Timeshift Schedules - some Esoteric thoughts.
just about everyone using Linux Mint has seen the word Timeshift, and has some inkling of what it does.
However, miss use of it keeps popping up, and and there seems to be newbies, as well as other users who have it running, but don't think about what it can do to repair their OS.
A recent thread occurred like this about 3 days ago, and the member here commented in almost the last post of his thread, that the idea of "repairing his OS" and getting it to work again, with Timeshift just had not occurred to him.
He had tried a lot of different ways of making things work right again, and by the time someone had entered the frey, his last good Timeshift was gone.
Today, thinking back over this one person's situation made me think that "only if" his Timeshift had been set up properly, he could have recovered from his problems without having to do a fresh install.... at least his data was still good.
So, with that idea in my head, I thought I would present my view of how to schedule Timeshift.
Looking at this Schedule that I have set up, my thoughts were:
1) Make a Monthly the basis of the whole scheme, and keep 2 of those.
2) Make Weekly snapshots and keep 3 of those.
a 4th one is the same as a Monthly so don't need a 4th Weekly.
3) Make Daily snapshots and keep 5 of those. could keep 6, but in practice, 5 has been enough for me, and a Weekly is only 2 days older.
In the situation that I depicted above, the member here would have been able to use the last weekly, or at worst, the 2nd to last, being only a few days older than the point at which he was experiencing trouble.
For the most part, for me. I generally recognize something is amiss within a day or two, but I recall a situation that occurred to me about 2 months ago, that I had made some innocuous little changes and simply forget to write them down.
At that time, I was not using the depth of recovery that I am showing here now. I had to drop back more than 5 days, to catch the last "On Demand" snapshot. Nothing serious happened, but over the next week, I became aware of missing applications that I had installed, but suddenly were not in my Menu anymore. ( SimpleScreenRecorder )
That was when I decided I needed to be more methodical with Timeshift.
I will comment here, that my Image backups are rare, at roughly 6 months, if I remember to do one then.
I've been on Mint now since vs 17.2 and enjoying every minute of it. I constantly learn new things by watching the gurus here help others out.
I'm not a guru yet, never will be, way too old at 78, and have a mind crippling injury whereby my memory is only good for 15 minutes. ( the result of a bad vehicle accident )
So, with that, I hope this thread is useful to someone, even just one, will make it worth it.
My personal Boo Boo is installing someone's fresh idea, using PPAs, or trying out a fancy Terminal Command I have not seen before......
and it causes a problem for me... Timeshift, lets me backup to just a few hours previous and all is good again.
for me, Timeshift runs at 00:01 every day.
I use BackInTime for /home/folder backups, but that is for another discussion.
Timeshift Schedules - some Esoteric thoughts.
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- AZgl1800
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Timeshift Schedules - some Esoteric thoughts.
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- BenTrabetere
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Re: Timeshift Schedules - some Esoteric thoughts.
There are a few things that everyone should do regularly to protect their Linux Mint installation - the Big 3 are: Install Updates, Backup Data, Use Timeshift.
My Timeshift schedule is Monthly (keep 2) and Weekly (keep 2). At one point I took daily snapshots, but stopped because I decided the Weekly snapshots were adequate my needs. I also make a manual snapshot prior to doing something that might have a negative impact on the system such as updating the kernel.
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Re: Timeshift Schedules - some Esoteric thoughts.
I don't understand. If you do daily, why would you need weekly? If you do weekly, why would you need monthly? What am I missing?
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Re: Timeshift Schedules - some Esoteric thoughts.
In my opinion: nobody needs to retain more than two snapshots. On a monthly schedule if you like automation, or simply on demand (which is my preference).
Hey, it's just a system restore tool.... Even if a snapshot is quite old, updating it after restoration is a cinch and completed in no time at all. So why bother with so many and so frequent snapshots?
Hey, it's just a system restore tool.... Even if a snapshot is quite old, updating it after restoration is a cinch and completed in no time at all. So why bother with so many and so frequent snapshots?
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Re: Timeshift Schedules - some Esoteric thoughts.
If the only updates you apply are those from Mint I daresay only one snapshot would be enough. If you add hardware or what might be called non-standard software from time to time then it simplifies reversion to earlier states to have more snapshots. Personally I have seven snapshots because I am too lazy to change the schedule and have plenty of space.
Cliff Coggin
Re: Timeshift Schedules - some Esoteric thoughts.
The only reason is if you have a problem and don't know it for 5+ days. Then you want to Timeshift back a week or more to fix it.I don't understand. If you do daily, why would you need weekly? If you do weekly, why would you need monthly? What am I missing?
You could get by with daily for 3 days and a few manual ones sprinkled in for the long range historical copies. I do Daily for 7 days and Monthly for 2. Yes, I could reduce the daily to much less, but they are generally almost free. Each one is roughly 1.5 GB, unless you just installed something. Then they are ~8 GB or so. But then the next one is only 1.5 GB.
I find that is you add a Comment to the snapshot, then it sticks around until you manually delete it. I like that feature. Sometimes I delete those old ones and get 10-30 GB space back on my disk.
- AZgl1800
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Re: Timeshift Schedules - some Esoteric thoughts.
I have a few commented just for that reason, it states the status of the OS,
or I make a statement " Prior to installing XYZ "
and if all goes well, then in a week or two, I can delete that one,
or I make a statement " Prior to installing XYZ "
and if all goes well, then in a week or two, I can delete that one,
- AZgl1800
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Re: Timeshift Schedules - some Esoteric thoughts.
Slept a few nights since this all started,
and I amended my scheme.....
only 2 snapshots as one poster mentioned, is not enough insurance for me.
so, this is how mine looks now.
and I amended my scheme.....
only 2 snapshots as one poster mentioned, is not enough insurance for me.
so, this is how mine looks now.
- RickyRaccoon
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Re: Timeshift Schedules - some Esoteric thoughts.
I only recently began using Timeshift- I hadn't messed with it before but after a couple times I thought I'd screwed my system up...
seemed like a good idea.
I have plenty of room- I shoved every drive I had laying around, into my desktop until I ran out of drive bays (and cheated with one more by taping the SSD to the bottom of the case with double-sided tape). So I'm not really paying attention to how many backups on hand.
Those Tara backups are from another HD- I have Ulyssa on the SSD I usually boot to, but the previous 'main' HDD still has Tara installed- I rarely boot to it, so I just run on-demand Timeshifts from time to time when I think of it.
I never do much freaky with it, so Weekly seems good enough to me. Just in case an update goes awry.
Edited to add, I got to looking at my sigline, and looking at the screenshot, and realised I hadn't done a Timeshift since updating the Tara to Tricia. That tells you how often I use it- I forgot I'd upgraded from 19 to 19.3 one evening. Rebooted to it and correcting that now..
seemed like a good idea.
I have plenty of room- I shoved every drive I had laying around, into my desktop until I ran out of drive bays (and cheated with one more by taping the SSD to the bottom of the case with double-sided tape). So I'm not really paying attention to how many backups on hand.
Those Tara backups are from another HD- I have Ulyssa on the SSD I usually boot to, but the previous 'main' HDD still has Tara installed- I rarely boot to it, so I just run on-demand Timeshifts from time to time when I think of it.
I never do much freaky with it, so Weekly seems good enough to me. Just in case an update goes awry.
Edited to add, I got to looking at my sigline, and looking at the screenshot, and realised I hadn't done a Timeshift since updating the Tara to Tricia. That tells you how often I use it- I forgot I'd upgraded from 19 to 19.3 one evening. Rebooted to it and correcting that now..