[Plugin] CA Appdata Backup / Restore v2.5


KluthR

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1 hour ago, muffinman1604 said:

What does "Create separate archives (one per folder)?" mean? Is yes or no going to be faster? 

Neither nor. It just split the backup up by source folders. Its not faster and not slower.

 

1 hour ago, muffinman1604 said:

Also, does the scheduled backup always stop the docker containers

Logically it stops them each time the backup starts.

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46 minutes ago, muffinman1604 said:

Is the option to verify backups very necessary?

It adds a bit more safety as it check backup integrity. 
 

47 minutes ago, muffinman1604 said:

And is there anything from Plex that could be removed to speed up the process?

Yes, some Cache folders or thumbnails. Could any Plex user post their exclusion list? Maybe I add a hint to one click add „useless“ Plex folders to the exclusion list

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5 minutes ago, CryPt00n said:

Possibility to not package it into a tar/tar.gz would be great too. Simple copy of appdata.

For a minority of apps, that may be quicker. For most though, it would slow things down, and possibly create a mess.

 

It could be a nice advanced option to apply per app, I wouldn't want it as a blanket option. Another advanced option possibility could be BTRFS snapshots, but that would probably require special handling and setup.

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I am back here again since this is getting out of hand. I have 500GB of backup data now since the backup finish with errors every time it runs. This was not a problem in V2 and only started after I updated. Can we please have this fixed? It is getting really annoying and I can't have Duplicacy send my 50+ GB of data everytime this backup fails. Is this only because I dont stop containers? I dont want to do that because then I lose functionality in my home which I don't want to do. I am going back to V2 if this is still an issue going forward. 

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I'll add an option to let the user completely ignore any errors for now - later this day. In the upcoming options, users have more options for that. Backups while containers are running are no valid backups for me.

It would be possible (next versions) to only include a pattern to the backup. Use case would be: If a container creates backups itself, AppData Backup could only pick those up while not stopping this container. Backup and verification would be successful because those files are static at that moment.

 

We will see.

 

@All Plex users: Please share your Plex exclusion list to create a list of useful exclusions for the next big upfates :)

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1 hour ago, vw-kombi said:

personally, I would doubt that database etc can be safely backup up when running.

Yeah, that's what I've been trying to say too. But I guess some people need to learn the hard way. But media apps like plex,and the *arrs is not that critical to loose either way, they just have to pull down the metadata and build a new database. But sucks to have a backup you cant use. I guess they will learn that in time :) 

Edited by strike
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1 hour ago, vw-kombi said:

Can I just ask if you have restored these running containers ever ?  Have you had a situation that you ever restored them ?

 

personally, I would doubt that database etc can be safely backup up when running.

Say my pi-hole for example. If stopped it will hamper connectivity in the whole network.

The appdata for that has a bunch of conf files, and a db. The conf files are important but will never change on their own even if the container is running, only time they'd change is when you're manually making changes. The DB might get corrupted, if it does it's just stats, delete it, no big deal. 

Edited by Kilrah
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2 minutes ago, Kilrah said:

no big deal. 

For you maybe, but what about users that have more important containers with databases then pihole? The worst part is that they will come here and complain "why their backups are not usable, isn't that what this plugin is for?" There should at least be a big red waring message that having containers running during backup might cause some files to be incomplete or have corrupt files. That way they can't say they haven't been warned.

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2 minutes ago, strike said:

For you maybe, but what about users that have more important containers with databases then pihole?

Again if it's a container that can't be safely left running and errors ignored you simply do not leave it running and/or ignore errors... 🤦‍♂️

 

3 minutes ago, strike said:

That way they can't say they haven't been warned.

Of course there have to be warnings in the UI, it's obvious.

 

4 minutes ago, wgstarks said:

Are you aware that pi-hole can create its own backups? Same for the *arrs.

Sure, but why set up 30 different backups in various locations/do them manually?

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3 minutes ago, Kilrah said:

Again if it's a container that can't be safely left running and errors ignored you simply do not leave it running and/or ignore errors... 🤦‍♂️

And you just assume that every user knows this? How do a user determine if it's safe or not? Or do you expect the developer to inform the user which containers are not safe to have running during backup? Not to be rude or anything, but you obviously don't work in IT. 

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2 hours ago, strike said:

Or do you expect the developer to inform the user which containers are not safe to have running during backup?

I would think that a notice in the app window “All backups should be tested after creation and at regular intervals” with a link to basic instructions how to accomplish this would be an easy way to cover this problem. Not that I expect all users will do it.😏

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1 hour ago, trurl said:

Who do you expect to know? There is nobody in charge with all the various addons to Unraid. And nobody is getting paid to know.

Fair enough. I don't expect the average user to know, that's for sure. I've worked in IT and anybody who has knows that the average user is, to put it nicely, not that smart. And as a developer you have to work around that and make certain choices for them to ensure that whatever you're developing is working as intended, even if sometimes the user makes the wrong choice. And when we have users demanding a feature which will essentially  break what the plugin is supposed to do and expect all other users to not only be okey with that, but they expect the average user to make the same choices as them self even if they actually have no idea how things work in the first place. 

 

Like I said, I've worked in IT and therefore I don't expect the average user to know as much as I do, that's why they called IT... So my approach is to always think about the average users and what they might and might not do and think. Thus my question in the last post. As the average user probably won't know, I don't expect them to know anyway.

 

But yeah idk. I just don't like the idea of breaking a plugin with this "feature" which ignores important errors. I won't be using this feature anyway, but I think about all the users who will come here complain about why their backup doesn't work. But maybe a warning will be enough to stop most of them, idk. Many of us here will help  answer them (too bad we can't help them since their backup is screwed up) if they come I'm not worrying about that, but it's just.. It could all be avoided in the first place if they could just do it the right way..

Edited by strike
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I will just add this here, and hopefully this scenario will make sense for all.

 

Out of the box, the plugin stops all dockers before making a backup. "Not" stopping a docker before backup is an advanced feature as it stands. The user has to click and show the advanced functionality. And the average user will more than likely not unhide advanced options and thus less likely to change this behaviour.

 

Its most likely that only an advanced user will tinker with the option to "not" stop a docker, and should they decide to let a docker run while a backup is being created, they should know that the backups "can" be useless, if the docker has not been stopped before the backup has been created.

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  • KluthR changed the title to [Plugin] CA Appdata Backup / Restore v2.5

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