personal offsite backup
I just read a newspaper article about house fires, and it struck me that one of the things that might well be lost in such a mishap would be my financial records etc that are stored on my computer. All carefully backed up to a local disk :) So I need to consider an offsite backup. What do people use and/or recommend? My initial thinking is to install some sort of disk and computer (pi?) in a nephew's house and install some automatic backup software. So I'm open to suggested implementation ideas or alternative ideas. I'd like to avoid solutions that involve subscriptions. TIA, Dave
FWIW, I do a nightly backup across the network to another computer. Nothing fancy: cd /home tar -czf - bill | openssl enc -e -aes256 -pbkdf2 -out secured.tar.gz -pass file:bill/secreat -out $Duh_Plack secreat is just a text file with a password, I figure if they've gotten that far into the machine why be super security conscious since it's pretty much a moot point. $Duh_Plack is a location on a NFS machine. BTW, I have the last 14 days filed away there. Every so often I will dump all of this stuff onto a 5TB USB drive (some stuff is re-encoded with a different manually input password, and put it into a locked container in my storage area down the hall, I live in a condo complex with lots and lots of overhead sprinklers. Generally speaking if I'm gone for more than a couple of days (or when I do the snowbird thing) I'll dump it off to a different 5TB drive, again some of it is encoded, and put that into a day-pack I carry. The 5TB drives have encoding done because I might lose control of the physical medium somewhere along the line. My house, before I moved to the condo, was burglarized while I was gone for the winter and they stole all of the stored paperwork (tax returns, birth certificate, etcetera). Along with lots of other stuff from inside the house, like computers. So there's plenty of stuff to consider...
On 11/11/24 2:43 PM, Dave Howorth wrote:
I just read a newspaper article about house fires, and it struck me that one of the things that might well be lost in such a mishap would be my financial records etc that are stored on my computer.
Having just lived though this example where my office was lost, offsite backups are critical. For 20 years I had a simple cron job that called rsync to sync servers between home and work. As the firemen were up on top of the 2nd floor with a 60 foot hook and ladder with chainsaws running to cut holes in the roof and the 900 HP turbo-pumps blasting 1200 gal/min down the hole -- I was glad to have the data mirrored. Depending on your connection, the initial move of data can be by flash-drive and sneaker-net if you have terrabytes to sync. The rsync handles the daily changes in both directions. No office, no 2nd ISP, so now I'm in your boat and I really don't know what I will do (I keep a grab-n-go 128G MicroSD in a Pi Zero 2 W I can unplug and stick in my pocket on the way out) While there are many sub-$5/month VM solutions you can buy, the issue is one of security. With the endless (daily) reported breaches of the supposedly most secure companies using supposedly best-practices, it is forseeable data out of your control is subject to being data stolen. In my particular circumstance with the safekeeping requirements imposed, and potential loss of my license if client data is compromised, there simply isn't a commercial site I trust to use as an offsite backup now. ... and that is sad. I'm almost to the point of looking for another self-hosting comrade to swap 50G of server space with to provide a solution for both... It's a vexing problem. Sticking another Linux box at one of my kids houses may be an option there - I'd just have to work with the dyn-ip issue and potential port blocking for non-business accounts. This is a tough issue to solve absent having 2 physical locations at your disposal. -- David C. Rankin, J.D.,P.E.
W dniu 11.11.2024 o 22:33, David C. Rankin pisze:
While there are many sub-$5/month VM solutions you can buy, the issue is one of security. With the endless (daily) reported breaches of the supposedly most secure companies using supposedly best-practices, it is forseeable data out of your control is subject to being data stolen. In my particular circumstance with the safekeeping requirements imposed, and potential loss of my license if client data is compromised, there simply isn't a commercial site I trust to use as an offsite backup now. ... and that is sad.
This can be easily solved using for example gocryptfs reverse mode. https://nuetzlich.net/gocryptfs/
On Mon, Nov 11, 2024 at 10:34 PM David C. Rankin <drankinatty@gmail.com> wrote:
On 11/11/24 2:43 PM, Dave Howorth wrote:
I just read a newspaper article about house fires, and it struck me that one of the things that might well be lost in such a mishap would be my financial records etc that are stored on my computer.
Having just lived though this example where my office was lost, offsite backups are critical.
For 20 years I had a simple cron job that called rsync to sync servers between home and work. As the firemen were up on top of the 2nd floor with a 60 foot hook and ladder with chainsaws running to cut holes in the roof and the 900 HP turbo-pumps blasting 1200 gal/min down the hole -- I was glad to have the data mirrored.
I'm a big fan of rsync. My worry in this case is that if something goes wrong on the main system (pre-fire), those changes could conceivably overwrite the correct stuff on the backup. Incremental backups to a new file each time are perhaps safest in that respect. Having said that, I also use rsync to backup up from one work office to another so that should disaster strike, I'm more prepared. But the potential rsync thing worries me. I'm planning on switching to a backup system that does occasional full backups and regular incremental ones. My data to backup (on local RAID storage) is currently ~250GB core business data (must be safe!) and ~1TB makes-life-easier-if-it-exists data. So an efficient backup solution is needed. rsync does work well. Except for my concern... -- Roger Oberholtzer
Le 12/11/2024 à 10:09, Roger Oberholtzer a écrit :
is needed. rsync does work well. Except for my concern...
there is no real solution when the problem is between the chair and the keyboard :-(. (every time I have lost data it was me the culprit - like the day I formatted a 4Tb usb disk when I wanted to format a 32Gb sd card :-() Redundancy is the only key. I have 4 archival disks (5Tb each) spread on various locations and rsynced when necessary, with a cloud and a web site retaining the most important part. incremental backup can be very bad at recovery time. How to know which one is the good one? And if, like me, you manage large (video) files, with frequent modifications when editing, volume can very fast be unmanageable if you have sensible data, local encryption is pretty simple jdd -- https://dodin.org
On Tue, 12 Nov 2024 10:09:01 +0100 Roger Oberholtzer wrote:
On Mon, Nov 11, 2024 at 10:34 PM David C. Rankin <drankinatty@gmail.com> wrote:
On 11/11/24 2:43 PM, Dave Howorth wrote:
I just read a newspaper article about house fires, and it struck me that one of the things that might well be lost in such a mishap would be my financial records etc that are stored on my computer.
Having just lived though this example where my office was lost, offsite backups are critical.
For 20 years I had a simple cron job that called rsync to sync servers between home and work. As the firemen were up on top of the 2nd floor with a 60 foot hook and ladder with chainsaws running to cut holes in the roof and the 900 HP turbo-pumps blasting 1200 gal/min down the hole -- I was glad to have the data mirrored.
I'm a big fan of rsync. My worry in this case is that if something goes wrong on the main system (pre-fire), those changes could conceivably overwrite the correct stuff on the backup. Incremental backups to a new file each time are perhaps safest in that respect.
Having said that, I also use rsync to backup up from one work office to another so that should disaster strike, I'm more prepared. But the potential rsync thing worries me. I'm planning on switching to a backup system that does occasional full backups and regular incremental ones. My data to backup (on local RAID storage) is currently ~250GB core business data (must be safe!) and ~1TB makes-life-easier-if-it-exists data. So an efficient backup solution is needed. rsync does work well. Except for my concern...
I run a daily python backup script to a btrfs formatted, externally mounted hard drive. The initial backup is done by rsync, followed by a btrfs snapshot of that backup, followed by a btrfs delete of the oldest snapshots (currently 182 days ago). I think this offers some protection against the rsync problem of copying errors to the backup. It also provides incremental backups to restore older versions of files. Bob -- Bob Williams
Am 12.11.24 um 11:38 schrieb Bob Williams:
On Tue, 12 Nov 2024 10:09:01 +0100 Roger Oberholtzer wrote:
On Mon, Nov 11, 2024 at 10:34 PM David C. Rankin <drankinatty@gmail.com> wrote:
On 11/11/24 2:43 PM, Dave Howorth wrote:
I just read a newspaper article about house fires, and it struck me that one of the things that might well be lost in such a mishap would be my financial records etc that are stored on my computer.
Having just lived though this example where my office was lost, offsite backups are critical.
No solution but additional questions and thoughts: I never managed to get reliably into a remote computer (*). Seems I am too stupid for this. So what I do, is doing backups on alternating external disks, which I then physically bring to another place like once a week. I will never have a absolutely recent backup, but at least I will not lose everything... Cloud solutions are not possible for me because I have zero trust in any of the companies that offer this (and also could disappear from one day to the other or change their condition/prices), but also for the sheer amount of data. (*) The problems are not only getting into the remote computer but also the privacy of the computer's owner and mine: Let's say my friend offers me to connect a large HD, encrypted by me, to his computer for my backup and switch it on/connect to the web at agreed times - and I find a manageable way to connect via the web. How can s/he give me access to "my" HD without giving me access to his or her data on his computer? I mean without hardening his settings to paranoid, so that other user cannot read his data, but making his daily life more complicated? Also consider that the remote friend probably doesn't use Linux, but Win or Mac. They can't handle LUKS encrypted disks and in proprietary Non-Open-Source encryption I have not the slightest trust. So I guess I will stay with my sub-optimal solution, unless you make me learn a convincing better one :-) -- Daniel Bauer photographer Basel Málaga Twitter: @Marsfotografo (often explicit nudes) https://www.patreon.com/danielbauer https://www.daniel-bauer.com (nudes)
On 2024-11-12 12:06, Daniel Bauer wrote:
Am 12.11.24 um 11:38 schrieb Bob Williams:
...
(*) The problems are not only getting into the remote computer but also the privacy of the computer's owner and mine:
Let's say my friend offers me to connect a large HD, encrypted by me, to his computer for my backup and switch it on/connect to the web at agreed times - and I find a manageable way to connect via the web.
How can s/he give me access to "my" HD without giving me access to his or her data on his computer? I mean without hardening his settings to paranoid, so that other user cannot read his data, but making his daily life more complicated?
Good question. I know how to encrypt a disk, but how can I keep a disk at some other location so that he can not read it? Transport has to be encrypted. At no time can the data be clear at the external location.
Also consider that the remote friend probably doesn't use Linux, but Win or Mac. They can't handle LUKS encrypted disks and in proprietary Non- Open-Source encryption I have not the slightest trust.
No, they would have to host a little mini computer with disks, totally controlled by you. They would simply provide space, electricity and internet, not maintenance. Alternatively, some multiplatform software that handles writing into some disk the data you send encrypted at your place. -- Cheers / Saludos, Carlos E. R. (from 15.5 x86_64 at Telcontar)
On 2024-11-12 14:28, Carlos E. R. wrote:
On 2024-11-12 12:06, Daniel Bauer wrote:
Am 12.11.24 um 11:38 schrieb Bob Williams:
...
Another method is keeping an encrypted hard disk (not active) stored at a "trastero" somewhere (rented storage room). Sneaking there once in a while to swap the disk. -- Cheers / Saludos, Carlos E. R. (from 15.5 x86_64 at Telcontar)
On 2024-11-12 14:28, Carlos E. R. wrote:
On 2024-11-12 12:06, Daniel Bauer wrote:
Am 12.11.24 um 11:38 schrieb Bob Williams:
...
(*) The problems are not only getting into the remote computer but also the privacy of the computer's owner and mine:
Let's say my friend offers me to connect a large HD, encrypted by me, to his computer for my backup and switch it on/connect to the web at agreed times - and I find a manageable way to connect via the web.
How can s/he give me access to "my" HD without giving me access to his or her data on his computer? I mean without hardening his settings to paranoid, so that other user cannot read his data, but making his daily life more complicated?
Good question. I know how to encrypt a disk, but how can I keep a disk at some other location so that he can not read it? Transport has to be encrypted. At no time can the data be clear at the external location.
Also consider that the remote friend probably doesn't use Linux, but Win or Mac. They can't handle LUKS encrypted disks and in proprietary Non- Open-Source encryption I have not the slightest trust.
No, they would have to host a little mini computer with disks, totally controlled by you. They would simply provide space, electricity and internet, not maintenance.
Alternatively, some multiplatform software that handles writing into some disk the data you send encrypted at your place.
-- Cheers / Saludos, Carlos E. R. (from 15.5 x86_64 at Telcontar)
Tue, 12 Nov 2024 14:32:59 +0100 "Carlos E. R." <robin.listas@telefonica.net> :
On 2024-11-12 14:28, Carlos E. R. wrote:
On 2024-11-12 12:06, Daniel Bauer wrote:
Am 12.11.24 um 11:38 schrieb Bob Williams:
...
(*) The problems are not only getting into the remote computer but also the privacy of the computer's owner and mine:
Let's say my friend offers me to connect a large HD, encrypted by me, to his computer for my backup and switch it on/connect to the web at agreed times - and I find a manageable way to connect via the web.
How can s/he give me access to "my" HD without giving me access to his or her data on his computer? I mean without hardening his settings to paranoid, so that other user cannot read his data, but making his daily life more complicated?
Good question. I know how to encrypt a disk, but how can I keep a disk at some other location so that he can not read it? Transport has to be encrypted. At no time can the data be clear at the external location.
Also consider that the remote friend probably doesn't use Linux, but Win or Mac. They can't handle LUKS encrypted disks and in proprietary Non- Open-Source encryption I have not the slightest trust.
No, they would have to host a little mini computer with disks, totally controlled by you. They would simply provide space, electricity and internet, not maintenance.
Alternatively, some multiplatform software that handles writing into some disk the data you send encrypted at your place.
Why not upload encrypted and scattercast files to your own dns-hosted web-server? That server surely has additional backups and many other uses so survival is improved but cost is diluted, both access and security are better than many other solutions (of which it's of course better to have several).
On Tue, 12 Nov 2024 09:20:44 -0500 bent fender <slowroller@trixtar.org> wrote:
Tue, 12 Nov 2024 14:32:59 +0100 "Carlos E. R." <robin.listas@telefonica.net> :
On 2024-11-12 14:28, Carlos E. R. wrote:
On 2024-11-12 12:06, Daniel Bauer wrote:
Am 12.11.24 um 11:38 schrieb Bob Williams:
...
(*) The problems are not only getting into the remote computer but also the privacy of the computer's owner and mine:
Let's say my friend offers me to connect a large HD, encrypted by me, to his computer for my backup and switch it on/connect to the web at agreed times - and I find a manageable way to connect via the web.
How can s/he give me access to "my" HD without giving me access to his or her data on his computer? I mean without hardening his settings to paranoid, so that other user cannot read his data, but making his daily life more complicated?
Good question. I know how to encrypt a disk, but how can I keep a disk at some other location so that he can not read it? Transport has to be encrypted. At no time can the data be clear at the external location.
Also consider that the remote friend probably doesn't use Linux, but Win or Mac. They can't handle LUKS encrypted disks and in proprietary Non- Open-Source encryption I have not the slightest trust.
No, they would have to host a little mini computer with disks, totally controlled by you. They would simply provide space, electricity and internet, not maintenance.
Alternatively, some multiplatform software that handles writing into some disk the data you send encrypted at your place.
Why not upload encrypted and scattercast files to your own dns-hosted web-server? That server surely has additional backups and many other uses so survival is improved but cost is diluted, both access and security are better than many other solutions (of which it's of course better to have several).
Because that requires a subscription to the web host service.
Am 12.11.24 um 16:45 schrieb Dave Howorth:
On Tue, 12 Nov 2024 09:20:44 -0500 bent fender <slowroller@trixtar.org> wrote:
Tue, 12 Nov 2024 14:32:59 +0100 "Carlos E. R." <robin.listas@telefonica.net> :
On 2024-11-12 14:28, Carlos E. R. wrote:
On 2024-11-12 12:06, Daniel Bauer wrote:
Am 12.11.24 um 11:38 schrieb Bob Williams:
...
(*) The problems are not only getting into the remote computer but also the privacy of the computer's owner and mine:
Let's say my friend offers me to connect a large HD, encrypted by me, to his computer for my backup and switch it on/connect to the web at agreed times - and I find a manageable way to connect via the web.
How can s/he give me access to "my" HD without giving me access to his or her data on his computer? I mean without hardening his settings to paranoid, so that other user cannot read his data, but making his daily life more complicated?
Good question. I know how to encrypt a disk, but how can I keep a disk at some other location so that he can not read it? Transport has to be encrypted. At no time can the data be clear at the external location.
Also consider that the remote friend probably doesn't use Linux, but Win or Mac. They can't handle LUKS encrypted disks and in proprietary Non- Open-Source encryption I have not the slightest trust.
No, they would have to host a little mini computer with disks, totally controlled by you. They would simply provide space, electricity and internet, not maintenance.
Alternatively, some multiplatform software that handles writing into some disk the data you send encrypted at your place.
Why not upload encrypted and scattercast files to your own dns-hosted web-server? That server surely has additional backups and many other uses so survival is improved but cost is diluted, both access and security are better than many other solutions (of which it's of course better to have several).
Because that requires a subscription to the web host service.
Apart of this, I have several TB of data to back up but only some hundreds of GB space on my web server... -- Daniel Bauer photographer Basel Málaga Twitter: @Marsfotografo (often explicit nudes) https://www.patreon.com/danielbauer https://www.daniel-bauer.com (nudes)
On Tue, 12 Nov 2024 19:07:40 +0100 Daniel Bauer <linux@daniel-bauer.com> wrote:
Am 12.11.24 um 16:45 schrieb Dave Howorth:
On Tue, 12 Nov 2024 09:20:44 -0500 bent fender <slowroller@trixtar.org> wrote:
Tue, 12 Nov 2024 14:32:59 +0100 "Carlos E. R." <robin.listas@telefonica.net> :
On 2024-11-12 14:28, Carlos E. R. wrote:
On 2024-11-12 12:06, Daniel Bauer wrote:
Am 12.11.24 um 11:38 schrieb Bob Williams:
...
(*) The problems are not only getting into the remote computer but also the privacy of the computer's owner and mine:
Let's say my friend offers me to connect a large HD, encrypted by me, to his computer for my backup and switch it on/connect to the web at agreed times - and I find a manageable way to connect via the web.
How can s/he give me access to "my" HD without giving me access to his or her data on his computer? I mean without hardening his settings to paranoid, so that other user cannot read his data, but making his daily life more complicated?
Good question. I know how to encrypt a disk, but how can I keep a disk at some other location so that he can not read it? Transport has to be encrypted. At no time can the data be clear at the external location.
Also consider that the remote friend probably doesn't use Linux, but Win or Mac. They can't handle LUKS encrypted disks and in proprietary Non- Open-Source encryption I have not the slightest trust.
No, they would have to host a little mini computer with disks, totally controlled by you. They would simply provide space, electricity and internet, not maintenance.
Alternatively, some multiplatform software that handles writing into some disk the data you send encrypted at your place.
Why not upload encrypted and scattercast files to your own dns-hosted web-server? That server surely has additional backups and many other uses so survival is improved but cost is diluted, both access and security are better than many other solutions (of which it's of course better to have several).
Because that requires a subscription to the web host service.
Apart of this, I have several TB of data to back up but only some hundreds of GB space on my web server...
That's why it requires a subscription, because free web space isn't enough.
Am 12.11.24 um 12:06 schrieb Daniel Bauer:
Am 12.11.24 um 11:38 schrieb Bob Williams:
On Tue, 12 Nov 2024 10:09:01 +0100 Roger Oberholtzer wrote:
On Mon, Nov 11, 2024 at 10:34 PM David C. Rankin <drankinatty@gmail.com> wrote:
On 11/11/24 2:43 PM, Dave Howorth wrote:
I just read a newspaper article about house fires, and it struck me that one of the things that might well be lost in such a mishap would be my financial records etc that are stored on my computer.
Having just lived though this example where my office was lost, offsite backups are critical.
No solution but additional questions and thoughts:
I never managed to get reliably into a remote computer (*). Seems I am too stupid for this.
i never thrust computers who are open to the internet for incoming connections. remember the last couple of weeks?month? with the ssh security problems!
So what I do, is doing backups on alternating external disks, which I then physically bring to another place like once a week. I will never have a absolutely recent backup, but at least I will not lose everything...
one of the most secure solutions in my opinion, even if you lose a little bit of work. i do the same with always complete dd backup of the hd/sdd's. booting from a prepaired external stick or at some computers a second (old) drive only inside the computer for this purpose, which will do the backup without user interruption to a bz2 image on external drive. very simple, no use for special software, only some shell scripts. of course for the time of the backup the "normal" system is not usable. periodically with zeroing the not used parts of the disk, periodically without. bring this external drive to a other location. best thing here is bring the backup back and in an hour or so the exact state of the date of the backup is back on my computers. .... and of course i tested bringing back the data to make sure the backups are good. a backup without trying to recover is a bad idea at all. could be lead in total data loss. personally i have had a bad data-cable and for this once made bad backups. so testing if everything with the backup is ok is something who must be done. bad thing of such backups are if you like to only recover some files, it will make some more work. need some drive to extract first, then mount. and with the increasing amount of data you like to store it will be worse. here i backup mostly ssd's up to 2tb most only half full. bz2 files are much smaller. it takes between 30 minutes an 90 minutes. if you have hdd' (only some older pc's with it left) it take some hours. simoN -- www.becherer.de
David, et al -- ...and then David C. Rankin said... % % Having just lived though this example where my office was lost, offsite % backups are critical. Ouch! Bummer :-( % ... % problem. Sticking another Linux box at one of my kids houses may be an % option there - I'd just have to work with the dyn-ip issue and potential % port blocking for non-business accounts. [snip] This. Something small like a Pi, or any old PC, that has enough USB ports will get ya done (as far as offsite mirroring goes). Yes, it's only for loss-of-media scenarios and not accidental deletion or uncaught ransomware or other GIGO errors, but it meets that need well. And until we're all on IPv6 ;-) and able to directly address, giving that Pi a port through the firewall to connect will get you access. The nice thing is that the little computer takes up only one more outlet than the portable drive(s) and could even be on WiFi and not need a wired connection, so it can tuck just about anywhere. As mentioned, after the initial data load, updates are usually small enough to survive bandwidth bottlenecks. I have the main server at our homestead, a backup server at the hangar where most of the camera footage is generated, and another backup server at the rental house. My real goal is someday to have all locations on the same virtual network so that I can hit print "here" and have it pop out "there", but for now NAT and bastion hosts get it done. I'm always interested in additional and smarter ways, too. Good luck! :-D -- David T-G See http://justpickone.org/davidtg/email/ See http://justpickone.org/davidtg/tofu.txt
On 11/12/24 6:35 AM, David T-G wrote:
omething small like a Pi, or any old PC
Oh, I'm a huge fan (looking at 2 pi zero 2 w's next to my laptop with enough jumper wires to make a pot of spaghetti jealous), and 2 pi 3b+ in the other room. This is currently my "grab-n-go" safeguard. With 128G microSD cards, they are legitimate storage contenders for data backup. That is 1/2 TB between the 4 PIs. That's more than enough for core-data. And the zero 2w's are about the size of a pack of gum. Not to mention the wireless on the zero 2w is bullet-proof and the 3B+ wired are plenty fast. (not to mention they are just a lot of fun to program to control anything under the sun via GPIO, I2C or SPI, sensors, oled displays, IMUs, A2D, D2A chips, timers, opamps, etc..). I've got a 1/2 dozen picos as well that are fun in their own right as bare-metal boards Years ago we picked up several refurb Dell boxes with Core2Duo E8600s and dual NICs (odd, but interesting). All boxes were between $69 and $99, 4G-8G RAM (with Win10 Pro installed). (time permitting in a crisis, these just get unplugged and thrown through a window) One thing is for certain, there is literally nothing salvageable after a fire. Even if not destroyed by flame, the thick smoke residue that coats every surface inside and outside destroys everything (and that's before the 2M gallons of water courtesy of the valiant fire fighters). -- David C. Rankin, J.D.,P.E.
I backup to Amazon Web Services S3. A few dollars a month for off-site backup. Jeffrey On Tue, Nov 12, 2024, 5:38 PM David C. Rankin <drankinatty@gmail.com> wrote:
On 11/12/24 6:35 AM, David T-G wrote:
omething small like a Pi, or any old PC
Oh, I'm a huge fan (looking at 2 pi zero 2 w's next to my laptop with enough jumper wires to make a pot of spaghetti jealous), and 2 pi 3b+ in the other room. This is currently my "grab-n-go" safeguard. With 128G microSD cards, they are legitimate storage contenders for data backup. That is 1/2 TB between the 4 PIs. That's more than enough for core-data. And the zero 2w's are about the size of a pack of gum.
Not to mention the wireless on the zero 2w is bullet-proof and the 3B+ wired are plenty fast. (not to mention they are just a lot of fun to program to control anything under the sun via GPIO, I2C or SPI, sensors, oled displays, IMUs, A2D, D2A chips, timers, opamps, etc..). I've got a 1/2 dozen picos as well that are fun in their own right as bare-metal boards
Years ago we picked up several refurb Dell boxes with Core2Duo E8600s and dual NICs (odd, but interesting). All boxes were between $69 and $99, 4G-8G RAM (with Win10 Pro installed). (time permitting in a crisis, these just get unplugged and thrown through a window)
One thing is for certain, there is literally nothing salvageable after a fire. Even if not destroyed by flame, the thick smoke residue that coats every surface inside and outside destroys everything (and that's before the 2M gallons of water courtesy of the valiant fire fighters).
-- David C. Rankin, J.D.,P.E.
Le 13/11/2024 à 03:19, Jeffrey Taylor via openSUSE Users a écrit :
I backup to Amazon Web Services S3. A few dollars a month for off-site backup.
I tempted some time ago to subscribe to a very cheap online backup system, cheap because not immediately available as recovery but the test period showed that bandwith was not usable. It would have needed more than a year to upload my 5TB data. so I use pcloud, a swiss cloud where I could have 2TB data for 350€ life time, one payment only. Of course life of me or the company... At first seing the web site seems pretty expensive, but if you subscribe they advertisements they do quarterly discount. The maximum for an account is 10TB. Nextcloud like with some changes but, of course, no system is problem free, so the need to have several. upload speed is acceptable but one can't expect more than 100Gb a day as average in french, but deepl is your friend :-) jdd -- https://dodin.org
On 11/13/24 1:39 AM, jdd@dodin.org wrote:
Le 13/11/2024 à 03:19, Jeffrey Taylor via openSUSE Users a écrit :
I backup to Amazon Web Services S3. A few dollars a month for off-site backup.
I tempted some time ago to subscribe to a very cheap online backup system, cheap because not immediately available as recovery
but the test period showed that bandwith was not usable. It would have needed more than a year to upload my 5TB data.
so I use pcloud, a swiss cloud where I could have 2TB data for 350€ life time, one payment only. Of course life of me or the company... At first seing the web site seems pretty expensive, but if you subscribe they advertisements they do quarterly discount. The maximum for an account is 10TB. Nextcloud like with some changes
but, of course, no system is problem free, so the need to have several.
upload speed is acceptable but one can't expect more than 100Gb a day as average
in french, but deepl is your friend :-)
jdd
I am really, really, really, really jaded on using commercial anything. With the daily list of companies pwned and data dumped on the dark web, it's just like rolling dice. Yes, AWS is supposed to use best-practices, but given the number of attacks I have coming from their VMs, they don't. Then there is the whole VM leakage side-attack thing to worry about. I've gotten to the point where I basically believe data out of your direct physical control is data subject to compromise. And just today "data breach - Amazon confirms employee data exposed in leak linked to MOVEit vulnerability" https://go.reg.cx/tdml/dfd67/675cca7f/caf7f115/4f0R -- Yikes... (a few other companies or sites supposedly employing "best-practices" in the spotlight during the past few months: npm typosquatting (not a direct npm chain compromise, but a risk to any user that doesn't spot the subtle name differences), Columbus Ohio prosecutors database, United Healthcare, Gryphon Healthcare, Pypi supply chain, HIPAA patient consent forms (Servicebridge), Flight Aware, National Public Data (that hurt a lot of folks in the US due to SS# being the primary key in much of that data - from the late 90's when everything was SS# associated)) (all articles from The Register) I was actually about to sign up for a free oracle vm, it had enough storage to be usable, but got to the point of entering credentials, and found Oracle uses 3rd-party verification and payment processors, so you never get to square-one before your personal data is sent out who knows where. I'm never comfortable just rolling dice. What a wonderful digital world we have created where dishonesty and ID-theft are a daily reality. You wouldn't put up with being robbed each morning on your way to the car, but we, as society, can't seem to do anything about the electronic robbery taking place on a continual basis. This is a vexing issue. Perhaps AI and quantum cryptography will solve all our problems.... um, I'm not holding my breath... I mean I was literally thinking about this issue and reply when the Amazon breach dropped... -- David C. Rankin, J.D.,P.E.
Wed, 13 Nov 2024 01:47:12 -0600 "David C. Rankin" <drankinatty@gmail.com> :
On 11/13/24 1:39 AM, jdd@dodin.org wrote:
Le 13/11/2024 à 03:19, Jeffrey Taylor via openSUSE Users a écrit :
I backup to Amazon Web Services S3. A few dollars a month for off-site backup.
I tempted some time ago to subscribe to a very cheap online backup system, cheap because not immediately available as recovery
but the test period showed that bandwith was not usable. It would have needed more than a year to upload my 5TB data.
so I use pcloud, a swiss cloud where I could have 2TB data for 350€ life time, one payment only. Of course life of me or the company... At first seing the web site seems pretty expensive, but if you subscribe they advertisements they do quarterly discount. The maximum for an account is 10TB. Nextcloud like with some changes
but, of course, no system is problem free, so the need to have several.
upload speed is acceptable but one can't expect more than 100Gb a day as average
in french, but deepl is your friend :-)
jdd
I am really, really, really, really jaded on using commercial anything.
Seconded
With the daily list of companies pwned and data dumped on the dark web, it's just like rolling dice. Yes, AWS is supposed to use best-practices, but given the number of attacks I have coming from their VMs, they don't. Then there is the whole VM leakage side-attack thing to worry about. I've gotten to the point where I basically believe data out of your direct physical control is data subject to compromise.
And just today "data breach - Amazon confirms employee data exposed in leak linked to MOVEit vulnerability" https://go.reg.cx/tdml/dfd67/675cca7f/caf7f115/4f0R -- Yikes...
(a few other companies or sites supposedly employing "best-practices" in the spotlight during the past few months: npm typosquatting (not a direct npm chain compromise, but a risk to any user that doesn't spot the subtle name differences), Columbus Ohio prosecutors database, United Healthcare, Gryphon Healthcare, Pypi supply chain, HIPAA patient consent forms (Servicebridge), Flight Aware, National Public Data (that hurt a lot of folks in the US due to SS# being the primary key in much of that data - from the late 90's when everything was SS# associated)) (all articles from The Register)
Best-Practices, Privacy-Policies? We live in the epoch of TCM (total credibility meltdown) when everyone is lying about everything all the time. I know of no country that has even a semblance of the laws that I would want to see in place AND enforced. With 10tb of data I wouldn't even consider anything other than periodically making backups on WD gold spinners and physically stashing them in secure (DIY) EM-hardened places known only to myself and as few others as possible. I don't know who has access to the bandwidth required, I certainly don't. I do have an OT yet related question to house gurus here. Other than transient EMP phenomenon the earth has on several occasions flipped its magnetic poles. Not only that, but each time the event followed long periods of back-and-forth upsets. How would such a flip affect magnetic media (or everything electric for that matter)? -- Data-Denial is the name of the game. Other than friends, family or civil authority (and even for the latter only to the extent necessary for necessary identification), criminalize the storage of anyone else's data except momentarily in the case of personal data in verifiably volatile fashion to complete a transaction. In the case of all identity abuse including the above avenues, make the contributing data source criminally complicit before the law regardless of the employed methods, privacy-policies or other similar double-speak parading as safeguards.
On 11/13/24 5:44 AM, bent fender wrote:
How would such a flip affect magnetic media (or everything electric for that matter)?
It wouldn't. The only thing it effect is where the needle points on your compass and the direction grains solidify in rock as it cools from magma :) -- David C. Rankin, J.D.,P.E.
On 11/14/24 16:44, David C. Rankin wrote:
On 11/13/24 5:44 AM, bent fender wrote:
How would such a flip affect magnetic media (or everything electric for that matter)?
It wouldn't. The only thing it effect is where the needle points on your compass and the direction grains solidify in rock as it cools from magma :)
I do wonder what would happen with respect to protection from the solar wind? And I wonder how long it would take to flip? If a day or two, probably minimal effects? But if it took 10,000 years? Regards, Lew
Thu, 14 Nov 2024 17:52:46 -0800 Lew Wolfgang <wolfgang@sweet-haven.com> :
On 11/14/24 16:44, David C. Rankin wrote:
On 11/13/24 5:44 AM, bent fender wrote:
How would such a flip affect magnetic media (or everything electric for that matter)?
It wouldn't. The only thing it effect is where the needle points on your compass and the direction grains solidify in rock as it cools from magma :)
I do wonder what would happen with respect to protection from the solar wind? And I wonder how long it would take to flip? If a day or two, probably minimal effects? But if it took 10,000 years?
Regards, Lew
Read about it a long time ago, I think at times there was frequent oscillation for maybe up to 100,000 years before the definitive flip. So I was wondering about the 3-finger rule of electric motors.
On 11/14/24 9:51 PM, bent fender wrote:
Thu, 14 Nov 2024 17:52:46 -0800 Lew Wolfgang <wolfgang@sweet-haven.com> :
On 11/14/24 16:44, David C. Rankin wrote:
On 11/13/24 5:44 AM, bent fender wrote:
How would such a flip affect magnetic media (or everything electric for that matter)?
It wouldn't. The only thing it effect is where the needle points on your compass and the direction grains solidify in rock as it cools from magma :)
I do wonder what would happen with respect to protection from the solar wind? And I wonder how long it would take to flip? If a day or two, probably minimal effects? But if it took 10,000 years?
Regards, Lew
Read about it a long time ago, I think at times there was frequent oscillation for maybe up to 100,000 years before the definitive flip. So I was wondering about the 3-finger rule of electric motors.
Things are definitely in flux, especially at mid-to northern/southern latitudes. I fly. One thing that is critical when doing things the old way, dead-reckoning with a compass and watch, is to correct for "magnetic declination" (the difference between magnetic north and true north). Just since the 90's the declination in my area has changed by 5% (and that's at 31.7N latitude). Go further north or south and the change is multiples of that number. I had read sever papers of the last decade on the fluctuations and how we are heading to another pole-swap, and if I recall, this is in somewhat of an accelerated manner compared to the normal period and rate. Most will be oblivious to changes, unless you use a compass or happen to catch the aurora over Saharan Africa during the swap. The effect on charged-particles means you get more where the poles are as the magnetic field-lines dip towards earth. There were some other "possible" climate effects I hadn't thought of, that this BBC article mentions: https://www.skyatnightmagazine.com/space-science/earth-magnetic-field-revers... But, after thorough reading, we can all take comfort that Leap and Tumbleweed will be unaffected :) -- David C. Rankin, J.D.,P.E.
Fri, 15 Nov 2024 20:37:31 -0600 "David C. Rankin" <drankinatty@gmail.com> :
On 11/14/24 9:51 PM, bent fender wrote:
Thu, 14 Nov 2024 17:52:46 -0800 Lew Wolfgang <wolfgang@sweet-haven.com> :
On 11/14/24 16:44, David C. Rankin wrote:
On 11/13/24 5:44 AM, bent fender wrote:
How would such a flip affect magnetic media (or everything electric for that matter)?
It wouldn't. The only thing it effect is where the needle points on your compass and the direction grains solidify in rock as it cools from magma :)
I do wonder what would happen with respect to protection from the solar wind? And I wonder how long it would take to flip? If a day or two, probably minimal effects? But if it took 10,000 years?
Regards, Lew
Read about it a long time ago, I think at times there was frequent oscillation for maybe up to 100,000 years before the definitive flip. So I was wondering about the 3-finger rule of electric motors.
Things are definitely in flux, especially at mid-to northern/southern latitudes. I fly. One thing that is critical when doing things the old way, dead-reckoning with a compass and watch, is to correct for "magnetic declination" (the difference between magnetic north and true north).
My memory is still as sharp as a razor blade but not much wider than its edge any more. We used to call it variation because once properly marinated too many confused declination with dip as the floor flew up to hit them in the face. Long hours earlier you would quietly have taken out your jeppesen computer (just kind of doodling as if you had nothing better to do) with a standing pencil stuck in the middle and maybe moved and turned it until the sun's shadow fell on the reciprocal of Z*15-WestLong. At that moment 0 was your true North and you could eyeball your true heading from that. It was a good ballpark check of the subsequent astro-compass work that you would next ask Mr. GearHandle to do if the sun was on the right. It was also a good way to validate the whole freakin' pacman horror that was just beginning to infest until then 'steamgauge' cockpits :-)
Just since the 90's the declination in my area has changed by 5% (and that's at 31.7N latitude).
The true axis wobbles somewhat, I wonder if declination-drift has to do with that? All that hot slop trying to keep up with its magnetic field in trail. Seasonal lag is a good two months, maybe there's a long-cycle magnetic equivalent.
I had read sever papers of the last decade on the fluctuations and how we are heading to another pole-swap, and if I recall, this is in somewhat of an accelerated manner compared to the normal period and rate.
Most will be oblivious to changes, unless you use a compass or happen to catch the aurora over Saharan Africa during the swap. The effect on charged-particles means you get more where the poles are as the magnetic field-lines dip towards earth. There were some other "possible" climate effects I hadn't thought of, that this BBC article mentions:
https://www.skyatnightmagazine.com/space-science/earth-magnetic-field-revers...
But, after thorough reading, we can all take comfort that Leap and Tumbleweed will be unaffected :)
I don't know, after all Linux is a cancer and Linus is an anti-christ, I can see it already, "looming pole-flip the work of digital rebel conspiracy with hacked phones".
-- David C. Rankin, J.D.,P.E.
David, et al -- ...and then David C. Rankin said... % ... % Just since the 90's the declination in my area has changed by 5% (and that's % at 31.7N latitude). Go further north or south and the change is multiples of % that number. [snip] If this goes any further I'll have to start filing these in my Flying mailbox rather than the SuSE mailbox :-) But one of the things I enjoy covering with my students is how the North Pole moves and the compass may be lying to you (more than it already does, of course) and whip out historical Atlanta sectionals to see the march of the variation lines across as time goes on. Yes, it definitely wanders! It's a fun, small world :-) HAND :-D -- David T-G, PP (ASEL), SIA (ASEL), LSR-M See http://justpickone.org/davidtg/email/ See http://justpickone.org/davidtg/tofu.txt
On Thu, 14 Nov 2024 18:44:03 -0600 "David C. Rankin" <drankinatty@gmail.com> wrote:
On 11/13/24 5:44 AM, bent fender wrote:
How would such a flip affect magnetic media (or everything electric for that matter)?
It wouldn't. The only thing it effect is where the needle points on your compass and the direction grains solidify in rock as it cools from magma :)
And the dose of hard radiation everybody received whilst it was flipping :(
On 2024-11-13 08:47, David C. Rankin wrote:
I am really, really, really, really jaded on using commercial anything. With the daily list of companies pwned and data dumped on the dark web, it's just like rolling dice. Yes, AWS is supposed to use best- practices, but given the number of attacks I have coming from their VMs, they don't. Then there is the whole VM leakage side-attack thing to worry about. I've gotten to the point where I basically believe data out of your direct physical control is data subject to compromise.
The solution for that is use some software that encrypts at your place, and sends the data already encrypted. -- Cheers / Saludos, Carlos E. R. (from 15.5 x86_64 at Telcontar)
Am 13.11.24 um 13:01 schrieb Carlos E. R.:
On 2024-11-13 08:47, David C. Rankin wrote:
I am really, really, really, really jaded on using commercial anything. With the daily list of companies pwned and data dumped on the dark web, it's just like rolling dice. Yes, AWS is supposed to use best- practices, but given the number of attacks I have coming from their VMs, they don't. Then there is the whole VM leakage side-attack thing to worry about. I've gotten to the point where I basically believe data out of your direct physical control is data subject to compromise.
The solution for that is use some software that encrypts at your place, and sends the data already encrypted.
Well encryption is good but did you know from any encryption that is not possible to decrypt with enough effort? (ww2 german enigma or the japanese code) - (the navajo indian code of the usa was not cracked by the axis during the war) so at least over some years most, if not all encryption will be worthless. or think about the encryption machines sold over the world by the swiss company crypto in german: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Rubikon only as example's. simoN -- www.becherer.de
Le 11/11/2024 à 21:43, Dave Howorth a écrit :
So I'm open to suggested implementation ideas or alternative ideas. I'd like to avoid solutions that involve subscriptions.
TIA, Dave
multiple large usb drives (one at an other location), professional cloud (pcloud)... jdd -- https://dodin.org
I know I am late to this conversation, but a good backup management program I like/use is Bacula. It handles storage and recovery of data in a fairly user friendly manner, does incremental, differential, and full backups on a schedule you set up, and transfers data to pools of data storage spaces you define. It breaks the backup management into 3 parts, each of which can, and typically do, run on different systems. A file director runs on each system to be backed up and manages the retrieval of data to be backed up. With the file director you can specify what to, or not, backup. A storage director handles the data storage, and of course there is the main director itself which oversees the entire process of backups and retrievals. It's a bit hard to understand at first, but has a lot of flexibility and is used in a lot of commercial environments. It is modeled on the usage of tape drives for backing up data, but translates into disk drive storage quite easily. And no, I am not employed by Bacula or in anyway connected to them. Just a user and I use Bacula to store my personal computers/laptops data off site myself. Marc.... On 11/11/24 12:43, Dave Howorth wrote:
I just read a newspaper article about house fires, and it struck me that one of the things that might well be lost in such a mishap would be my financial records etc that are stored on my computer. All carefully backed up to a local disk :)
So I need to consider an offsite backup. What do people use and/or recommend? My initial thinking is to install some sort of disk and computer (pi?) in a nephew's house and install some automatic backup software.
So I'm open to suggested implementation ideas or alternative ideas. I'd like to avoid solutions that involve subscriptions.
TIA, Dave
On Fri, 15 Nov 2024 00:00:00 -0800 Marc Chamberlin via openSUSE Users <users@lists.opensuse.org> wrote:
I know I am late to this conversation, but a good backup management program I like/use is Bacula. It handles storage and recovery of data in a fairly user friendly manner, does incremental, differential, and full backups on a schedule you set up, and transfers data to pools of data storage spaces you define. It breaks the backup management into 3 parts, each of which can, and typically do, run on different systems. A file director runs on each system to be backed up and manages the retrieval of data to be backed up. With the file director you can specify what to, or not, backup. A storage director handles the data storage, and of course there is the main director itself which oversees the entire process of backups and retrievals. It's a bit hard to understand at first, but has a lot of flexibility and is used in a lot of commercial environments. It is modeled on the usage of tape drives for backing up data, but translates into disk drive storage quite easily.
And no, I am not employed by Bacula or in anyway connected to them. Just a user and I use Bacula to store my personal computers/laptops data off site myself.
Marc....
Thanks for the suggestion. Bacula looks like an impressive mechanism. I'm a bit worried that it might be too popular though, and for firms as well as personal systems. So I fear black hats may try to attack Bacula systems at random in the hope of finding something juicy. Call me paranoid but I'd rather be in the shadows.
On 11/11/24 12:43, Dave Howorth wrote:
I just read a newspaper article about house fires, and it struck me that one of the things that might well be lost in such a mishap would be my financial records etc that are stored on my computer. All carefully backed up to a local disk :)
So I need to consider an offsite backup. What do people use and/or recommend? My initial thinking is to install some sort of disk and computer (pi?) in a nephew's house and install some automatic backup software.
So I'm open to suggested implementation ideas or alternative ideas. I'd like to avoid solutions that involve subscriptions.
TIA, Dave
participants (15)
-
Adam Mizerski -
bent fender -
Bill Swisher -
Bob Williams -
Carlos E. R. -
Daniel Bauer -
Dave Howorth -
David C. Rankin -
David T-G -
jdd＠dodin.org -
Jeffrey Taylor -
Lew Wolfgang -
Marc Chamberlin -
Roger Oberholtzer -
Simon Becherer