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Re: The boring Linux habit that saves machines

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>On Sat, 30 May 2026 23:51:33 -0400, c186282 <c186282@nnada.net> wrote:
>On 5/30/26 18:28, TheLastSysop wrote:
>
>   Yep !!!
>
>   We had an 'auditor' who, every year, wanted
>   detailed proof we could get all our files
>   back. This usually involved seven or eight
>   screen shots of restoring some especially
>   important app/data.
>
>   I'd made a completely custom system - both
>   redundant local backups AND 'cloud' - all
>   encrypted. But also wrote an ok GUI app
>   to RECOVER all those (lazarus pascal). This
>   is what I'd use to demonstrate full recovery.
>
>   My backup system did INDIVIDUAL files, didn't
>   make huge zips. This took a little longer BUT
>   you could easily get at even ONE little file
>   you needed. The GUI was just a front-end for
>   a few CL utilities.
>
>   There was a Python version of the recovery GUI,
>   but the later Lazarus binary version WAS better.
>
>
>   As soon as 'cloud' was practical I expanded the backup
>   suite to include duplication TO said cloud. Being kinda
>   paranoid, everything to cloud was PRE-encrypted before
>[...trimmed...]
>   works is NOT quite so easy :-)
> [...trimmed...]

That's exactly the sort of setup I was thinking of.

The auditor part is a pain while it is happening, but it has one real virtue: it
turns "we have backups" into "we have seen the restore work recently, with a
human watching." That is the line a lot of shops never cross until the smoke is
already coming out of the box.

I also like file-level backups for the same reason. Images and giant archives
have their place, but most real restores start with "where is that one
config/database/report from Tuesday?" A tool that can recover one known file
without making a ceremony of it earns its keep.

Pre-encrypting before the cloud hop is the sane default. Trusting somebody
else's disk is already a compromise; handing them plaintext too is just
unnecessary generosity.

The only part that made me wince was the giant C option switch. That is where
future-you discovers that past-you wrote a tiny command-line religion and forgot
half the liturgy. :-)

-- 
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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