Release notes for Excito Bubba 2&3 software version 2.6

[johannes]

This is a new update. The upgrade is available only as a web update.

How to upgrade
To upgrade a running system, make sure you don't have any activities running such as uploads, downloads, print jobs etc. Then log in as admin in web-ui. Choose "Settings" menu entry. Choose "Software update" in the sub menu.

Fixed issues
* A few bug fixes
* A whole new backup experience, using rsync instead of duplicity (solving many issues)
* General system and security updates

Notes
* Since this is a farily large update, the web UI may be unresponsive for a while during update. Don't worry, this is normal.
* The old backup feature is still there, and backup jobs already existing will still run. New jobs however must be done with the new system.

[effevee]

Hey Johannes,

Thanks for the new upgrade.

Notes
* Since this is a farily large update, the web UI may be unresponsive for a while during update. Don't worry, this is normal.

One minor hickup during the upgrade : the apache2 service did not restart automatically at the end, so the web UI became unresponsive. Had to login to the console to manually restart the service.

Thought this would be good to know for other B2/B3 users.

I will now test the new rsync backup.

Regards,

Frank

[albert]

Hi Johannes,

the upgrade went without any problem.

Regarding the new backup I have several questions:

- Once you add a new target, you cannot remove it with the web interface
- Where are the config files stored for this backup
- Miss the option to make my own selection to backup, or only backup Mail (/home/<user>/.Maildir
- Where is the data stored on the remote storage, there is no way to configure that through the webinterface
- Daily, Weekly, twice a week, is a very limited option

Most of these things can be circumvented, once I know where the config files are stored.


Regards,

Albert

[johannes]

Hi Albert!

- Once you add a new target, you cannot remove it with the web interface

Yes you can, check admin -> settings -> remote accounts

- Where are the config files stored for this backup

Code: Select all

/etc/bubba/remote_accounts.yml and 
/etc/bubba/remote_backup_jobs.yml

- Miss the option to make my own selection to backup, or only backup Mail (/home/<user>/.Maildir
- Where is the data stored on the remote storage, there is no way to configure that through the webinterface
- Daily, Weekly, twice a week, is a very limited option

I agree that options are somewhat limited but we focused on usability, and leave the advanced options to the advanced users, who (often) can do these settings manually. Feedback noted though, thanks!

/Johannes

[gonk]

- Miss the option to make my own selection to backup, or only backup Mail (/home/<user>/.Maildir
- Where is the data stored on the remote storage, there is no way to configure that through the webinterface
- Daily, Weekly, twice a week, is a very limited option

I agree that options are somewhat limited but we focused on usability, and leave the advanced options to the advanced users, who (often) can do these settings manually. Feedback noted though, thanks!

A very limited functionality (set of options in this case) isn't the same as increasign the usability. Apple all too long kept stating that the one-button mouse was superior but we all know that they were wrong.

My concern is, will the existing duplicity tasks keep running?
If so, will they be visible and managable in the UI?
... or shall I remove all of them before updating?

[albert]

To quickly answer your last questions.

Yes your old backups keep running. No need to remove them before the upgrade.

In the backup setup page there is a link to the old backup page, which is fully working.

Albert

[Ubi]

It sounds kinda overkill to have two backup systems run inparallel, and i imagine it will yield support issues with regard to cpu load and storage space. Is this really default behaviour?

[johannes]

[quote="Ubi"]It sounds kinda overkill to have two backup systems run inparallel, and i imagine it will yield support issues with regard to cpu load and storage space. Is this really default behaviour?[/quote]

We couldn't really accept that a software update could kill and remove existing backup jobs, for people not reading up well this could be a bad surprise. So the old backup is untouched in the background for now, but it is not possible to create new jobs anymore.

[Ubi]

Yeah i undertand and its probably the only thing you can do, but please communicate this very clearly becausevwe will be getring people on this forum with crazy problems tat are a reult of this. The way you mentioned it now in the OP suggets a replacement, not an adition

[toukie]

"I agree that options are somewhat limited but we focused on usability, and leave the advanced options to the advanced users, who (often) can do these settings manually."

Maybe some "advanced user" could tell how to do a backup of a separate folder from say /home/web

Thanks for the upgrade, it was rather large but it went smoothly without any problems. For me it solved one little problem I had before.

[gonk]

Maybe some "advanced user" could tell how to do a backup of a separate folder from say /home/web

This is what I've set up to backup /home/web to my S1 extension disk mounted at /home/storage/extern/bubbaS1

Code: Select all

rsync --archive --acls --delete-delay --verbose --stats --itemize-changes --progress --human-readable   /home/web   /home/storage/extern/bubbaS1/b3_backup/

This script, surrounded by some logging of start and completion time, is run daily via chron.

[gonk]

Here are my conserns relating to the 2.6 release

Settings/Remote accounts, rsync to non B3 or HiDrive targets
http://forum.excito.net/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=4472

Duplicity - "Fatal Error: Backup source host has changed."
http://forum.excito.net/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=4473

[gonk]

The manual at http://b3/manual/index.php?lang=en has not been updated when it comes to the new backup solution.

Based on the available infornation it is not possible to judge if it provides the same timeline functionality as the duplicity based one or if it is just a plain keep-a-mirror-somewhere-else that will not allow you to recover a file removed or changed once the backup has been executed again.

The on-line help just says:

Restore a backup
Go to “File Manager” and browse to /home/admin/ and you will find a folder there for each target device, where the target data is mounted. You can there manually copy the files from target.

All in all this new solution seems like major steps in the wrong direction, especially the weird selection of HiDrive.

On which critera/properties was the desigh of the new solution based?

[johannes]

Gonk,

Sorry you are not happy with the new backup. I'll try to give some background:

The previous (duplicity-based) backup was flawed. It worked nicely when released several years ago, mostly since people back then backed up smaller sets of data. It has nice timeline features but when data grows large it gets way too heavy for a system like the B3. Nowdays the typical B3 user backs up their photo collection (could be 1 TB or more), and for that, timeline feature is useless. Furthermore, restoring from a tree of multiple delta backups gets very heavy, and with large datasets it does not work properly on the B3. Due to the high number of issue reports on the backup we felt that it could not be trusted.

Therefor, a much more simplistic approach was chosen, and most customers now think sync is a nicer approach than backup, for instance it is comforting to be able to see all data directly on the target. We have had many worried customers asking why their data was "garbled" on target (duplicity compresses it, chunks it and "deltas" it). For instance a clean sync ensures restoring without the need for a working B3, if this would ever be needed.

The choice of HiDrive was just since we had that done anyways (special customer request).

[RandomUsername]

I've been rsyncing backups to hidrive for some time and they have some nice file versioning features.