18.3 Timeshift question

[Mattyboy]

Ok probably not actually a question but more looking for agreement on an idea here.

System set up with separate Boot, Swap and home partitions. Home is encrypted.

I've noticed timeshift snapshots can only be stored on ext file systems. ( I do have another storage drive in ext4 but that's not really the point here. )

Would the best place to store my snapshots be the root partition? Alternatively say something went wrong and they were stored on my encrypted home, what would I need to do to access the files from a live boot? Mount that partition with sudo mount and enter then my password? Presumably the live timeshift will then be able to scan my home for the snapshot?

Thoughts on this appreciated, cheers.

[Mute Ant]

Up front, I don't know how Timeshift works at all, the next year playing with 18.3 will let me practice. My wild guess is that it will try to put files back where they came from, the exact original path, like...
/home/mute/Pictures/meep-meep/coyote.jpg
...so it won't work on a broken system, and it won't care that going from /home to /home/mute involves an encryption map.

Point of Order: "An encrypted home partition" is not part of a normal Mint installation. If you have an encrypted home folder, that's a very different thing to an encrypted home partition, and both are very different to LVM-on-LUKS used for whole-OS encryption.

[Mattyboy]

Yeah I'm aware of the different fors and against regarding encryption... I'm using it on my laptop for my home folder.. you never know


Timeshift is actually pretty easy, once you know what you're doing of course and a damn good reason to update to 18.3 once its released proper. I've already set it up on my desktop.. my question or thoughts may be better understood after watching this, Very helpful I thought.. from 11.50

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pPpJUUKYbiQ

[MintBean]

The best place would be on a separate disc entirely.

[Mattyboy]

The best place would be on a separate disc entirely.

Yeah I hear that mate. I'm thinking more along the lines of if that's not an option, like, say, on a laptop out and about. Maybe I need to look deeper into the timeshift options but there doesn’t appear to be a setting to specify the time snapshots are created. You know like setting it for a time when you know you're home with a drive plugged in. So its either gotta go in root or home ( see first post ).

[Mute Ant]

I intend to use one of these... https://www.amazon.com/SanDisk-Ultra-Lo ... B00XI3RRQG ...I have found the 16GB size just right. Don't wipe it, get a new one. SanDisk must love customers like that.

[MintBean]

The best place would be on a separate disc entirely.

Yeah I hear that mate. I'm thinking more along the lines of if that's not an option, like, say, on a laptop out and about. Maybe I need to look deeper into the timeshift options but there doesn’t appear to be a setting to specify the time snapshots are created. You know like setting it for a time when you know you're home with a drive plugged in. So its either gotta go in root or home ( see first post ).

Ah okay... that shows the limit of my knowledge of Timeshift! Wonder if it's robust to a powerdown during backups.

[MintBean]

I intend to use one of these... https://www.amazon.com/SanDisk-Ultra-Lo ... B00XI3RRQG ...I have found the 16GB size just right. Don't wipe it, get a new one. SanDisk must love customers like that.

I would do some research first. I had a couple of these a couple of years ago. Would get extremely hot when plugged into the computer for a few minutes even if not active and one of the two completely stopped working after about a year of light use.

[Mattyboy]

Had thought about a USB drive. Starting to think putting it on an encrypted data partition ( mount at boot ), or just leaving it in Home ( encrypted ) and taking the risk on portable devices might be the best idea. I had a quick scan through some readable files stored in the snapshot folder and it contains details I wouldn't be comfortable leaving on an 'open' drive... user name.. SSID ..

[greerd]

Hi guys,

I started using timeshift a few months ago, and used it once to recover back to when I had nvidia 370 installed after trying a new version and not having 370 in the driver manager anymore. I had no issues, backing up from a running system and also recovering to the same running system, just have to reboot to the restore point to finish.

I have it setup to automatically keep 5 days, 5 boots, 2 monthlies and a couple of on demand, only backing up the slash directory excluding /home, /mnt and /media. The total size of the timeshift directory is 30G for the 14 snapshots. (My /home is backed up using LuckyBackup.)

/etc/cron.d contains timeshift-boot and timtshift-hourly but I don't know where the daily and monthlies are run from.

If your slash directory isn't encrypted I don't see the reason to store the backups on an encrypted partition, if you have the room. It's quick and easy and gives one some peace of mind.

Cheers

[MintBean]

Does anyone know what happens if you power down during a backup? Does anything display to show a backup in progress?

[greerd]

Does anyone know what happens if you power down during a backup? Does anything display to show a backup in progress?

/etc.cron.d/timeshift-boot runs 10 minutes after boot and I would of noticed any display but I never have. The on-demand can be run within the gui and it opens a window with progress. It can be setup for on-demand only if you're using an external device.
I would expect that as long as you shut down nicely you should be good.

[MintBean]

Thanks greerd.