[9front] Free Carrots #4: Making Backups

[9front] Free Carrots #4: Making Backups

[Stanley Lieber]

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http://helpful.cat-v.org/Blog/2022/04/22/0/

sl


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Re: [9front] Free Carrots #4: Making Backups

[igor]

Quoth Stanley Lieber <sl@stanleylieber.com>:
> http://helpful.cat-v.org/Blog/2022/04/22/0/
[…]

Thanks sl! I was aware of kvik's clone⁽¹⁾, the use of
disk/mkfs as an rsync replacement was new to me.

clone⁽¹⁾ is usually one of the first things I put on
a machine as I am not aware of a more convenient way
to copy file hierarchies from A to B (thanks kvik) in
a fast way.

Has clone been considered as an addition to the 9front
base system in the past?

[1] https://git.sr.ht/~kvik/clone

Re: [9front] Free Carrots #4: Making Backups

[kvik]

> clone⁽¹⁾ is usually one of the first things I put on
> a machine as I am not aware of a more convenient way
> to copy file hierarchies from A to B (thanks kvik) in
> a fast way.

Glad my shitware is of help to you. :)

> Has clone been considered as an addition to the 9front
> base system in the past?

I'd veto this on the basis of it (clone) being incomplete
as a replacement for disk/mkfs for the described backup
managing task. Primarily, it has to (1) learn to read the
"job" in the form of a proto file, and (2) be able to filter
out "up to date" files.

The current code kinda sucks (don't you judge me!) which
makes these two things more difficult to implement than ideal.

Writing a fresh version which takes into account the above
points should be easy with the benefit of hindsight.
Unfortunately I'm quite busy typing C++ at work which leaves
me with very little motivation to touch computers in my spare
time.

Sorry.

Re: [9front] Free Carrots #4: Making Backups

[sirjofri]

Hey all,

I addition to mkfs, I played around with replica some time ago for the 
exact same reason. I wrote a little blog post about it here:

https://sirjofri.de/changeblog/1593621046/

The linked files aren't in that location anymore, but here instead:

https://sirjofri.de/oat/rc/guidedreplica/

Disclaimer: the solution is very buggy for a common push/pull scenario I 
intended it back then (syncing files to a laptop and be able to sync them 
back, but only changed files). Use with care and make proper backups!

See also: replica(1), replica(8)

sirjofri

Re: [9front] Free Carrots #4: Making Backups

[Lyndon Nerenberg (VE7TFX/VE6BBM)]

Has anyone played around with upspin?  It's written in go, so there's
hope it will port to plan9 without too much pain.

I fired it up a few years ago but the showstopper was how the server
wanted to completely take over my HTTP server.  I didn't have a
second publicly visible server I could dedicate to the task, so it
all went back on the shelf.

There are some interesting ideas in there, but the bar was just a
bit to high for me to do any serious playing with it.

I still have my keys kicking around here somewhere, so I might take
another crack at it.  But I'm up to my eyeballs right now trying
to get that 4.3BSD APL code running on a modern C compiler :-(

--lyndon

Re: [9front] Free Carrots #4: Making Backups

[hiro]

i love the idea of upspin, but i don't know if it's still maintained?
rob and russ or whoever was involved seem awfully silent about it lately :(

On 4/25/22, Lyndon Nerenberg (VE7TFX/VE6BBM) <lyndon@orthanc.ca> wrote:
> Has anyone played around with upspin?  It's written in go, so there's
> hope it will port to plan9 without too much pain.
>
> I fired it up a few years ago but the showstopper was how the server
> wanted to completely take over my HTTP server.  I didn't have a
> second publicly visible server I could dedicate to the task, so it
> all went back on the shelf.
>
> There are some interesting ideas in there, but the bar was just a
> bit to high for me to do any serious playing with it.
>
> I still have my keys kicking around here somewhere, so I might take
> another crack at it.  But I'm up to my eyeballs right now trying
> to get that 4.3BSD APL code running on a modern C compiler :-(
>
> --lyndon
>

Re: [9front] Free Carrots #4: Making Backups

[qwx]

On Sat Apr 23 06:23:23 +0200 2022, sl@stanleylieber.com wrote:

> http://helpful.cat-v.org/Blog/2022/04/22/0/
> 
> sl

Hello,

I imagine that by now a whole bunch of people have come up with ways
to back things up or synchronize trees.  I've used mkfs(8) a lot, then
clone(1), etc., but I really wanted to also be able to remove files no
longer present (while not touching any mtimes for up-to-date stuff,
etc.).  After a bunch of iterations of scripts with diff(1) and
others, I now use derp(1) together with the equivalent of dircp(1) and
some awk [1].  This prints two commands, one to remove files, the
other to unpack new or modified ones.  Of course, it's slow and has
tar(1)'s filename length limit, but I kind of like it.  I'm very
interested in hearing about other solutions though :)

Cheers and thanks for the post,
qwx

[1] http://shithub.us/qwx/rc/HEAD/bin/syncab/raw

Re: [9front] Free Carrots #4: Making Backups

[Steve Simon]

fwiw

i tried to use replica when it appeared but always struggled. it worked perfectly for labs releases but synchronising home and work systems proved difficult.

i used mkfs but preferred dump9660 if the data being backed up fits on a cd - for a single project. it has the nice feature that you can do incremental backups with a dated top lever directory, in the manner of /n/dump

-Steve

> On 26 Apr 2022, at 12:43 pm, qwx@sciops.net wrote:
> 
> On Sat Apr 23 06:23:23 +0200 2022, sl@stanleylieber.com wrote:
> 
>> http://helpful.cat-v.org/Blog/2022/04/22/0/
>> 
>> sl
> 
> Hello,
> 
> I imagine that by now a whole bunch of people have come up with ways
> to back things up or synchronize trees.  I've used mkfs(8) a lot, then
> clone(1), etc., but I really wanted to also be able to remove files no
> longer present (while not touching any mtimes for up-to-date stuff,
> etc.).  After a bunch of iterations of scripts with diff(1) and
> others, I now use derp(1) together with the equivalent of dircp(1) and
> some awk [1].  This prints two commands, one to remove files, the
> other to unpack new or modified ones.  Of course, it's slow and has
> tar(1)'s filename length limit, but I kind of like it.  I'm very
> interested in hearing about other solutions though :)
> 
> Cheers and thanks for the post,
> qwx
> 
> [1] http://shithub.us/qwx/rc/HEAD/bin/syncab/raw

Re: [9front] Free Carrots #4: Making Backups

[sl]

> http://shithub.us/qwx/rc/HEAD/bin/syncab/raw

thanks, this is nice!

sl