at home. Takes about 2 hours to build a windows machine from scratch now including OS, Office, dev tools, updates onto an SSD. I imagine that would work reasonably well on a Mac too if you skipped half the junk that appeared in the user's profile.
bradleyland 11y ago
> Even with Time Machine backups, you still spend many hours setting configs after a restore. But how many hours do you spend establishing, testing, and maintaining a backup plan that mitigates the risk of spending a few hours getting back to working status after a restore? In my experience, TimeMachine is wonderfully effective at restoring system state (including things like shell customizations, dotfiles, etc). The marginal return on investment in more comprehensive backup setup just doesn't pay dividends. Of course, there's the issue of offsite backups, which typically aren't as comprehensive as TimeMachine. The point I'm making is that technical folks often have a hard time making value judgements as it relates to technology. Having a backup of your data is 100% necessary. No argument there. Having a backup of your system state? That's not as high a priority, because you're mitigating a future time investment with a current time investment. You have to weigh the two against each other: time spent today versus potentially time spent in the future.