Linux

For files are in git (using stow to recreate) and my documents folder is syncing to nextcloud (selfhosted) and this also to my laptop. This is of course not a "Backup" per se more a "multiple copies" but it gets the job done and also firs my workflow. To be happy with that I want to set up an offsite backup of data from my server to a NAS in my parents place but right now that's just a to-do I haven't put any work in yet ;)

When I researched this previously I concluded that there are two very good options for regular backups: Borg and Restic. These are especially efficient at backing up a diff of what has changed since the last backup. So you get snapshots of your filesystem state at each backup point without using a huge amount of space. You can mount any snapshot as a virtual directory. After the initial backup, incremental backups take a minute or two.

I use Borg, and I back up to cloud storage on Borgbase. I use Vorta as a GUI for Borg. I have Vorta start automatically when I start my window manager, and I have it set up for daily backups. I set up the same thing on my kid's computer.

I back up my home directory. I have some excluded directories like ~/.cache, and Steam's data directory. I use Baobab to find large directories that I don't want backed up.

I use the "exclude caches" option in the Borg "create archive" settings. That automatically excludes Rust target/ directories because they follow the Cache Directory Tagging Specification. Not all programming languages' tooling follows that spec so I also use directory name pattern excludes. For example I have an exclude pattern for .*/node_modules/.*

I use NixOS, and I keep my system config in a git repo so I don't need backups for anything outside my home directory.

Main drive is a 1 1TB super fast m.2 device, backup drive is an 8TB platter drive with btrfs.

Bunch of scripts I wrote myself copy all important stuff to the platter drive every night using rsync, then makes a snapshot with current date. Since its all copy on write, i have daily backups for like 3 years now. Some extra scripts clean up some of the older backups, lowering the backup frequency to once a week after a year, once every 4 weeks after 2 years.

I have similar solutions for my servers where i rsync the backups over the Internet.

I use restic, have also been looking at kopia and borg

Timeshift for the system, works perfectly, if you screw up the system, bad update for instance just start it, and you'll be back up running in less than ten minutes. Simple Cron backups for data, documents etc, just in case you delete a folder, document, image etc . Both of these options to a second internal HD

Bareos. Its a newer Form of bacula and is a realworkhorse.

The only thing I use as a backup is a Live CD that's mounted to a USB thumb drive.

I used to use Timeshift but the one time I needed it, it didn't work for some reason. It also had a problem of making my PC temporarily unusable while it was making a backup, so I didn't enable it when I had to reinstall Linux Mint.

Firstly, for my dotfiles, I use home-manager. I keep the config on my git server and in theory I can pull it down and set up a system the way I like it.

In terms of backups, I use Pika to backup my home directory to my hard disk every day, so I can, in theory, pull back files I delete.

I also push a core selection of my files to my server using Pika, just in case my house burns down. Likewise, I pull backups from my server to my desktop (again with Pika) in case Linode starts messing me about.

I also have a 2TiB ssd I keep in a strongbox and some cloud storage which I push bigger things to sporadically.

I also take occasional data exports from online services I use. Because hey, Google or Discord can ban you at any time for no reason. :P

I have my important folders synced to my Nextcloud and create nightly snapshots of that to a different drive using borg.

One thing I still need to do, is offsite encrypted backups using rsync.

All of my servers make local dumps of their databases and config files to directories owned by unprivileged users. This includes file paths, permissions, and ownerships (so I know how to put them back).

My primary research server at home uses rsync to pull copies of those local backups from my servers.

My primary research server uses Restic to make a daily incremental backup to Backblaze's B2 service.

For my home server, I use Restic and a cronjob to weekly take snapshots of all my services. It then gets synced to a Backblaze B2 bucket (at $6/TB/mo). It's pretty neat, only saving the difference between the previous and current snapshot, removes older snapshots, and encrypts everything.

I use syncthing to sync almost everything across my computer, laptop (occasional usage), server (RAID1), old laptop (powered up once every month or so), and a few other devices (that only get a small subset of my data, though). On the computer, laptop, and server, I have btrfs snapshots (snapper). Overall, this works very well, I always have 4+ copies of my data in 2+ geographical locations.

restic -> Wasabi, automated with shell script and cron. Uses an include list to tell it what paths to back up.

Script has Pushover credentials to send me backup alerts. Parses restic log to tell me how much was backed up, removed, success/failure of backup, and current repo size.

To be added: a periodic restore of a random file to have its hash compared to the current version of the file (will happen right after backup, unlikely to have changed in my workload), which will be subsequently deleted, and alert sent letting me know how the restore test went.

You have loads of options but you need to also start from ... "what if". Work out how important your data really is. Take another look and ask the kids and others if they give a toss. You might find that no one cares about your photo collection in which case if your phone dies ... who cares? If you do care then sync them to a PC or laptop.

Perhaps take a look at this - https://www.veeam.com/products/free/linux.html its free for a few systems.

I sync important files to s3 from a folder with awscli. Dot files and projects are in a private git repos. That's it.

If I maintained a server, I would do something more sophisticated, but installation is so dead simple these days that I could get a daily driver in working order very quickly.

Pika Backup for /home/ to an external drive. It's an automatic solution with a simple GUI that serves as a front end to Borg iirc. Lets you easily browse and mount old backups. Anything outside of my actual personal files can be recreated or restored trivially, so I don't care to back them up.

I also have a manual dump of /etc/ but i change it so infrequently that it doesn't really need looking after.

If I feel like it, I might use DD to clone my drive and put in on a hard drive. Usually I don't back up, though.

.dotfiles on github

Big/critical files on an external HD

simple as

Software & Services:

• Restic client
• Restic REST server
• https://github.com/rbuchberger/res-man + systemd timers or cron to configure & run restic nightly
• healthchecks.io for monitoring
• ntfy.sh for notifications

Destinations:

• Local raspberry pi with external hdd, running restic REST server
• RAID 1 NAS at parents' house, connected via tailscale, also running restic REST

I've been meaning to set up a drive rotation for the local backup so I always have one offline in case of ransomware, but I haven't gotten to it.

Edit: For the backup set I back up pretty much everything. I'm not paying per gig, though.

Dotfiles are handled by GNU Stow and git. I have this on all my devices.

Projects like in git.

Media is periodically rsynced from my server to an external drive.

Been meaning to put all my docker-composes into git as well...

I don't back up too much else.

Pendrive for the important stuff, paper for the really important stuff and brain for everything else.

My backup is begging my computer to implode so I can experience the sweet relief of getting offline.

But also I use external discs and make copies of important files I can't recreate. Don't care too much about config as I am happy enough to distro hop and set things up anew.

I built a backup server out of my old desktop, running Ubuntu and ZFS

I have a dataset for each of my computers and i back them up to the corresponding datasets in the zfs pool on the server semi-regularly. The zfs pool has enough disks for some redundancy, so i can handle occasional drive failures. My other computers run arbitrary filesystems (ext4, btrfs, rarely ntfs)

the only problem with my current setup is that if there is file degradation on my workstation that i dont notice, it might get backed up to the server by mistake. then a degraded file might overwrite a non-degraded backup. to avoid this, i generally dont overwrite files when i backup. since 90% of my data is pictures, it's not a big deal since they dont change

Someday i'd like to set up proxmox and virtualize everything, and i'd also like to set up something offsite i could zfs-send to as a second backup

Timeshift for configs to a locally attached drive. Home partition to cloud with rsync

For system files/configuration on my machines, timeshift set to run once a week.

For family photos and shared files, I built a pair of SFTP servers made from old HP thin-client PCs at two different geographic locations which automatically sync to each other once a day via cron job using vsftpd and lftp. Each one has both an NVMe and SATA SSD which run in a software RAID 1 configuration.

For any other files, a second local server also using vsftpd and two SSDs in USB enclosures. I manually back them up using rsync on an irregular basis.