Nine

Restic

Like everyone has said there’s way better ways of doing it.

HOWEVER if you wanted to use dd you totally could. I’d recommend piping into something like gzip/zstd to save some space though.

dd if=/dev/sda | gzip >/mnt/backup_disk/sda.gz

You could also use restic backup the raw block device too.

That being said, clonezilla is exactly what you want

Everyday. I’ve got a lot of stuff that uses it. Granted most of it was mostly created a decade ago but with minimal maintenance it works great. The most helpful script is parsing megacli outputs so I can get a heads up on drive failures and rebuilds among other things.

I just came across this - https://fedoramagazine.org/d-bus-overview/ - and I think it explains it pretty well.

To add to this systemd can do everything they can. You can isolate network, do fire-walling, and sandboxing pretty easily. Any OCI container can be used too if you don’t want to install something too.

I could just do more with it.

I didn’t have a lot of money and went dumpster diving for parts. Changed out a bad capacitor and got a system booting. This was back in Pentium 3 and 4 days. I found a 512MB stick of memory that had some bad areas. Linux was able to map around it with some kernel options at boot. Since I had limited storage I used knoppix and had a print out of the needed kernel options and memory addresses.

Once it was up and running I was able to do anything and everything I wanted. I did built a better system and got gentoo going a year or so later.

Eventually I got gaming mostly working with the project that eventually became crossover. First software I ever purchased too. I started dual booting less.

I bounced back and forth between windows and Linux and when I built a system around 2010 I didn’t even bother configuring it for dual booting.

I haven’t really touched anything windows since around the release of Windows 10 and only used windows 7 for work reasons prior. These days I’m pretty useless with anything on that end.

So I’m an evangelical fan of Linux. I use it everywhere I can and the FOSS philosophy resonates with me. I advocate for it where it makes sense and works. I’ll go out of my way and spend time & money helping people move into it too.

From what I understand Greg Kroah-Hartman would take over

I was curious about this too. Definitely making me question some of my own thoughts and assumptions about btrfs.

🤣

I guess it largely depends on the instance and user. Federation allows things to talk but users and their home instances still have ownership of the data. So if a user removes it it’s gone. If the instance goes away it’s gone.

At least that’s my basic understanding. I haven’t had the time to really explore how everything works and do a deep dive. So if I’m wrong someone please correct me!

Good to hear! I’ve been looking at that distro too for a gaming PC. Glad to hear you’re having good results!

So yes those are things that can do similar functions and in the case of os-tree based things btrfs is used heavily.

But you’re still missing the point.

It sounds like you’re saying people are needlessly trying to be complicated for no reasons. That we have btrfs & zfs so anything else is pointless.

That’s a lot like saying we have roofs so a roof in Florida should be the same as a roof in Siberia. Anything else is needlessly complicated.

There’s a lot of nuance missing there. Sure we have different technologies that can do similar things. There’s also reasons why someone would use one over the other.

I have to disagree with you on that. You’re missing the point entirely.

It’s not about making something easy into something complicated. It’s about making something that is reliable and reproducible.

Saying it’s just bs to justify jobs, sales, etc is like saying we already have widget X therefore it’s stupid to use widget Y. You’re missing the reasons why someone might need a widget that does something different than widget x.

No one is (should) be saying one is superior to the other. It’s different technology and methods to get to the same goal. That is a working system that consistently and reliably produces results that are required.

So yes, there’s different ways of managing those systems but that’s not a bad thing or is it needlessly complicated for no reason or benefit.

There’s a lot of reasons why someone would choose or need something like nixos or sliverblue. There’s also lots of reasons someone would choose not to use them

Yeah I’ve run into the same problems, really annoying when I can’t find a workaround but it’s getting easier as time goes on

I think there’s just not enough people who run them. I think the closest you’ll find is the nixos crowd.

I’ve wanted to give silverblue a go, but I know how to manage my fedora install pretty well and don’t feel like taking on a new project like that when at the end of the day I just want to load up steam and decompress. I have a feeling that the majority people who want to try it are in same place I am.

Though it’s getting more and more tempting to switch since the vast majority of my data and packages are installed in my home.

Since it’s a work phone they’re responsible for backing it up and managing it. That’s not something you should be doing at all. If they need you to have more than the standard 5G iCloud storage then they can purchase it for your work iCloud account. Don’t backup your work data onto a personal device. If they get sued do you really want to give over your personal computer as evidence? You’re opening yourself to a lot of liability so don’t do that.

Since you’re not going to listen 😂

The short answer is no. Longer answer is use a vm, best answer is use a Mac.

Even though I have a MacBook I don’t use it to backup my iPhone. It’s just not worth it, imo, to spend the time and storage. You can’t even restore it effectively without iCloud either so it kinda defeats the purpose. The only way I could see it being an option to consider is if you have very limited internet access and/or bandwidth.

That’s what I’ve been using too. You can combine them to have a local dns with more restrictions too.

Personally I just run named/bind for my local(lab) dns with NextDNS as the forwarders. Everything else use uses their app and/or gets the resolved configured to use it. Keeps everything safe and fast. Well worth a small fee imho.

Highly recommend NextDNS!!!

Since both drives are SSDs there’s nothing really stopping you from using BTRFS. You are correct that the features for BTRFS are better for the long term health of your SSDs and if you feel comfortable with it then you should 100% use it. That being said with todays SSDs the life span extending features of BTRFS, F2FS, etc are going to be minimal at best. So don’t stress too much over running it or not. Just use whatever you’re most comfortable with.

The kind of data OP is talking about using won’t benefit much from the features of btrfs. That being said it’s still a great choice for them!

Also it will detect bitrot but it won’t be able to fix it unless DUP is being used.

I’m assuming you don’t want to tinker with things? I’m also assuming you do not have experience with things like ZFS. So….

Unless you’re running multiple drives (or special options) zfs & btrfs aren’t going to give you much. For instance btrfs (unless it’s set to DUP) isn’t going to protect from bitrot or other data corruption. Same goes for ZFS. It will throw an error when something doesn’t match the checksum though.

Your best option is to either use ext4 or xfs for your 4tb storage. If you’re working with a lot of large files xfs has some advantages but overall you’re not going to notice that much of a difference in your uses.

For your ssd, btrfs has the advantage over ext4 and xfs. Although so does f2fs. In practical uses for what you’re describing it’s not going to make that much of a difference.

Unless you have a specific reason to use something other than ext4 then just stick with that. It’s simple and just works. Make sure you’re keeping backups eg restic, borg, rsync, duplicity, etc etc. and follow the 3,2,1 rule where possible and you’ll be fine.

If it were me setting up that system I’d mirror the drives and use btrfs. Which is pretty much what I did on my PC. But that double the costs of storage.

The only place (at home) I use ZFS is on my NAS. I have Rocky8 setup and all it does is handle storage. I use mirrored pairs on my important data and Z1 on everything else. But that’s a topic for another post

If you REALLY want some of the features of zfs or btrfs eg snapshots, I’d lean on your backup software for that but if you can use LVM to take snapshots in a similar fashion. See STRAIS for another example too. However that’s beyond the scope of this post.