Built-In Full LIVE system Backup & Restore option?

[madgabz]

Hi,

Like most of other NAS4FREE users, I'm a bit of a tinkerer, but no real admin. I dabble with *NIXes for fun, but when shit hits the fan, I'm basically out of my league!
Several times, I've had my system crashing totally when trying to mount and do filecopying/backups on NTFS/FAT32-formatted eksternal drives, and every time it is a PAIN to recreate the system from where I left off!
Also, it seems many users of Nas4free is using external drives of various filesystems, etc, and also playing around with stuff, (vbox/brigg/LAMP/ports, etc), which makes it inherenly dangerous for a stable system!
YES! This is all risky activities for which we are responsible ourselves, BUT...
Why not have a way to do automatic backups of live nas4free system/bootdisk using eg. dump/restore, to eksternal network disks/HDDs/Flashdisks ? Then, have an option during startup on livecd to restore from whatever media, using whatever config-media you have used?
Using dump/restore can even be used for doing incremental backups for those careful ppl?

Does this sound like a stupid idea?

[ChriZathens]

N4F uses one small config.xml file to restore filesystem settings after an O/S crash.
As for the data, why add complex scripts and complicated restore functions?
If for some reason you lose your data, you simply create the array or whatever you used in the past and copy-paste from the backup..

Unless you mean something different and I did not understand it...

[raulfg3]

Why not have a way to do automatic backups of live nas4free system/bootdisk using eg. dump/restore, to eksternal network disks/HDDs/Flashdisks ?

not needed for embeded install, you only need to reinstall embeded and restore your previosly saved config.

Only have sense for a full install if you install packages on nas4Free, if you install packages inside a jail, have no sense because jails are restored when you restore config.

this is what you say i suppose: viewtopic.php?f=55&t=266

[madgabz]

well, i could do a dd as you suggest in that linked post! I agree, why bother if you are just using plain vanilla nas4free, with no added packages, etc... just use config-backup/restore!!!
Well, i must say, i think a lot of us ARE ACTUALLY installing all kinds of addons using pkg_add, and/or installing packages from local ports collections. And spend quite some time figuring out symlinks and .so-files, etc, that never works out of the box....
Having this as an semi-automated procedure with a clean and simple interface using the webpage would make restoring a fail-over, custom nas4free system much, much easier!

[madgabz]

example: i have the subsonic music server installed under /var, to use it i had to go through painful install-hell of java JRE. this is just 1 thing that is gone to hell after a system failover! this cannot be restored using the config.xml restore procedure! and to use subsonic with transcoding on-the-fly, i need a 64-bit recompiled version of lame-encoder, or a recompiled ffmpeg package w support for mp3. This can ONLY be done having a jail (or similar) installed with freebsd and fulll ports, for compiling that! All requiting customization of nas4free.
plus, the other 2000 other small/minor/big alterations to get other nifty stuff running, using all sorts of dependent packages and whatnot.
I am quite certain I am not the only one having the same need! prove me wrong

[raulfg3]

Well, i must say, i think a lot of us ARE ACTUALLY installing all kinds of addons using pkg_add, and/or installing packages from local ports collections.

this is bad and NOT recommended by N4F team since jails are easy to install in Nas4Free using "Thebrig", please do all install inside a jails and you do not have problems in case of OS/boot corruption problems, and you do not need to recompile anything, because are as safe as your data are. (Jails MUST be in the data disk).