How do you all go about backing up your data, on Linux?

Kalcifer@lemmy.world to Linux@lemmy.ml – 192 points –

I'm trying to find a good method of making periodic, incremental backups. I assume that the most minimal approach would be to have a Cronjob run rsync periodically, but I'm curious what other solutions may exist.

I'm interested in both command-line, and GUI solutions.

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I use rsync+btrfs snapshot solution.

  1. Use rsync to incrementally collect all data into a btrfs subvolume
  2. Deduplicate using duperemove
  3. Create a read-only snapshot of the subvolume

I don't have a backup server, just an external drive that I only connect during backup.

Deduplication is mediocre, I am still looking for snapshot aware duperemove replacement.

I'm not trying to start a flame war, but I'm genuinely curious. Why do people like btrfs over zfs? Btrfs seems very much so "not ready for prime time".

btrfs is included in the linux kernel, zfs is not on most distros
the tiny chance that an externel kernel module borking with a kernel upgrade happens sometimes and is probably scary enough for a lot of people

Features necessary for most btrfs use cases are all stable, plus btrfs is readily available in Linux kernel whereas for zfs you need additional kernel module. The availability advantage of btrfs is a big plus in case of a disaster. i.e. no additional work is required to recover your files.

(All the above only applies if your primary OS is Linux, if you use Solaris then zfs might be better.)

I've only ever run ZFS on a proxmox/server system but doesn't it have a not insignificant amount of resources required to run it? BTRFS is not flawless, but it does have a pretty good feature set.