Cloudron makes it easy to run web apps like WordPress, Nextcloud, GitLab on your server. Find out more or install now.


    Cloudron Forum

    • Register
    • Login
    • Search
    • Categories
    • Recent
    • Tags
    • Popular

    Nextcloud Backup without Data

    Support
    backups cifs hetzner hardlinks
    5
    24
    901
    Loading More Posts
    • Oldest to Newest
    • Newest to Oldest
    • Most Votes
    Reply
    • Reply as topic
    Log in to reply
    This topic has been deleted. Only users with topic management privileges can see it.
    • I
      iqweb last edited by girish

      Hi - is there anyway to make cloudron backups for Nextcloud excluding the data folder. I find the internal cloudron backup a bi impractical for large datasets.

      I am using a Hetzner smb mounted storagebox share & rsync can't use hardlinks so I have to do full non-incremental backups & as can be expected - quickly run out of space. I am however using borg to backup to the same storagebox & that is deduplicated so uses space efficiently. I also pull a backup of the Nextcloud every night to our Synology NAS.

      I would prefer though to still have a cloudron native backup of the Nextcloud app/db minus the data. Is that possible? If not - could it become possible in a future update?

      Thanks

      jdaviescoates 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
      • jdaviescoates
        jdaviescoates @iqweb last edited by

        @iqweb said in Nextcloud Backup without Data:

        I am using a Hetzner smb mounted storagebox share & rsync can't use hardlinks so I have to do full non-incremental backups & as can be expected - quickly run out of space. I am however using borg to backup to the same storagebox & that is deduplicated so uses space efficiently. I also pull a backup of the Nextcloud every night to our Synology NAS.

        I'd like to do something similar, got any good links to step by step guide of how very such a system in place?

        I use Cloudron with Gandi & Hetzner

        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
        • nebulon
          nebulon Staff last edited by

          This is indeed often an issue. In your case however you should be able to use hardlinks if you mount the storage box as described at https://cloudron.io/documentation/backups/#cifs

          Generally it is hard to detangle the app's data folder from the other parts (mostly the database backups) as things then risk to go out of sync on a restore and it is hard to predict how apps like Nextcloud handle such cases.

          1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
          • M
            msbt App Dev last edited by msbt

            @nebulon when I asked hetzner about a year ago about hardlinks on storage boxes they said:

            auf unseren Storage Boxes kommt ZFS zum Einsatz.
            Hardlinks werden aus Sicherheitsgründen leider nicht unterstützt. Eventuell könnten Sie das Problem der Deduplizierung auch über BorgBackup lösen: https://wiki.hetzner.de/index.php/BorgBackup
            Unsere Storage Boxes unterstützen BorgBackup rsync nativ.
            

            Are you sure those are working now?

            1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
            • nebulon
              nebulon Staff last edited by

              Interesting reply, I am actually using such a storage box myself with samba and hardlinks on Cloudron. So far this has worked fine. I also just did a test hardlink manually on that samba mount and the hardlinks do persist across remounts. What I don't know is if they might actually somewhat duplicate data on the disk itself, but I think in such a case my box would be filled up by now easily.

              Interesting though, I was not aware that they support borgbackup natively.

              Can you maybe create some manual hardlinks on your storage box and check how it behaves for you?

              1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
              • M
                msbt App Dev last edited by

                I think when I tried that last year, the first backup went through (as well as manually creating hardlinks), but the subsequent ones were throwing errors. I thought it was due to the amount of data (40gb+ nextcloud instance), but the support said otherwise. When I have time I'll try again and let you know 🙂

                1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
                • I
                  iqweb last edited by iqweb

                  I also asked hetzner support about hardlinks & they said:

                  It seems that Samba is transferring the Hard Links correct, but not always showing them correct.
                  You could use rsync directly, in order to back up your data to the Storage Box.
                  For example:
                  -----------------%<-----------------
                  rsync --progress -H -e 'ssh -p23' --recursive <local_directory> <username>@<username>.your-storagebox.de:<target_directory>
                  -----------------%<-----------------
                  

                  Also - like msbt - it was working in the beginning & then started giving errors about hardlinks.

                  jdaviescoates - Do you mean the borgbackup to Hetzner storagebox - or the Synology pull?

                  nebulon - Is there a way to do a cloudron app only -minus nc data backup? I'm only able to keep 2 days of native cloudron backups at the moment & would very much prefer more than that!

                  jdaviescoates 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                  • girish
                    girish Staff last edited by

                    @iqweb @msbt Can one of you give me the hard link error you got? I would like to get this fixed.

                    AFAIK, CIFS supported hard links since a long time.

                    # cd /path/to/storagebox
                    # touch foo
                    # ln foo bar
                    # ln foo baz
                    # ls -l foo bar baz 
                    

                    What happens when you run above?

                    1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                    • M
                      msbt App Dev last edited by

                      # cd /var/storagebox/test
                      # touch foo
                      # ln foo bar
                      # ln foo baz
                      # ls -l foo bar baz
                      -rw-rw---- 3 yellowtent yellowtent 0 May 11 20:44 bar
                      -rw-rw---- 3 yellowtent yellowtent 0 May 11 20:44 baz
                      -rw-rw---- 3 yellowtent yellowtent 0 May 11 20:44 foo
                      

                      rather disappointing, seems to work 😉

                      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                      • girish
                        girish Staff last edited by

                        @msbt If possible, please trigger a backup as well with hardlinks. I would like to know why it fails. Maybe there is some limit somewhere we are hitting in CIFS.

                        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                        • M
                          msbt App Dev last edited by

                          ok, switched to rsync + hardlinks, testing

                          1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
                          • nebulon
                            nebulon Staff last edited by

                            Just to give a bit more information here. I can confirm that sometimes creating hardlinks within a cifs mount on a hetzner storage box fails like:

                            root@my ~ # cp -al /backups/snapshot/app_caafd030-50c4-413d-82b8-733e28d9da01/data/public/ /backups/foo
                            cp: cannot create hard link '/backups/foo/public/css/fonts/element-icons.ttf' to '/backups/snapshot/app_caafd030-50c4-413d-82b8-733e28d9da01/data/public/css/fonts/element-icons.ttf': No such file or directory
                            

                            However as soon as I touch or read/write that failing file, it starts working just fine.

                            If someone else here sees the same issue, maybe you can try to also see if touching a file which is failing fixes the hardlink creating. Given that this seems quite the sporadic issue, it would help to gather more information here to see if this indeed is consistent.

                            1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
                            • I
                              iqweb last edited by

                              I'll switch back to rsync with hardlinks & try touching the error files too

                              1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                              • girish
                                girish Staff last edited by

                                @iqweb We are monitoring @nebulon 's backups in the meantime, so we can find a workaround. Maybe as simple as a retry or maybe using rsync instead or creating hardlinks manually in node might do the trick.

                                1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                                • M
                                  msbt App Dev last edited by

                                  I've been using hardlinks for a few days now and encountered no problems so far. Would the backup job notify me if some links couldn't be generated? Not sure what happened the last time I tried that.

                                  1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                                  • nebulon
                                    nebulon Staff last edited by

                                    Yes you would receive a notification and email if a backup job failed

                                    1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                                    • I
                                      iqweb last edited by

                                      Seems to be working for me now too!

                                      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                                      • jdaviescoates
                                        jdaviescoates @iqweb last edited by

                                        @iqweb said in Nextcloud Backup without Data:

                                        jdaviescoates - Do you mean the borgbackup to Hetzner storagebox - or the Synology pull?

                                        Both! Thanks 😊

                                        I use Cloudron with Gandi & Hetzner

                                        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                                        • nebulon
                                          nebulon Staff last edited by

                                          Just a heads up, I have seen some bad behavior with cifs mount and hard-links on my personal Cloudron, which made some backups corrupt.

                                          So please everyone who is using this for now with relevant data, do not use hardlinks.

                                          jdaviescoates 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
                                          • girish
                                            girish Staff last edited by

                                            We have now setup a separate hetzner box to sync large amount of data to debug this issue.

                                            1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
                                            • jdaviescoates
                                              jdaviescoates @nebulon last edited by

                                              @nebulon said in Nextcloud Backup without Data:

                                              So please everyone who is using this for now with relevant data, do not use hardlinks.

                                              I'm not sure if this applies to me or not. I backup to a Hetzner Cloud Volume (not storage box). Currently I have hardlinks enabled. Should I turn them off?

                                              What should I look for in the logs to see if this is effecting me?

                                              Thanks!

                                              I use Cloudron with Gandi & Hetzner

                                              1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                                              • nebulon
                                                nebulon Staff last edited by

                                                It highly depends on how a "disk" is mounted onto the server. The hardlinks issue is only there for cifs mounts and since cifs/samba support hardlinks since a very long time, this seems to be related in particular to the hetzner storage boxes at the moment.

                                                jdaviescoates 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
                                                • jdaviescoates
                                                  jdaviescoates @nebulon last edited by

                                                  @nebulon OK thanks, so I don't think this applies to me.

                                                  This is how Hetzner Cloud Volumes are mounted:

                                                  mounting a hetzner volume.png

                                                  I use Cloudron with Gandi & Hetzner

                                                  1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                                                  • nebulon
                                                    nebulon Staff last edited by

                                                    correct in your case this should not be any issue as this is mounted like a regular ext4 which supports hardlinks just fine.

                                                    1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 2
                                                    • First post
                                                      Last post
                                                    Powered by NodeBB