Finally getting round to sussing backups.
I have played with a few apps and didn’t like many. Deja Dup has been uninstalled after it told me my drive is too small, when it isn’t. Installed Pika Backup and that looks nice (UI wise).
But my big question is… what do I backup?!
As someone used to TimeMachine on Mac, it’s tricky to know what to backup. For now I have kicked off a backup of home folder, nothing else. That at least protects me while away (going away for few days now, with laptop, wanted my data backed up at home just in case).
Fedora Workstation/Gnome - Is there a guide for what folders to backup anywhere? (I found one in Fedora Docs for Silverblue)
Timeshift from the Linux Mint folks comes highly recommended for system backups. Keep in mind that it excludes your home directory by default, as it’s not really designed for that.
It can use rsync or Btrfs snapshots. This can be quite helpful before larger set of updates or upgrading between versions.
Since you have a means of backing up your home directory, I think you’re set. In the past, I just used rsync to send it off to a local NAS.
Thanks everyone. I am really a beginner so some of the comments above are a mystery to me. I am just heading out on a 10 hour drive, away for a week. Will get into this in detail when I get back. For now I just wanted SOME kind of security for my data, in case the laptop is stolen or lost while away. I will add a few replies and try to respond while I am away…
Bit confused, ‘not really designed for that’? For what, backing up user data? if not that, then what’s it for?! (Dumb question perhaps, but sound weird to want backups which exclude our own data!
rsync/btrfs snapshots - I don’t know what either of these are. I really need the simplest GUI for now I think.
Bit more confused, if you think I am set, what would TimeShift do for me? I am curious because of the name, I am used to TimeMachine and CarbonCopyClone on mac. Something akin to TimeMachine is my long term hope to achieve on Fedora. For now, a CCC type clone or ‘mirror’ of my drive would be sufficient, to keep in fire safe.
Thanks for recommendations. Never heard of /etc folder (that’s how much of a beginner I am!) And that’s partly why I opened this thread, i.e. to learn what folders actually give me a real backup of everything I need! I have never put anything in /etc folder, knowingly anyway!
Good point. ONE
I have 1TB internal (massively crunched down from my previous 2TB drive on Mac. I bought a 1TB backup disk. Which makes me realise I probably misled people here by using the term ‘backup’ drive. I really just wanted a clone drive for now, wanted to mirror my internal drive to put in safe in case of loss. For now incremental backups are not essential, but I do hope to achieve that if I can, in next month or two.
Hmm, that’s encouraging thank you! Will have a read of the link when I can in next few days.
I am using Deja-Dup successfully, backing up my home folder with the default setup to an online account. I have even restored the home folder on newly set up VMs several times (e.g. to test F41), and it all went as it should.
Drive being too small - could that mean that the data to be backed up takes up more space than that available on the backup drive? Deja-Dup, and its backend duplicity, perform incremental backups, and those are kept for a period according to the setup on the Preferences → General page, however, older backups should be deleted earlier if space is running short. If this is not the case, you could file a bug.
Instead of Timeshift, on Fedora systems BTRFS Assistant seems to be the better choice. However, I would only advise to go this route once you have gained knowledge about the btrfs file system and its snapshots feature.
Incremental backup apps (with GUI frontends such as Deja-Dup or Pika Backup) would be the closest to TimeMachine in my opinion.
Given that you don’t seem to tweak your system that much (except for user configs → information drawn from your previous posts), I would say you are safe with only the home folder being backed up.
Agreed. I have my Mac backing up using Time Machine to a my Fedora server on a Samba share. Samba supports the Apple features needed to support this use case.
I use systemd services to run duplicity every hour to duplicate the Time machine experience. I keep 2 full backups, taken every 7 days ,and 1 hour incrementals in between on my main workstation.
@joeyjonnson Timeshift is meant to create backups or snapshots of the base operating system in case an operating system upgrade, application upgrade or installation causes major problems. It gives you a chance to go back to something like a “last known good” state to rollback to.
The reason why it excludes /home is operating system and application upgrades don’t normally touch your home directory and including it in the snapshot means that you could lose data if you do a rollback. If I remember correctly, Fedora will default to having a separate partition or slice for /home, meaning that a file system snapshot (which is a feature of the file system that is used) wouldn’t include /home anyway.
It’s not a direct replacement for Apple’s Time Machine, but more of a safety net for your base system.
