Backup advice

TrueNAS General
1

Hi all!

I’m trying to upgrade from Bluefin to something newer. (monitoring ISP bandwidth)

I have Syncthing running, which a handful of devices use to sync all sorts of data.
That Syncthing directory is Rsynced through modules (daemon) to a vault.

In this way, if one of the devices clears their targeted sync folder, everything remains in the vault.
The storage space on the device itself is cleared, as well as the space allocated in the Syncthing directory, and the vault remains unaffected with all files still present.

But i’m running into problems with Rsync SSH, especially private key’s etc…
(i’m nearly giving up… been trying understanding certificates and key’s for years now…)

Is Rsync over SSH needed in my case? (Syncthing DIR and Vault DIR = same system)

Thank you

2

Hi all!

Been trying to get the Rsync SSH running, but it just won’t work…

Does anyone have some advice for my use case please?

Do i need Rsync to backup one way locally?

Thank you

3

Help anyone?

Also, posted a mistake here:

This should be dataset off course.

4

So 140+ views an not a single comment? Just wow…

5

I do try to respond to threads like these, mostly because I’ve given up making any new threads after posting three topics for separate issues which never got a reply, so I know how it feels (though on the plus side it did force me to learn a lot, and I’m better off for it).

I can’t say I’m familiar with your use-case, and I haven’t really had much interaction with syncthing. However, in the case where you want to be able to keep something similar to a backup/recycle bin (in this case your vault dir), is there a specific reason ZFS snapshot tasks would not work? If you needed to recover something specifically you could access this vault via SMB with shadow copies enabled and you’d just be able to pull old versions or deleted files as needed.

1 Like
6

Thank you for taking the time to respond. I do agree with you that trying on your own, without external help, will teach anyone a lot.

From a personal point of view, i’ve learned tons of things for the past six years using Trunas, but not without the help from everyone here. As i am not great in understanding cli, code, … the mere fact i accomplished to get a decent setup running, is to be considered a small miracle… :rofl:

To continue on this thread, i’ll try to explain my use case a bit more clearly.

So i have Syncthing running on various devices, which takes in files on to it’s dataset. (so SyncThing does camera backup on phones, folders from desktop’s and laptops around the house)

But the way i setup Syncting on the local devices is that for example, when my phone’s storage is full, i just need to check if the SyncThing app has synced, do a manual Rsync to my Vault Dataset, and then i’m free to delete all that’s stored in the synced folders.

The Rsync part was advised a long time ago, which i managed to get working, but only through Daemon, which is obsolete since Cohiba.

So in short:

  • Local devices run SyncThing app, with storage folders defined to sync to the server.
  • SyncThing (server side) pulls in all files to it’s dataset. (mirror mode, delete file on either side = gone everywhere)
  • Rsync(d) running every hour to sync the SyncThing dataset to my Vault dataset (same server).

So basically, i want to ‘one-way copy’ from my SyncThing dataset, to my Vault dataset.

The ZFS Snapshot task is what i then should do with the Vault dataset, i presume, for best practice.

Thank you.

7

Got you.
My understanding of rsync tasks within the TrueNAS WebGUI is that they only work between two systems, so probably wouldn’t work great for you. I don’t think replication tasks have the ability to do what you’re after either.

What you could do is just set up rsync to run on an hourly cronjob via the CLI. It’s something that would not persist through upgrades (so would need to be readded to cron), but will survive reboots just fine. Someone else might have a better approach here but as it’s not something I’ve personally used it’s the best I can think of. That way you can use whatever options you feel like along with using it locally.

8

Thank you!
That might explain the walls i run into configuring RsyncSSH locally :exploding_head:
(this basically explains my point… imagine the time lost on trying something that can’t work from the beginning)

I’ll take a look at it next time i’m tinkering with the server.
Also, thanks for the heads-up on the Cron Jobs not being persistent through upgrades. (this should be at least optional IMHO)