How to Automatically Backup a Linux VPS to a Separate Cloud Storage Service

Re:How to Automatically Backup a Linux VPS to a Separate Clo... by fabian2k on Monday June 10, 2019 @10:19AM (#20146918)

I've used rclone for a very similar purpose. Restic, which is used in this post looks very interesting as well.

It's not the topic of the post, but database backups deserve a special mention. You can't just naively copy the database folder this way in most cases, you have to make sure to backup a consistent snapshot of the database. This is still not hard to do at smaller scales, when you can just add an exported dump of the database to your regular backup. But it is a point that needs some attention if you host the database yourself.

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Re:How to Automatically Backup a Linux VPS to a Separate Clo... by tluyben2 on Monday June 10, 2019 @11:14AM (#20147439)

I have many servers with different (versions) of Linux distros on them and I found Duplicity | Restic very annoying to install. Vague (for me as non-Python expert) error messages and options randomly not working as a result. Rclone was absolutely painless to install everywhere.

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Re:How to Automatically Backup a Linux VPS to a Separate Clo... by KAMSPioneer on Monday June 10, 2019 @11:34AM (#20147668)

Were you getting Python errors from Restic? Not terribly familiar with Duplicity, but Restic is written in Go (Github is https://github.com/restic/restic).

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Re:How to Automatically Backup a Linux VPS to a Separate Clo... by tluyben2 on Monday June 10, 2019 @11:44AM (#20147777)

I tried 4 different similar packages; maybe I remember that detail wrong, but I could not get Restic working on older machines for some reason. Rclone was so simple and it just worked, so I did not investigate further. Is Restic much better?

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Re:How to Automatically Backup a Linux VPS to a Separate Clo... by witten on Monday June 10, 2019 @11:49AM (#20147832)

You might be thinking of Borg Backup, which is written in Python: https://borgbackup.readthedocs.io/

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Re:How to Automatically Backup a Linux VPS to a Separate Clo... by anderspitman on Monday June 10, 2019 @01:36PM (#20148896)

Yeah for me the hardest part about installing restic was remembering how to unzip a bz2 file. I don't know what more you can ask for than a statically linked binary...

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Re:How to Automatically Backup a Linux VPS to a Separate Clo... by tluyben2 on Monday June 10, 2019 @02:07PM (#20149211)

Ok, cannot have been Restic then; thanks, I am going to try that one now. And find out what the other Python one was; I was following an SO recommendation.

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Re:How to Automatically Backup a Linux VPS to a Separate Clo... by anderspitman on Monday June 10, 2019 @01:35PM (#20148888)

I use restic (for dumping an encrypted deduped backup to a usb drive) and rclone (for pushing to backblaze B2). Both fantastic tools.

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Re:How to Automatically Backup a Linux VPS to a Separate Clo... by ngcc_hk on Monday June 10, 2019 @10:37AM (#20147107)

Very good point. (For source code sync with git is a must.)

And do rehearsal as well. Backup may not work.

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Re:How to Automatically Backup a Linux VPS to a Separate Clo... by fabian2k on Monday June 10, 2019 @10:42AM (#20147155)

The tricky thing with the naive copy as a database backup is that it actually could work if you test it while the database isn't writing at the moment. For example when you only tested this outside production on a test server without load.

But yes, you do have to test and verify that your backup works. It might be configured entirely wrong, the cron job might not be running for some reason, you set it up with encryption years ago but lost the passphrase. There are plently of ways this can potentially fail.

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Re:How to Automatically Backup a Linux VPS to a Separate Clo... by marceloneil on Monday June 10, 2019 @11:20AM (#20147512)

restic actually supports rclone!

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