Make many backups
Last week, I saw a notification saying a new kernel update was available for my desktop running Linux Mint, so I went ahead and updated it. When I restarted the system, all my data was gone. Everything! Even my applications had disappeared.
Well, not gone exactly. My available disk space indicated that it was all there, but my user profile had vanished, so there was no way for me to access it without messing around with partitions and what not. I searched for a solution online, and it didn’t look good. There were other people who had faced this, but the answers were too complicated for me to make sense of what to do next.
Luckily I had backups of my data I could retrieve from. So I just nuked the system and reinstalled the OS.
My backups were in layers.
- Luckybackup which uses rsync to take a snapshot of my main data folder every night to an external HDD.
- Deja Dup backs up my entire root folder once a week to a separate HDD.
- Syncthing which is not really a backup at all, ensures that all my devices are synced and up to date.
I used Deja Dup first, to bring back all my support folders like fonts, templates, Appimage files, music and so on. Then I copied over the more recent, nightly backup data from Luckybackups to update the main content folder which brought my state back to what it was about 4 days from disaster point. The last missing 4 days were on my laptop, courtesy Syncthing.
So, I didn’t lose a thing. Except for the downloads folder which was excluded from my backups and I’m not missing anything crucial there. I had to setup Syncthing and share folders again. I also had to download all my emails. Small price to pay, all things considered.
The last time I faced something like this was about a decade ago, and the lessons learned then have paid off all this time later.
Now I’m thinking if it makes sense to also keep a copy of some of my important files on my self hosted Nextcloud instance. Maybe I can learn how to use cryptomator to secure it first.
Backup folks. It’s insurance.