We finally have a simple solution for backing up files on Linux
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- Опубліковано 2 чер 2024
- One of the hardest things about migrating to Linux has been finding a simple yet effective backup solution.
For the longest time, I've been relying on RAID and periodic rsync to keep me safe, which isn't the most ideal setup.
Recently however, I discovered Pika Backup, which has to be the most simple solution for backing up data on linux that I've found.
A big thank you to the maintainers of this package, they've done an exceptional job.
Video Links
- Pika Backup: apps.gnome.org/PikaBackup/
- Documentation: world.pages.gitlab.gnome.org/...
- Wallpaper: www.freepik.com/free-photo/vi...
Gear
- Samsung T9 External SSD: amzn.to/4c5s5Px
These are Amazon affiliate links which provide a small commission to this channel via anything purchased via these links
00:00:00 Intro
00:00:46 Pika Backup
00:01:16 Setup
00:03:45 Repository Files
00:04:30 Creating an Archive
00:06:56 Restoring Files
00:09:04 Scheduling
00:10:00 Remotes & New machines
00:11:12 Advanced Features
This is one of the very best linux software tutorials I have ever seen. Very detailed but NO fluff and unnecessary "background music". Well done. earned a like and a sub
What do you have against background music?
Anyone who has hearing loss has a lot of difficulty separating the music and the narrative. That is my rationale for disliking "background music". The second reason is that some folks do not know how to level the audio narrative so that it is consistent across the records so you constantly have to tweak the volume control up or down to be able to understand the narrative. Thanks for asking!
@@wesbryie
I was using Pika before watching this video for personal file backups and Timeshift for system snapshots
I wish they'd join hands and come up with a unified intuitive interface for both types of backup.
I used Deja Dub instead of Pika but I will try Pika. Deja Dub was just the recommendation in Gnome Software
@nico1337 where do you keep your system snapshot? On an external or separate partition?
@@tennisfreak312 on one of my 7 internal drives
@@tennisfreak312 Same problem that I had when it came to backup-ing, that I switched back to Windows after almost breaking my computer while trying to restore my system... 😅
1:08 "I'm using Arch btw" that was a cheeky flex
been running rsync/rsnapshot for like ~ 20 years on server. dropbox and syncthing for desktop/workstation. plus git for projects. never needed much of a desktop backup solution. but i recently started setting up linux desktops for friends & family TM. pika looks like the right tool there. thanks for creating great content!
Right with you, after years of half-assed backup strategies using DAT and CD/DVD-RW, I setup a dedicated rsnapshot box on an SFF system. Dedicated because I realized that I was the primary danger to anything mounted on my primary machines. Quarterly backups to Nov 5, 2004!
Admittedly, rsnapshot is not so user-friendly as this tool, but in exchange I can use Linux knowledge to accomplish useful tricks, like moving to bigger drives, mirroring to an offsite archive, and fixing things when something goes awry.
I'm curious, do you encrypt your rsync/rsnapshot backups? I usually make a tar.gz file, encrypt it with gpg and then scp to a server.
It has the advantage of being seamless (gpg asymmetric encryption does not require a input), but that does not make incremental backups
@@nogesax3535 In my case, I have a local rsnapshot server, 2 external mirrors (rotated off-site once a month), and a Google Compute Engine mirror. All backups are on encrypted filesystems (via LUKS). Encrypting at the file level would be somewhat opposite of how rsnapshot works - not saying it's not possible, just that I worry that it would be hard to manage successfully and reliably while also not leaking data.
in my case no encryption. external hard drive. same disk for almost the full time. replaced once to upgrade size. old WD "Book". so incremental works ofc. backups usually take only seconds.
Hear... hear... #metoo.
Git is the BEST incremental backup tool ever!
And yes, non-incremental backup is done by rsync.
*It's a real shame you can't find this great video if you google for Pika Backup* - or only if you're lucky. A title like this would be much better: *Pika Backup: We finally have a simple solution for backing up files on Linux*
How the hell do u have so few subscribers, This is some really high quality content. I really look forward to more of your vids!!
Thank you!
I think it is because, the first Video is only a Month ago. It needs a bit of time to gain subscribers. But I think for the short time, that this Channel is active, it gains a much of subscribers. But this Channel needs more subscribers. I already love this Channel
@@dreamsofautonomycan u also use the software to restore folders to there diffrent respective locations?
He is also the person behind this channel
youtube.com/@dreamsofcode
Let's say it's not his first rodeo ahahah
Keep up the good job
Because this is his second channel
in kde systems there is KUP, which makes incremental backups and is integrated with the system itself. The behaviour of KUP is similar to file history in windows, it takes backup on the specified interval and auto detect if the specified drive is mounted or not, if not then it will not do anything and as soon as you connect your drive it automatically take a backup. the ease of use of KUP is identical to file history in windows. You can access kup in system settings in kde and setup multiple schedules if you like
It also supports making a full backup every time, rather than an incremental backup.
@@contrabombarde1216 true, forgot about that, and that is also quite intuitively available
Doesn't seem to be there in Plasma 6
@@timotiuswidjaja2792 Still on Plasma 5.27, but I really hope they didn't remove it. That would really suck.
Not only the topic is interesting. I'd like to acknowledge separately the level of video production with those blur and highlight effects. Does feel classy comparing to our usual YT Linux stuff videos (not that those are necessarily bad, but...). Geez, an instant subscription.
I have nothing setup at the moment and this is exactly what I was looking for. A life saver I must say.
I also love the open nature of the tool, that it has a simple side and also a full on complex side.
Thank you muchly for all the learnings. Wishing your channel much success!
Another good Borg backup client is Vorta. You can exclude certain folders by making a .nobackup file under the folder.
Love the Star Trek names ❤
vorta is a python app. pika backup is a rust app, that means it takes a long time to compile using AUR in Arch Linux :(
in my test VM i enabled chaotic AUR for fast install aur precompiled stuff
This video is done so nice and your voice is so nice. Instant sub! Keep up this great work.
Very nice job with explaining Pika Backup. Thank you.
Excellent tool and presentation.
I used Bjorg, but not with so much settings. This is far easier with Pika to achieve a full featured backup flow.
Hey just to let you know that Deja Dup Backup also existed for a long time and similar to this but this tool looks very awesome and probably way better/polished and advanced.
I use Deja Dup and it is easy to setup with automatic backups. It is just GUI for tool called duplicity.
@@tom3f yeah I know that one, it comes with Manjaro for example, it's not bad 😁
Nice to see the channel is still going.
Hope is grows.
Just using rsync. Great video. Thanks
Thank you for making this. This is so much better and easier to use.
I am using Vorta and it served me well - but pika looks a bit more polished for "simple setup and every day usage" for people who don't want to understand the inner workings of borg. I am happy that you covered it - I will just send anyone I find without a borg backup to watch this video in the future
Backed up Garuda Linux to my Synology NAS without issues. Thanks for the tutorial 😊
Great vid! Looking forward to the borg vid!
Me too! Borg is really dope
NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!! They assimilated my people!!!
@@dreamsofautonomyI can remove most of your implants and turn you back into a human! RESISTANCE IS NOT FUTILE!!!
@@dreamsofautonomyisn’t Pika essentially a gui frontend for borg?
@@Batwam0YES like Vorta is a gui for borg, too
Great quality, informative video. Liked it very much!
Wow. What a great solution. Excited to use this. It looks soooo easy.
Thank you so much for a very good review. Very helpful, indeed! I'd be grateful if you can top this off with a video on Borg backup some time in the future!!! Keep up the good work, your channel is amazing!
This is a wonderful, and timely video, (for me). I've been looking for something like this since I first started using Linux years ago. I'll be looking forward to setting this up on my system and experimenting with it. It really looks promising. Thanks for making this video. I'll be looking forward to your future videos on the subject.
/Bob (A Now-New Subscriber)
Thus channel is a gem💎
Please keep up with quality content
I've been a happy Back In Time user for about a decade. It's rsync-based and a good balance of simplicity and features.
I read an allegation (sorry source amnesia) that `rsync` contains an error and can corrupt files.
@@b43xoitnever happened to me and my years worth of backing up and restoring stuff....
@@b43xoit Considering how much rsync is used in different contexts, that sounds a bit strange.🙂
Amazing video quality as usual 😁
Helpful walkthrough. Thanks
Another great video, thank you!
Let's be honest, the user experience for Pika (like a lot of gnome) is very nice indeed - Linux has always been powerful, but now it's starting to get the whole design/ux piece right. As a recent convert, I've been messing about with snapper and btrfs assistant - I'll have a look at Pika :) Awesome video, thank you!
Honestly, I'm really vibing with what Gnome is doing at the moment. The level of consistency and ease of use I think is going to push the platform higher when it comes to mass market. It's almost at the stage where I could start to recommend it to non technical people.
I'm a simple user, so this might be too simple, but I only use `rsync` and a bare git repository to backup my entire machine. A post-installation script will restore all of that along with installing packages in 30 minutes, I can reinstall my machine right now without the fear of losing anything.
Scheduled script every hour with rsync incremental mode here. Works easy and super fast .
This is one of the best videos that I've seen recently, thanks for sharing
this is awesome, looks great! We always had a simple solution for backing up files on Linux with rsync though
i use rsync and can testify its more complex than any windows backup tool i've used
I read an allegation (sorry source amnesia) that `rsync` contains an error and can corrupt files.
@@b43xoitAnd that "error" would never have been solved, while rsync is as old as Linux is and is the basis of about any back up system out there? Hard to believe.
Was thinking of Borg right from the start, having used it for the past 6-7 years, and lo it turns out to be a borg GUI! Pika looks like a pretty good tool to get to an initial borg config even for the cli-inclined.
Clean video production! I like Pika Backup, but since full system snapshots aren't really a thing on Linux (other than Timeshift and btrfs assistant which required arduous tinkering to set up), I just back up my entire Home folder in Dropbox in an encrypted .zip file, along with a post-install script that installs everything on a fresh install.
i can't say more than anyone else has already said this tutorial was cut to the point and was just in depth, pika backup i honestly very user friendly.
Thank you!
For so many months I have been facing same problem of not having a simple backup system thanks bro love your every video.❤️
Great video! For my needs I use rsync.
I use Rsync, is very good. Excellent videos, have learned a lot.
I read an allegation (sorry source amnesia) that it contains an error and can corrupt files.
Hello.
Thanks for the video.
I was using rsync for years and now i use timeshift on my fedora 40
Looks good.
I'll give it a try.
I use rclone with pcloud and icedrive. Will give pika a spin. Thanks for the informative content.
Great video. Good pacing, good coverage, very clear.
And what a great piece of software! I have to look into that.
Thanks, I was looking for backup solutions for a new Linux installation. One thing though, you don't need to use the time machine interface to browse files, you can just open the backup drive and access one of the time stamped backup sets.
Using restic for my homelab servers. One local hard drive repo receives the files from all the servers. The repo is then synced off-site with rclone. All that process is automated via a few basic scripts.
Pika looks very nice for a desktop use case! I wish there were the same UI for restic so I could add a desktop backup to the same repo I already use (though I have limited need for desktop backup, using a dotfile git and storing files on the servers rather than locally)
i have very similar protocol, but i use restic copy snapshot instead of rclone. is rclone faster than copying restic snapshots?
Nice, good improvement over other options. That said, it's way more fun to setup another system as a server, install a RAID drive array, then mount it as an SSHFS mount, then write an rsync script to backup everything I want, then run the script via Cron job. I don't do things the easy way :-)
i use a script that uses borg to backup my markdown notes to my USB stick sitting on my fritz router mounted as cifs
that way if my hard drive dies then at least my notes are in a more current backup state than the real backups i don't do that often to external USB drives
Which terminal do you use? I love the aesthetic.
I'm loving your videos, by the way. Solid content!
That's Console it's part of Gnome. But gnome has 2 terminal applications one is Gnome terminal and the other is Console
@VitisCZ I'm actually using Gnome Console, but it doesn't look that. Is that a theme or something that you have to configure?
@@TheALPHA1550that’s Zsh with the powerlevel10k theme
He uses Alacritty.
I use Borg as one of my solutions for client's backup since a long time. I did bash wrappers script to handle server backups, using date and time concatenated with server name for each backup name. The script writes states into rsyslog (start / stop / errors / stats) and keeps the whole logging into files that are named the same as the backup, sending email for status / errors / etc. Everything is backed outside the client sites, hosted centrally on my servers and each client backups (which are dedup & encrypted) are even "airgapped" into inaccessible directories on my servers (in case of ransomware, the hackers can't delete all backups!). Borg is very powerful and i use CLI to easily remotely mount backups an restore whatever client ask me! So this Pika solution is a great complement to all this! Kudos for this video!
Would you be willing to share more information and/or instructions on how to do what you do? Maybe a DIY video? Thanks in advance
@@jim7smithOk, i'll check the way i'll share this and report back here!
@@guyboisvert66 Thanks so much, looking forward to seeing the info
@@jim7smithWhat's your level as a Linux User / Sysadmin? Experience in bash scripting?
Great content!
Excellent! Thanks!
I use my own shell script run as a cron job.
It backs up to a selection of USB thumb drives. For each type of backup (home, /usr/local, mail, /etc) it:
* deletes all but the latest N (usually 2) copies by date from all backup drives,
* creates the backup in a temporary space,
* copies it to multiple thumb drives (usually 3).
Pika sounds promising. I've had a good experience with duplicati on desktops, and tar incremental backups on servers.
TimeMachine is one of the most important reasons I still use OSX/MacOS. It has saved me twice, once restoring from to a completely replaced drive.
Not just my files but my full OS including all settings for printers, wifi and everything else.
It is simply brilliant, I really don’t understand why Windows and Linux don’t have something similar. It is from 2007, so it completely baffles me that no other OS has been able to create something similar in 17 years..
Looks really good. Thanks for sharing.
At present, simple does it. Straight forward bash scripts to rsync to a couple of ZFS repositories with snapshots before and after. It may not be the most elegent, but easy to understand, and has got me out of trouble more than a few times.
I would not install or use z. FS on an envy M. ESS d until they fix the piss pour. Random reed and writes performance out of the box by default
From what I understand there isn't simple file. Or command that 1 must edit. I think involving something about highsync or usync =13 ...to fix it?
I'll just stick to the tried and true ext4
@@motoryzen People don't use ZFS for top performance, they use it for data integrity and/or its management features. For what it's worth, ZFS works fine on my NVMe machines (not "piss poor" as you might say), but of course it'll always be slower than ext4 or XFS simply due to the extra checks that ZFS does.
I read an allegation (sorry source amnesia) that `rsync` contains an error and can corrupt files.
@@austinleong3319 yes I know what they use it for but the bottom line is the random reading right performance is so shity compared to the normal standards that we've been used to with nvme technology that it basically defeats the point
One and even better analogy to see what I mean go back to dial-up internet
awesome video!
I use BTRFS snapshots for incremental copies and dd's for full disk images. Scheduled Rsync jobs also work.
I'm using Synology Drive. I don't backup whole system, just documents and project files - source code, images etc. It works really well for me. For backing up applications, I created sh file which will install all apps (flatpak and deb packages) on new machine. I don't backup whole system, because I build large projects - linux kernel, PrusaSlicer and other SW, so build deps would take a lot of space for backup.
You have an amazing wuality videos, made me install arch on VM. I don't use it, but fun 2 days of installing it.
😂
I literally just came back to Linux on my desktop and was in need of a backup solution. Perfect timing
I used Vorta till today. Indeed Pika is friendly and easier.
That was informative. I'm using rclone (and RoundSync on Android, which uses rclone under the hood), and some time ago I came over duplicati, trying it out
As an openSUSE Leap, KDE. user for years now I will see if I can apply what this Excellent and helpful video has shown me, to my system, using a spare Crucial MX500 sata ssd. Even having some knowledge of the CLI, the prospect of Linux backups has, until now, seemed off putting . Great work. Thank you and subscribing.
I've been using syncthing while I was developing my own solution for backups. After seeing this and giving Pika a shot, I'm happy to say that I will no longer be hearing my laptop fans spin up and my computer lag many times a day as syncthing does it's syncing.
my system backups were living on a prayer.
if I broke my system, I would have to manually plug in a live USB with linux, mount my laptops drive and partitions, and search for the files manually (hoping they are still their).
Now that I know of this tool, I have already started downloading it while watching the video :)
Pair this with Timeshift and you will have a complete backup system.
Timeshift (or snapper) combined with bootable snapshots makes my ArchBTW feel like DebianFYI.
Great tip! I'm gonna nerd out on Timeshift later tonight.
@@snickersanyoneTou spelt DebianFTW wrong 😊
Yeah, I also went with Timeshift for the System and PIka for the personal files. Timeshift saved my ass every-time I tried something crazy enough to destroy my whole system.
Timeshift has saved my butt a few times..... usually mucking around with new GPU drivers.
Nice and I like it but I wanted to find a cloud native backup solution in a multi az context. Even if it wasn't useful for my use case I'm happy to have seen that
Vorta too uses Borg and I much prefer it - both it and Pika are excellent tho with intuitive GUI and sane defaults making it very user friendly.
timeshift does just fine as a backup solution and works like time machine, only with more user configurable options. It's meant just for system backups, but you can include user files as well (or just your dotfiles). Backintime is also pretty good. Fully featured and nice GUI. I don't understand how this fails the simplicity test. Configuring timeshift takes about 10 seconds with the GUI client. Not saying Pika is in any way bad, but Linux has not been short of backup solutions.
Great video. What software do you use for the smooth zoom in and out for the screen share? It’s like butter
Very clear and detailed tutorial. I'm subscribing. I'd love the same for a system backup (other than Timeshift ?)
Thanks for the sub! Yeah I definitely want to take a look. I've been using NixOS more these days which helps with the system backup but has it's own quirks.
Honestly one of the reasons I love openSUSE is how easy snapshots are with it. Yes I know, snapshots are not backups and I do have my important stuff secured elsewhere but for the most prevalent problems: Broken updates or breaking things with configuration, it's enough.
I don't really need a backup solution for home since I use Syncthing on mutiple devices 😅 and every kind of "big data" like films/games I don't feel I need a backup for.
I use a combination of Syncthing and Duplicati. Syncthing is very useful for network drives or remote PCs. Then I use Duplicati which is installed on a docker container on my Pi5 to do encrypted backups to my NAS that is running in raid 1 and another in raid 6. 😌
thanks! needed just this video.
1:56 what machine do you use? seems compact and probably much quieter than the conventional tower I have
Looks similar to a Beelink minipc
SO... this is a GUI frontend for the actual and awesome borg-backup
I'm looking to implement a strategy where I sync all my persistent data (documents, music, etc.) to my NAS via Syncthing and then just do the backups server-side. Since I use NixOS, any system configuration can easily be reproduced with a few commands. I'd only really miss out on backing up "temporary" data like local container volumes, browser cookies, downloads and maybe some saves from Steam games.
Agreed! I've been playing more and more on nix on my main workstation and I think Pika/Borg goes nicely together. You can also manage Borgmatic from your nix configuration as well.
On MacOS use Vorta backup which also uses borgbackup on the back end.
Nice video. One question though, what is your current OS and OS theme ? it's simple and beautiful
I'm using Arch, btw :)
On my filming machine I have it set up for use with Gnome on X11 as it's easiest to run with ffmpeg, and I have a few scripts to center my windows etc.
For wayland, I'll have to use a capture card in order to achieve the same thing.
yes, a CRON running, SCP + tar + gzip, old school.. lol
Thanks for sharing, I will test Pika Backup :-)
i'd been using rsync but switching to this now!
Vorta is a good Borg frontend if you use a Qt based DE.
I use rsync for my home directory. This is perfect.
Rsync for the win.. When you have more than 4GB rsync is nice. I backup over the network to a server with RAID6. Both machine are using Fedora.
I use borgbackup to do automated backup and then rsync to make snapshots of borgbackup to remote locations.
Me too. rsync is all you need. I have a bash script triggered by cron to make regular backups using rsync and a secondary script to create rotation copies with cp -al using hard links. Disk space will only be used when a file is changed. rsync is very smart. Whenever a file in the primary backup copy is changed rsync will unlink it and the hard linked copy will retain the previous version. Works for me since 20 years.
I read an allegation (sorry source amnesia) that it contains an error and can corrupt files.
@@b43xoit I call bullshit. rsync last bug on RHEL/Fedora was 2011. Most problems are user error and network failures.
Timeshift, Deja dup and Lucky backup is both simple, but generally U R right.
Hello @dreamsofautonomy,
What gnome version, theme, iconset and so one are you using? I'd be very interested to know.
Thank you!
Rsync and Snapper is all I need.
I've been using Pika for a while now, and yeah it's good and simple, but I think if I have to set it up again, I will use Vorta backup again. A tad more complex, but felt more solid. Both use borg.
Not a lot of mentions (if any) for restic, it’s not as simple as Pika, or rsync but I’ve found it fantastic for backing to object storage, it does it using packed blocks and has a repository file saving non-negligible amounts of money with transaction costs especially when backing up source code.
I took a look at Borg a while back and couldn’t get my head around it for my use case (full disclosure I may have not tried hard enough).
But yeah restic has been awesome, backing up multiple hosts efficiently and recovery has been straightforward.
Worth a look I think.
Oh just to add, it has a sparse checksum validation feature as well to do integrity validation on random subsets… big win when you have a large backup set.
This voice sounds very familiar. Excellent content as always 👍👍
YT made me follow you around. Subbed 🫡
Since I'm on butter I use Timeshift to snapshot my filesystem hourly. Since I don't really have anything important on it, I don't bother backing it up externally. Everything of importance is on my NAS and modern SSDs are reliable enough for me to not bother as much
BTRFS assistant and Pika are godlike, easy, fast and efficient to use.
Personally I format my remote storage in btrfs, and use rsync which with hardlinks is able to store backup since years without eating much disk space. Super fast also
Based on Borg, which is an amazing backup solution.
Great video! Can you do a video about "vorta", also available in AUR. TIA
as a regular non-tech-savvy user, when it comes to backing up personal files, it's rather simple and easy. I know which folders to backup. I was wondering more about what should be backed up for reverting a system back to it's previous state after a system update that went wrong, or something like that. But I don't even know whether that's possible to do on a mutable system. I guess I should search for some tutorials about it.
If you just backup your entire root directory you should just be able to copy it back and be fine, at least if it's all on one physical device. If you have a weird partition structure with other drives mounted on your fs then you might need to recreate that manually before you restore. The only issue is your /boot volume, whether it has the right kernel image for the hardware you're running on (if you need to switch to another machine) and the boot loader / uefi partition. But if you run a linux install disc with minimum options and then just copy your files back that would probably be fine. Just exclude /boot from the backup.
Now you can make it harder if you want to actually save space and not back up things like package files, but that can get complicated. If you're using an arch based flavor I can tell you that /var/lib/pacman stores metadata about all its packages, including file hashes. But you need to write/find a C program that calls libarchive (with gzip and mtree extensions) to read it.
Or you could just exclude the output of "pacman -Ql" or whatever command lists all files on your system that comes from packages (apt list?). But then you'll lose anything that you modified, like /etc/mirrorlist
Veeam agent and volume image since is it much faster - I just moved VM containers to a separate disk to get them excluded.
I really love Duplicati. It can run on Docker and I use it for all my PCs and servers.
What micro computer are you using? Would you recommend? I’m in the market for something besides a laptop. I don’t play games, I’ll run a nice linux wm, and do development. Thanks.
I use the tar command to make an archive and chrontab to automate the process. However, after learning about pika backup I am going to modernize.