Timeshift system restore

[richb]

Has anybody tried this?

http://www.ubuntugeek.com/timeshift-...in-ubuntu.html

[richb]

I installed and ran this. The size of the backup was a little over 8 GIG and it took about 45 minutes. It is a front end for rsync.

[oshunluvr]

8 gigs and rsync? Sounds like a full backup routine.

If you are feeling the need for role-back functionality and file system snapshot-ing, do some studying up on btrfs. It does both natively.

[richb]

This seems to fill my needs nicely. I will see what btrfs does. If it is rollback and system backup, that is what this does with one click and minimal setup.

[oshunluvr]

45 minutes and 8 gigs of storage isn't really "one-click" in my book, but admittedly, btrfs features are not supported by many GUI tools yet. btrfs snapshots take only a couple milliseconds and no storage initially. As you amend your system (add/delete files after making a snapshot), space will gradually fill up. "Rollback" involves mounting snapshot subvolume in place of the current subvolume. To recover the space, you remove the snapshots.

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/btrfs

There was a rollback tool made available in 12.10: http://www.howtoforge.com/rollback-t...n-ubuntu-12.10 but I haven't tried it. Honestly, I'm more comfortable using the terminal for system level things like this.

I'm making a list of things to work on next year when I'm fully retired. This is one of them

[richb]

It is one click ....... and wait, while you continue with whatever you were working on. So it is not intrusive. After the initial backup, additional ones are incremental, so space is used sparingly.

EDIT: And this is for those who prefer a GUI. I fit that profile.

[GreyGeek]

Where do you store the 8GB of backup?
My installation would require 34GB. It would require a USB HD to store it.

[richb]

32 gigs? That is huge for system files.

Right now it is on the internal HD, but I intend to put it on a thumb drive.

[GreyGeek]

I have hundreds of audio and video clips that I've taken and accumulated over time. (Not movies. I don't dl or save any commercial movies and watch very very few). Family, grandkids, school and sporting events, etc... I am using UbuntuOne to backup a lot of the more critical files, but I'm going to drop that service (and Dropbox as well) and rely on my locally connected HDs. I've been watching the butter fs development with interest after Solaris (or was it Sun?) showed a video of their Z file system, of which btrfs appears to be a Linux version. Setting up a seven port powered USB hub and using 3 or 4 32GB USB sticks in a btrfs system. The hub will be here tomorrow. The sticks are coming later.

[oshunluvr]

That will be a fun experiment! Obviously, it will be slower than on internal devices (unless USB 3.0?) but you can still do it all: add and remove devices on-the-fly (while mounted), create and mount subvolumes, snapshots, etc.

I looked into ZFS a few years ago and stumbled over BTRFS in the process. Since it looked to me like the Linux kernel was going to adopt BTRFS, I went that way. I believe ZFS and BTRFS are not actually related, but share many features. Dibl and I have been steady btrfs users for about 3 years now I think, without any major issues.

One interesting feature of subvolumes is that they can be mounted directly as the root volume, or accessed from the level above. For example, my 3 OS installs and home are in separate subvolumes that mount directly at boot. But I can also mount the entire partition and browse through all my different installs with a single mount command. Neat.

One thing worth noting: at this time btrfs doesn't handle dynamically expandable virtual drives well or swap files/partitions at all.

[richb]

I guess you can setup Timeshift for data files, but it is by default intended for system files only and the web site punctuates this. I use cloud backup for my data files. I also understand that a future version of Timeshift will use btrfs rather than rsync.