18.04 upgrade and backup options

[GreyGeek]

Oh, that's okay, Vinny. I didn't mean you had to come up with something. I believe there's a write-up on using btrfs snapshots around here somewhere, or someone could chime in, or I could GTS. :-D

--EDIT--

For anyone who might be looking for btrfs snapshots for backing up systems I submit this link.

I bookmarked that link earlier this summer. I dismissed it for the same reasons that I dismissed snapper, TimeShift and some other backup tools of this genra that use the same locations for snapshots. Snapper creates its snapshots in /home/user/.snapshots and /root/.snapshots. In my tutorial in the BTRFS subforum I explain why I think those locations are not good. I also explain why mounting the live filesystem to /mnt, which makes /mnt the <ROOT_FS>, is better.

Basically, IMO, nothing I've seen so far beats the tools that BTRFS supplies to make and restore snapshots and backups. The BTRFS command puts EVEYTHING into the snapshot. Using the increment command in BTRFS send (-p) creates a snapshot on the destination by only sending over what has changed since the previous snapshot. Send my entire @ and @home to the archive disk using send & receive takes a total of about 30 minutes. Using the incremental option archiving both @ and @home takes less than 3 minutes.

[vinnywright]

Hmm, I downloaded the service menu, but the page says:

"To install, place the "subvol_manager.desktop" file and the "subvol_manager-scripts" folder and it's contents into:

~/.local/share/kservices5/ServiceMenus"

I'm in ~/.local/share and I don't see any kservices folder. I just created "kservices5" and "ServiceMenus" and it worked fine.

yes that is correct.

VINNY

[MadMage999]

Hmm, I downloaded the service menu, but the page says:

"To install, place the "subvol_manager.desktop" file and the "subvol_manager-scripts" folder and it's contents into:

~/.local/share/kservices5/ServiceMenus"

I'm in ~/.local/share and I don't see any kservices folder. I just created "kservices5" and "ServiceMenus" and it worked fine.

[MadMage999]

Very nice! Thanks for the info and the linkage. I'm going to try that service menu right now.

I thought about using rsync but I figure I already know btrfs can do it without worrying about it being a live filesystem, so I'll go with that.

Also, there's this: https://btrfs.wiki.kernel.org/index....emental_Backup
"IncrementalInstant, Atomic COW Snapshots Since the snapshots are atomic, when a snapshot is restored it appears to applications as if a power loss had occurred (and the filesystem has gone back to an earlier state). Thus it is possible to backup databases without stopping them beforehand.

Snapshot Transfer
Efficiently determining and streaming the differences between two snapshots if they are either snapshots of the same underlying subvolume, or have a parent-child relationship. This is far quicker than e.g. rsync could, especially on large file systems. (For instance, rsync cannot be aware of mere metadata changes like filename, location etc but the FS itself is certainly aware of it.) "

--EDITED--

Oops missed part of that quote.

[vinnywright]

Oh, that's okay, Vinny. I didn't mean you had to come up with something. I believe there's a write-up on using btrfs snapshots around here somewhere, or someone could chime in, or I could GTS. :-D

--EDIT--

For anyone who might be looking for btrfs snapshots for backing up systems I submit this link.

Aaaa I thought you were speaking of "rsync" exclusively.

BTRFS snapshots are easy as pie if your system is in a btrfs file system , (I have 2 installs in 1 BTRFS file system ) that I will take snapshots of for easily recovering if somthing goes wrong in a upgrade or a large update .

in fact one of our senior members @oshunluvr has a Dolphin service menu for doing this he created . hear https://www.opendesktop.org/p/1214134/

see this link ,,, https://www.kubuntuforums.net/showth...ice-menu/page3

it works quite well IMO

screen shot ,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,, ,,,,,,,,,,



VINNY

[MadMage999]

Oh, that's okay, Vinny. I didn't mean you had to come up with something. I believe there's a write-up on using btrfs snapshots around here somewhere, or someone could chime in, or I could GTS. :-D

--EDIT--

For anyone who might be looking for btrfs snapshots for backing up systems I submit this link.

[vinnywright]

I'm interested in this as well. I need a good way to sync/backup running systems to an ssh/sftp server. I suppose I could use btrfs for all the systems needing backed up.

truly I have no idea , this is the first time I have used it at all , and did a fare amount of googleing to to get the line (slightly modified by me with the help of "man rsync" ) that I used.

VINNY

[MadMage999]

Does rsync actually back up files that are running as processes or are open by some other method, or do they silently skip them?

I'm interested in this as well. I need a good way to sync/backup running systems to an ssh/sftp server. I suppose I could use btrfs for all the systems needing backed up.

[vinnywright]

from the post I got the base command from .

Please be mindful that this is suitable for local and stand-alone systems only. If your system is being actively accessed by some other systems on the network, it isn’t better solution. Because, the contents of these systems might be constantly updated every minute, and some files may change during the rsync process. Say for example, when rsync will reach the file 2, the contents of the previous file (File 1) might be changed. This will leave you with a dependency error when you will need to use that backup. In such cases, a snapshot-based backup is the better approach. Because the system will get “froze” before the backup process starts and get it “unfreeze” when the backup process finishes, so all the files are consistent.

VINNY

[vinnywright]

Does rsync actually back up files that are running as processes or are open by some other method, or do they silently skip them?

I am not sure of the way it acts on open files , I did the backup from a different system installed on this box , (their are 5 of them) so the / root I was copying was not in use .

VINNY

[vinnywright]

screen shot



VINNY

[GreyGeek]

Does rsync actually back up files that are running as processes or are open by some other method, or do they silently skip them?

[vinnywright]

LOL upgrade went ok , but the upgrader disabled the neon repo in my /etc/apt/sources.list ?

I got a warning that "neon-desktop" could not be installed (before it started) , I think , ya well we will deal with that after the fact .
then at the end wile reviewing the packages to be removed I see "plasma-desktop" , and think , ya well we will deal with that after the fact as well , at worst I'll find my self in a TTY trying to fix things

so after the reboot I'm in a desktop with no wallpaper , clicking the desktop dose nothing , no menu, , yakuake works, krunner works, their is a taskbar but no taskmanager and conky works.

any way I launch krunner(alt+F2) get dolphin open /etc/apt/sources.list with kate and un-comment the neon line , then F12 to yakuake and

sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get dist-upgrade

600+ packages , then

sudo apt install plasma-desktop neon-desktop

, reboot , looks like all is well .

Kodi is gone , will see what else as time goes on

VINNY

[vinnywright]

crossing fingers ,,,and starting the upgrade.

VINNY

[vinnywright]

well couldn't wait any longer so I gust started the backup with this

vinny@vinny-Bonobo-Extreme:~$ sudo rsync -aAXvh --progress /mnt/sda6/ --exclude={/cdrom,/dev,/lost+found,/media,/proc,/run,/sys,/tmp} /mnt/sdb1/backup

we will see what we will see

after this completes we will start the upgrade.

VINNY

26.89G in 25min ,,,,,15.77M bytes/sec , backup done .