mount app backups?

[perler]

Is there a way to mount/browse backups?

This would be helpful in a scenario where you delete a file and want to restore a backup from before deletion without re-installing a whole app.

[girish]

@perler Providing a way to browse and decrypt backups via Cloudron dashboard itself would be a security issue. Because if one gains access to the dashboard somehow, they can now delete the backups also. This is the reason we have avoided building this.

As for browsing, where are your backups hosted? For example, if you use any of the object storages, you can use rclone to mount it on your PC/laptop. Then you can use the Cloudron CLI tool to decrypt filenames and backups - https://docs.cloudron.io/guides/decrypt-backups/

[nebulon]

@perler if you use the rsync backup method, you usually can use the backup storage provider UI to browse the files. Otherwise we currently don't have any backup browser as such, so you would have to restore that specific app one-by-one going back in time with the restore until you hit a backup containing that file.

[perler]

@nebulon ok, but as we have encrypted backups, is there a way to manually decrypt them for browsing?

also, are these backups incremental? (the app backups mainly)

[nebulon]

@perler if they are encrypted, then there is no easy way to decrypt them. The rsync ones are incremental, tarball is not. I think the easiest way is to just go into the backups tab in that app's configure screen in your Cloudron dashboard and just restore those one-by-one.

[perler]

@nebulon unfortunately, that's not really practical as this would loose the current state of the app.

we will maintain quite large nextcloud installations and requests for "can you please restore file A as I deleted it by mistake (and cleared the trashbin)" will happen. mh..

[girish]

@perler Providing a way to browse and decrypt backups via Cloudron dashboard itself would be a security issue. Because if one gains access to the dashboard somehow, they can now delete the backups also. This is the reason we have avoided building this.

As for browsing, where are your backups hosted? For example, if you use any of the object storages, you can use rclone to mount it on your PC/laptop. Then you can use the Cloudron CLI tool to decrypt filenames and backups - https://docs.cloudron.io/guides/decrypt-backups/

[perler]

@girish ok, I see and understand the reasoning and for now I think we will be fine.

But I wonder why there shouldn't be a read-only facility to restore single files. On other systems we use duplicacy/duplicati and this works quite well there.

[girish]

@perler said in mount app backups?:

But I wonder why there shouldn't be a read-only facility to restore single files.

No reason not to have a readonly browser as such, if we can implement it securely. Can you raise a feature request at https://forum.cloudron.io/category/97/feature-requests ? Thanks!

[perler]

@girish done