Backup

Due to the higher complexities of running a modern website or blog securely or rather, for making it easier for people via CloudFlare and the like, I have found that when one of those main sites are down, again like CloudFlare, sites that rely on their DNS redirecting and whatnot, go down too. Many blogs that I follow are starting to jump on that band-wagon which is annoying since it can be quite a bit of time for a site to return to working order whether it was on CloudFlare’s side or the blog owner. Regardless of this I have looked into ways to have backup copies of their sites while this is still an option.

For those of us who use rsnapshot, moving to another backup solution is really not a pleasant thought. Debian 11 Bullseye brought along new features, updated packages, and a new kernel. Unfortunately it also dropped support on some packages, namely rsnpashot. This was done, I’m sure with a purpose to keep packages that are still being developed running in the latest distro. And since Debian usually runs for about two years between major update version it was made that rsnapshot was to not be added the the Debian 11 release due to rsnapshot not being maintained for two years.

After running Proxmox on my server in my homelab as well as for work for several years now, I have looked into ways to backup the essential files for an easy reinstall if and when needed. Since most Proxmox setups run on bare metal hardware recover is a little more involved than just creating a snapshot or backup and reverting to an earlier point in time.

I often backup the files with rsnapshot, but sadly Debian 11 has dropped rsnapshot from their repo due to the fact that rsnapshot hasn’t been maintained in over two years. I do have a fix for that by following this link here: https://blog.wretchednet.com/post/bringing_rsnapshot_back_to_debian/. Update it appears that rsnapshot is back up and running on Debian 12 stable.

After I recently setup rsnapshot as my backup solution, which can be found here https://blog.wretchednet.com/post/rsnapshot/ I started looking at options on how to remotely backup my workstation. I used Backblaze for a while but I wasn’t too happy with their interface. I looked at getting another cloud backup solutions but each one would either cost quite a bit more per month and or had similar or worse user interfaces.

I decided to go with Google Drive since I’ve had it for years, its free for up to 15 GB, and the interface is simple to index and use. Most of my initial backups would only be a few gigs, but whenever it came time to get the higher tier from Google Drive, I can get 100 GB for not too crazy of a price.

I think of myself as an advanced Linux users. I have been using it exclusively for over 10 years plus and as a homelab enthusiast and a network/system administrator for my job, I use it every single day. But I hadn’t taken the time to sit down and really give rsnapshot a decent try. I have worked with rsync and scripting during all of this time but now that my needs are expanding, rsync is not keeping up with the scale. It took a little bit of time to understand how to work with the config file but once I had learned it, I implemented it on all my servers and workstations.