Backups and Bitrot

https://xd1.dev/2024/03/backups-and-bitrot

by gchamonlive • 2 years ago

2 5 2 years ago

A quick tale of zombie code surviving through the years thanks to a successful backup strategy.

simonblack2• 2 years ago

I take a nightly snapshot of my /home/user directory. I try to maintain this under 15GB and as close as possible to 10 GB.

I also take a snapshot of my installed-packages-list, and a snapshot of my /etc and /local directories.

Those are the main ingredients of my automated daily backup. Using that information, I can reinstall and rebuild my system to where it was at backup-time last night. I haven't timed that recently, but I'd estimate that the rebuild would take between one and one-and-a-half hours from a completely crashed boot/root/main hard drive.

gchamonlive3• 2 years ago

Yes! I also do that. An hourly pkglist goes a long way.

But I am thinking about giving nix a try. It's supposed to solve many of those problems without having to resort to batch jobs.

simonblack2• 2 years ago

An hourly pkglist goes a long way.

Hourly? Hmm. That's not a bad idea at all.

Quite often I will change something only to wish I had a better way of backtracking the installed packages quickly, instead of rummaging about in the install logs.

Thinks: how about an hourly pkglist daily in a week-long circular-queue? A script and a cronjob could knock that on the head in a very short time. Or maybe a watch on the install-log and you'd only produce a pkglist if there's actually been any change.

Backups and Bitrot

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