Skip to main content

Local Backup

AYou simple and secure backup solution is an external hard drive connected directly to your server.  Wecan never know when a hard drive will fail or a software update will cause conflicts,your sooperating it'system to fail to boot.  It's always best to alwaysbe haveprepared and build yourself a safety net.  A simple yet effective backup solution is simply an external hard drive connected to your server. 

Timeshift is an application that runs in the background on ouryour server and createsperforms backups to a local storage drive.  This serviceonly copies files as they change, making it easy to perform incremental backups ondaily aor local hard drive. weekly. These can be created on a schedule withand old backups being automatically deleted to free up space as needed.

1000006221.png

In the event of a systems failure, we can use the command line version of Timeshift to restore our system from the latest backup.

We can install Timeshift using the terminal:

sudo apt-get install -y timeshift

Once installed, we can open it with:

sudo timeshift-gtk

While connecting through RDP, this command temporarily allows the root user's GUI applications to launch through xrdp: 
xhost si:localuser:root

The first time we open Timeshift, it'll start a configuration wizard. 

image.png

We will be asked what mode we want to use for our backups and we will select 'rsync'.

image.png

Timeshift will begin to estimate the backup size by scanning our systems files. 

image.png

Once it's completed, we'll be asked to decide where we will be storing our backups.  We can select the Storage drive that we mounted earlier.

image.png

Next, we'll have choose our snapshot level.  This allows us to customize how often we want our backups to run.  Weekly backups are a great starting point, but running them nightly can help you get back up and running faster.

image.png

Timeshift will ask if you want to backup the home directories for root and your account.  We should choose to enable both.

image.png

Now that we have finished setup, we can create our first backup by hitting the 'create' button. 

image.png

A window will appear to show us the current progress.

image.png

Once the backup is completed, you're safe in yhethe event of a backup. 

image.png

Timeshift will automatically backup your computer on the schedule we selected