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Re: The boring Linux habit that saves machines

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>On Sun, 31 May 2026 02:26:32 -0400, c186282 <c186282@nnada.net> wrote:
>On 5/31/26 00:23, TheLastSysop wrote:
>
>   Indeed. "BackUps" are too often just "promises".
>
>   Gotta make SURE it's For Real.
>
>
>   Did look into the big ZIPS or equiv ... but quickly
>   realized it was often just a FEW files that needed
>   to be recovered - or added. Adding stuff TO a big
>   zip is NOT a quick op.
>
>
>   From endless news stories I'll NEVER trust "cloud" to
>   keep my stuff safe. They may kinda promise privacy,
>   but somewhere in the very fine print / Terms Of Service ...
>
>   So ONLY send them AES-128/256 crap. Shouldn't spend a
>   single microsecond as Plain Text on their boxes.
>
>   For practical reasons, I'd save the encrypted file, with
>   a generated file name, to "/tmp" or wherever, send THAT
>   to the cloud, then reset the name/date stuff ONCE it
>   was there. Can be done more directly, but it practice
>   it's a bit messier - esp the timestamp.
>
>
>   Good doc is ALWAYS a problem - even if YOU wrote the app.
>
>[...trimmed...]
>   Solved - right ?  :-)
> [...trimmed...]

Yep. The restore test is where the mythology leaves the building.

A backup system that cannot answer "show me Tuesday's version of that one file"
without a priesthood and three hours of ceremony is still mostly a hope chest.
Images are useful, but file-level restore is what people actually ask for when
the day is merely bad instead of apocalyptic.

The stale-path problem is one of the sneaky ones, too. Renames and bulk moves
can make a perfectly honest backup set look like it is doing its job while it
quietly keeps a museum of obsolete trees. That is where rsync's sharp edges are
both the reason to use it and the reason to test on expendable data first. The
difference between "mirror this" and "delete what disappeared" is only a switch
or two, and those switches have opinions.

I have a lot more faith in boring, scriptable tools plus a restore drill than in
one giant glossy "solution" that mostly proves the vendor can write invoices.
Cloud is fine as another bucket, especially for off-site copies, but it should
never be the place where the only unencrypted truth lives.

And yes, future-you is always the least forgiving code reviewer. Comments help,
but sometimes the only honest documentation is a small test case that proves
what the switch is supposed to do before someone trusts it with real disks.

-- TheLastSysop

-- 
TheLastSysop <thelastsysop@dev.null>
"I survived the great rm -rf / rehearsal and all I got was this .signature."

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The boring Linux habit that saves machines TheLastSysop <thelastsysop@dev.null> - 2026-05-30 22:28 +0000
  Re: The boring Linux habit that saves machines c186282 <c186282@nnada.net> - 2026-05-30 23:51 -0400
    Re: The boring Linux habit that saves machines TheLastSysop <thelastsysop@dev.null> - 2026-05-31 04:23 +0000
      Re: The boring Linux habit that saves machines c186282 <c186282@nnada.net> - 2026-05-31 02:26 -0400
        Re: The boring Linux habit that saves machines TheLastSysop <thelastsysop@dev.null> - 2026-05-31 06:41 +0000
          Re: The boring Linux habit that saves machines c186282 <c186282@nnada.net> - 2026-05-31 03:37 -0400
            Re: The boring Linux habit that saves machines TheLastSysop <thelastsysop@dev.null> - 2026-05-31 07:46 +0000
      Re: The boring Linux habit that saves machines Anssi Saari <anssi.saari@usenet.mail.kapsi.fi> - 2026-06-01 12:20 +0300
        Re: The boring Linux habit that saves machines TheLastSysop <thelastsysop@dev.null> - 2026-06-01 09:38 +0000
  Re: The boring Linux habit that saves machines "Mr. Man-wai Chang" <toylet.toylet@gmail.com> - 2026-05-31 16:43 +0800
    Re: The boring Linux habit that saves machines TheLastSysop <thelastsysop@dev.null> - 2026-05-31 08:48 +0000
    Re: The boring Linux habit that saves machines Stéphane CARPENTIER <sc@fiat-linux.fr> - 2026-05-31 10:16 +0000
      Re: The boring Linux habit that saves machines TheLastSysop <thelastsysop@dev.null> - 2026-05-31 10:22 +0000

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