Finally I can write my happy “backup day” blog post, after several years of problems with my own backup. Even when it is a couple of days to late 😉 The last weeks I create a new backup setup and rolled it out to all my “production” systems. Yeahh.
Here is my new / current setup:
Backupninja
During my search for a backup solution I stumbled upon the tool backupninja and really liked the idea. Don’t write your own script that calls DB backup and the filesystem backup, but instead drop a file inside /etc/backup.d/ and it will automatically does it for you and sends an email if there is a problem. Even when this is a very Debian centric project, there is a Fedora/EPEL package for it. But the EPEL Package is only on version 1.1.0, instead of the current 1.2.1, but a mock rebuild of the fedora package for RHEL7 fixed that without any major issues. 1.2.1 is important because now restic is supported. There is still some love needed, because there are now at least two trees that are drifting apart ;-(
restic vs borg
The part that took the longest was the decision restic vs. borg. I used duplicity before, but the necessity to make a full backup regularly was a big NO for me. Even when duplicity is the only backup – that I know off – that supports repairing of errors within the archive with the help of par2 files. But at the End the decision was borg vs. restic. After some considerations I decided to simply start with both and decide later 😉 Better two backups than no backups.
Android Backup = seedvault vs. TitaniumBackup
I’m using titanium Backup for Android for a very long time. It works good, it can be bought without a google account and I moved between multiple Devices by restoring a backup on the new device. But the need for a rooting solution makes it hard for devices other than my personal own ( dor my wife, friends etc.). I was surprised when I learned today the my LineageOS already have a backup solution build in. It was something that was mention in the release-notes of LineageOS 18.1: seedvault. I was shocked to find it already in current LineageOS 17.1. My highlight was the direct support for nextcloud as a backup target. I did not tested the restore yet, but that will be next 😉 So at the moment I also have 2 backup solution for my Google free Android phone.
Password and Bookmark sync and Backup
My last paint point when it comes to backup was backup of my Browser bookmark and Passwords including sync. Of course I could use Chromium or Firefox buildin sync mechanism. (I use both browser at the moment, but I still use primarily firefox. In part because I use the buildin password store. )
An article about bitwarden and podman was posted in the fedora magazin years ago and I was playing around since about a year ago. Because Chromium was forbidden to use the sync from Google Chrome soon (or already), the idea was regrowing in my head.
The nice thing about bitwarden is that it is OpenSource and has the possibility to run it self hosted, but it is quite a heavy setup with more than 10 containers running and it has to be real docker, not podman ;-(. But bitwarden_rs to the rescue. It is a rewrite in rust, that is using a sqlite database and can run without docker. Because it is a rewrite it does not support all options from the full setup, but for a small setup it is ideal. The migration is not yet done, but that will hopefully happen in the next couple of weeks.