this post was submitted on 12 Jul 2023
27 points (93.5% liked)

Selfhosted

40008 readers
1024 users here now

A place to share alternatives to popular online services that can be self-hosted without giving up privacy or locking you into a service you don't control.

Rules:

  1. Be civil: we're here to support and learn from one another. Insults won't be tolerated. Flame wars are frowned upon.

  2. No spam posting.

  3. Posts have to be centered around self-hosting. There are other communities for discussing hardware or home computing. If it's not obvious why your post topic revolves around selfhosting, please include details to make it clear.

  4. Don't duplicate the full text of your blog or github here. Just post the link for folks to click.

  5. Submission headline should match the article title (don’t cherry-pick information from the title to fit your agenda).

  6. No trolling.

Resources:

Any issues on the community? Report it using the report flag.

Questions? DM the mods!

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
 

So, I've found that there are a lot of ways to backup a server and anything on it, but I'm somewhat at a loss for what to use to backup everything else to that server.

For most stuff I personally can grab the files I need and back them up using a simple SMB share or rsync or whatever, but for my SO or anyone else who wants to back up is going to have a hard time. That doesn't even cover phones - which you would want to back up fairly regularly since, you know, they get dropped. Sure, I personally can hook up tailscale and split tunnel it, and then set up sync on certain folders, but nobody else I know is going to be able to.

In a perfect world there would be a backup app that had its own little wireguard tunnel built in that could run all the traffic from wherever to my server, and would easy to set up on Android and Windows, but I don't think that exists. So what does everyone use that does exist?

top 9 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 year ago (2 children)

It sounds like your ask is for a recommendation to back up personal files from disparate locations to a server.

I use a self hosted Nextcloud instance for this purpose.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

Nextcloud is fantastic for this especially with their desktop app!

For app settings I run pretty much everything in a container (FreeBSD jail) that can be zipped and exported easily that way. Our NAS files go to two external hard drives with rsync. One for local in house backup and one I leave at my work desk for off site backup of anything I can’t replace like the photos my wife’s taken over the last two decades.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

File synchronization is not a backup.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago

I would recommend looking into Syncthing. I use it on all my devices and share specific folders between devices (notes mostly) and all folders back to the server. The server then backs all that up offsite as well.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago
[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

rsync:

#! /usr/bin/sh


TIMESTAMP_LOG="/path/to/logdir/.backuplog"
BACKUP_DEST="server:/path/to/backup/$1"
TIMESTAMP=$(date +"%Y-%m-%d %H:$M:%S")

echo "backup to:$BACKUP_DEST"
echo "Backup: $BACKUP_DEST $TIMESTAMP" >> $TIMESTAMP_LOG
pause
rsync -auvh /path/to/homedir* rhudson@$BACKUP_DEST

This should be called with a name of a target subdirectory in BACKUP_DEST.. mine are rsynca, rsyncb, rsyncc but I will change this soon for day of week based directories.

I also have certificate authentication setup on ssh on my server - that's why no password is needed.

Someday I will set up tailscale between this machine and the server.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

You are trying to solve two different, but related problems, and there are discrete solutions for both.

One is a personal cloud. You need a secure place to store your shit from multiple users and devices, from multiple networks. You’ll need a mostly static IP and dyndns or your own domain, and certificates signed by a public CA/letsencrypt.

Then, you are looking for a backup application that supports rsync or sftp/scp over ssh or vpn, that is also cross compatible (Android and PC/Linux). Point this to the service above, and you are good to go.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago
[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago

scp -i [certificate] local.file [email protected]:~/destination.file

load more comments
view more: next ›