Re: I uninstalled OpenMediaVault (because totally overkill for me) and replaced it with borgbackup and rsyncq
On Sat, 2023-09-02 at 23:57 +0200, Linux-Fan wrote:
> Michael Kjörling writes:
>
> [...]
>
> > The biggest issue for me is ensuring that I am not dependent on
> > _anything_ on the backed-up system itself to start restoring that
> > system from a backup. In other words, enabling bare-metal
> > restoration.
> > I figure that I can always download a Debian live ISO, put that on
> > a
> > USB stick, set up an environment to access the (encrypted) backup
> > drive, set up partitions on new disks, and start copying; if I were
> > using backup software that uses some kind of custom format, that
> > would
> > include keeping a copy of an installation package of that and
> > whatever
> > else it needs for installing and running within a particular
> > distribution version, and making sure to specifically test that,
> > ideally without Internet access, so that I can get to the point of
> > starting to copy things back. (I figure that the boot loader is the
> > easy part to all this.)
>
> [...]
>
> My personal way to approach this is as follows:
>
> * I identify the material needed to restore.
> It consists of
>
> - the backup itself
> - suitable Linux OS to run a restore process on
> - the backup software
> - the backup key
> - a password to decrypt the backup key
>
> * I create a live DVD (using `live-build`) containing
> the Linux OS (including GUI, gparted and debian-installer!),
> backup software (readily installed inside the live system),
> backup key (as an encrypted file) but not the password nor
> the backup itself.
>
> Instead I decided to add:
>
> - a copy of an SSH identity I can use to access a
> read-only copy of the backup through my server and
> - a copy of the encrypted password manager database
> in case I forgot the backup password but not the
> password manager password and also in case I would
> be stuck with the Live DVD but not a copy of the
> password such that I could use one of the password
> manager passwords to access an online copy of the
> backup.
>
> * When I still used physical media in my backup strategy
> these were external SSDs (not ideal in terms of data
> retention, I know). I partitioned them and made them
> able to boot the customized live system (through syslinux).
>
> If you took such a drive and a PC of matching architecture
> (say: amd64) then everything was in place to restore from
> that drive (except for the password...). The resulting Debian
> would probably be one release behind (because I rarely updated
> the live image on the drive) but the data would be as up to
> date as the contained backup. The assumtion here was that one
> would be permitted to boot a custom OS off the drive or have
> access to a Linux that could read it because I formatted the
> “data” part with ext4 which is not natively readable on
> Windows.
>
> In addition to that, each copy of my backups includes a copy of the
> backup
> program executable (a JAR file and a statically compiled Rust program
> in my
> case) and some Windows exe files that could be used to restore the
> backup on
> Windows machines in event of being stuck with a copy of the backup
> “only”.
>
> While this scheme is pretty strong in theory, I update and test it
> far too
> rarely since it is not really easy to script the process, but at
> least I
> tested the correct working of the backup restore after creation of
> the live
> image by starting the restore from inside a VM.
>
> HTH
> Linux-Fan
>
> öö
>
I have also been trying UpenMediaVault and it's an overkill for me.
I have a Dell R320 fitted with 8 1T SAS drives, the hardware raid is
turned off as OpenMediaVault uses sorfware RAID.
If I turn the hardware raid on can I use Debian as the opperating
system?
Thank you for any help,
David.
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