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  3. Nextcloud Backup without Data

Nextcloud Backup without Data

Scheduled Pinned Locked Moved Support
backupscifshetznerhardlinks
24 Posts 5 Posters 3.7k Views 5 Watching
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    • I Offline
      I Offline
      iqweb
      wrote on last edited by girish
      #1

      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

      jdaviescoatesJ 1 Reply Last reply
      1
      • I iqweb

        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

        jdaviescoatesJ Online
        jdaviescoatesJ Online
        jdaviescoates
        wrote on last edited by
        #2

        @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

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        • nebulonN Offline
          nebulonN Offline
          nebulon
          Staff
          wrote on last edited by
          #3

          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.

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          • M Offline
            M Offline
            msbt
            App Dev
            wrote on last edited by msbt
            #4

            @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?

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            • nebulonN Offline
              nebulonN Offline
              nebulon
              Staff
              wrote on last edited by
              #5

              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?

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              • M Offline
                M Offline
                msbt
                App Dev
                wrote on last edited by
                #6

                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 🙂

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                • I Offline
                  I Offline
                  iqweb
                  wrote on last edited by iqweb
                  #7

                  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!

                  jdaviescoatesJ 1 Reply Last reply
                  0
                  • girishG Offline
                    girishG Offline
                    girish
                    Staff
                    wrote on last edited by
                    #8

                    @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?

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                    • M Offline
                      M Offline
                      msbt
                      App Dev
                      wrote on last edited by
                      #9
                      # 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 😉

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                      • girishG Offline
                        girishG Offline
                        girish
                        Staff
                        wrote on last edited by
                        #10

                        @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.

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                        • M Offline
                          M Offline
                          msbt
                          App Dev
                          wrote on last edited by
                          #11

                          ok, switched to rsync + hardlinks, testing

                          1 Reply Last reply
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                          • nebulonN Offline
                            nebulonN Offline
                            nebulon
                            Staff
                            wrote on last edited by
                            #12

                            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.

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                            1
                            • I Offline
                              I Offline
                              iqweb
                              wrote on last edited by
                              #13

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

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                              • girishG Offline
                                girishG Offline
                                girish
                                Staff
                                wrote on last edited by
                                #14

                                @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.

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                                • M Offline
                                  M Offline
                                  msbt
                                  App Dev
                                  wrote on last edited by
                                  #15

                                  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.

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                                  • nebulonN Offline
                                    nebulonN Offline
                                    nebulon
                                    Staff
                                    wrote on last edited by
                                    #16

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

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                                    0
                                    • I Offline
                                      I Offline
                                      iqweb
                                      wrote on last edited by
                                      #17

                                      Seems to be working for me now too!

                                      1 Reply Last reply
                                      0
                                      • I 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!

                                        jdaviescoatesJ Online
                                        jdaviescoatesJ Online
                                        jdaviescoates
                                        wrote on last edited by
                                        #18

                                        @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

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                                        • nebulonN Offline
                                          nebulonN Offline
                                          nebulon
                                          Staff
                                          wrote on last edited by
                                          #19

                                          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.

                                          jdaviescoatesJ 1 Reply Last reply
                                          1
                                          • girishG Offline
                                            girishG Offline
                                            girish
                                            Staff
                                            wrote on last edited by
                                            #20

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

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