3 ms·

How do you handle backups? I have a similar structure but on Google Drive (minus TODOs, for which I use Google Keep)

by mcjiggerlog 10y ago

tokenizerrr 10y ago
I have a similar-ish setup and use rsync.net. Ask for the HN discount.
- codethief 10y ago
  I was going to suggest rsync.net as well. That, and attic/borg for the actual backups. See http://www.rsync.net/products/attic.html http://www.rsync.net/products/attic.html for the discount (3ct/GB/month).
lucb1e 10y ago
Yeah that has been an issue for years now. I want encrypted, incremental, off-site backups with an open source client. That's basically it. Duplicity and a few other tools fit the bill, but contrary to what Duplicity seems to think, my SSD does not have >10 GB of spare storage that can be occupied permanently. Oh and prices of S3 or higher are ridiculous (even AWS Glacier is expensive compared to just hosting a hard drive at a friend's place), in that case I'd rather self-host it, so Tarsnap is out. And I'm not sure how much faith I have in backup projects that don't even claim to be stable like bup. The requirements sound basic to me, but I've not found anything yet. I've started designing my own solution a while ago but ran into an issue with garbage collection on the server side (the old files kind of GC, like git has; not RAM). Perhaps I'll find some time to solve it, perhaps it'll remain an unsolved mystery for longer. I've heard good stories about Tarsnap. If you have money to spend or if you can be very selective in what you backup (e.g. backup only documents/spreadsheets and not your whole SSD/hard drive), that might be a good option. Duplicity is also great except it uses a lot of local state to determine which files it has already uploaded (at least, I'm guessing that's what it's for). Go for it if you can spare 1% of the backup size per incremental backup (yes, it accumulates). My temporary solution is `sudo tar c / | gzip | openssl enc -aes-256-cbc | nc $server` or simply put: an encrypted zip file copied to my server. Not incremental so I don't do it regularly.
- CalRobert 10y ago
  I'm not a big fan of amazon, but you could try Cloud drive with acdcli. $60 a year for "unlimited" (but subject to whatever limitations they care to impose) storage. I did find that doing several hundred GB of uploads with acdcli appeared to result in being throttled, but if you're doing daily diffs or the like you ought to be ok.
  - lucb1e 10y ago
    Thanks for the suggestion, I didn't know of ACD. Some issues on first glance though: - The $60 is €70. I think someone got the conversion rate backwards; - Acdcli does not seem to be able to actually write any files? The Github page mentions v0.1 is read-only and v0.2 should be able to write files. The current version is v0.1. - Actually, acdcli does not seem to do anything like incremental backups or encryption, it's just a CLI to ACD.
    - CalRobert 10y ago
      I thought you had another solution handling the file creation and just needed a place to dump the files. I use acdcli to upload (acdcli ul) on a pretty regular basis, though.
- qznc 10y ago
  One of my "when I find the time" project ideas is a backup-for-friends service. A p2p network for finding and connecting between home servers, so you can setup a connection to your friends. Then you can give disk space to your (authenticated) friends and they give it to you. Use that remote disk space for encrypted backups with Dropbox-like user friendlyness.

How do you handle backups? I have a similar structure but on Google Drive (minus TODOs, for which I use Google Keep)

tokenizerrr 10y ago

I have a similar-ish setup and use rsync.net. Ask for the HN discount.

codethief 10y ago
I was going to suggest rsync.net as well. That, and attic/borg for the actual backups. See http://www.rsync.net/products/attic.html http://www.rsync.net/products/attic.html for the discount (3ct/GB/month).

lucb1e 10y ago

Yeah that has been an issue for years now. I want encrypted, incremental, off-site backups with an open source client. That's basically it. Duplicity and a few other tools fit the bill, but contrary to what Duplicity seems to think, my SSD does not have >10 GB of spare storage that can be occupied permanently. Oh and prices of S3 or higher are ridiculous (even AWS Glacier is expensive compared to just hosting a hard drive at a friend's place), in that case I'd rather self-host it, so Tarsnap is out. And I'm not sure how much faith I have in backup projects that don't even claim to be stable like bup. The requirements sound basic to me, but I've not found anything yet. I've started designing my own solution a while ago but ran into an issue with garbage collection on the server side (the old files kind of GC, like git has; not RAM). Perhaps I'll find some time to solve it, perhaps it'll remain an unsolved mystery for longer. I've heard good stories about Tarsnap. If you have money to spend or if you can be very selective in what you backup (e.g. backup only documents/spreadsheets and not your whole SSD/hard drive), that might be a good option. Duplicity is also great except it uses a lot of local state to determine which files it has already uploaded (at least, I'm guessing that's what it's for). Go for it if you can spare 1% of the backup size per incremental backup (yes, it accumulates). My temporary solution is `sudo tar c / | gzip | openssl enc -aes-256-cbc | nc $server` or simply put: an encrypted zip file copied to my server. Not incremental so I don't do it regularly.

CalRobert 10y ago
I'm not a big fan of amazon, but you could try Cloud drive with acdcli. $60 a year for "unlimited" (but subject to whatever limitations they care to impose) storage. I did find that doing several hundred GB of uploads with acdcli appeared to result in being throttled, but if you're doing daily diffs or the like you ought to be ok.
- lucb1e 10y ago
  Thanks for the suggestion, I didn't know of ACD. Some issues on first glance though: - The $60 is €70. I think someone got the conversion rate backwards; - Acdcli does not seem to be able to actually write any files? The Github page mentions v0.1 is read-only and v0.2 should be able to write files. The current version is v0.1. - Actually, acdcli does not seem to do anything like incremental backups or encryption, it's just a CLI to ACD.
  - CalRobert 10y ago
    I thought you had another solution handling the file creation and just needed a place to dump the files. I use acdcli to upload (acdcli ul) on a pretty regular basis, though.
qznc 10y ago
One of my "when I find the time" project ideas is a backup-for-friends service. A p2p network for finding and connecting between home servers, so you can setup a connection to your friends. Then you can give disk space to your (authenticated) friends and they give it to you. Use that remote disk space for encrypted backups with Dropbox-like user friendlyness.