Hi, I used to use Linux Mint and I know that Timeshift is not available on Solus (for good reasons in my opinion), right now I use Borg with Vorta, but I can't figure out how to use it to make a full system snapshot, then I read that it does not support backing up hardlinked symlinks, so that does not seem like a good system to use for a full system snapshot. I would like something as simple as Timeshift to use for full system snapshots. I do need to be able to access the snapshot as a mounted medium or something to that effect as sometimes I just need one thing. It needs to be able to make and restore snapshots to my external hard disk and it needs to work without a hitch when restoring a snapshot, in other words, it must be reliable, and any online solutions are out of the running due to my limited data plan for my main internet.
I'm probably being too picky, but I do worry quite a bit about hard drive issues.

Thanks and regards
V1T4MiN

    V1T4MiN Greetings, welcome to the lovely Solus forums!

    IF you are still curious about using Timeshift one Solus, then this forum post may help you you:
    https://discuss.getsol.us/d/378-installing-timeshift-is-solus

    I have not done this myself, so I can't verify the workaround, but others have used it. I don't do system snapshots myself, but using Grsync (its in the Software Center) is enough for my needs.

    For some further reading check this post on Timeshift and Deja Dup (also in the SC):
    https://discuss.getsol.us/d/1723-timeshift-on-solus

    Timeshift's github might give you some more clarity as well:
    https://github.com/teejee2008/timeshift#installation

    Also, there is a search box on the top navigation bar to search the forums. It's where a got all these links for ya. Hope this helps some! Good luck.

      Thanks! I had looked into getting Timeshift and it is not a good option as dcron was deprecated from the repos a bit back, so after any updates are applied it would uninstall that dependency automatically I believe. Deja Dup would work ok if it let you grab one file from a snapshot. but as far as I know, you need to extract the whole snapshot to copy anything (kind of a silly system if you ask me, but I digress). I was mainly looking for a backup system for system snapshots to protect against bad updates that may slip through the cracks. Borg + Vorta seems to work fine for the home directory (the hardlink thing is bothersome somewhat, maybe I will try something else for that). and eopkg history works great for basically undoing an installation of a package. Maybe I don't need another snapshot system on Solus? I know Timeshift is based on rsync, how well does Grsync work? I've seen screenshots and it always looked a bit complex but I suppose that judging a book by its cover 😂

      Thanks & Regards
      V1T4MiN

        V1T4MiN As long as you update fully each week during the Friday syncs, there won't be any "bad updates"

        All updates go through the unstable branch first, where many awesome volunteers test and report any issues they experience. That's the beauty of having a curated rolling release is that everything gets tested before it's pushed to stable. The main devs take that task very seriously.

        As for Grsync, I'm a simple man, so I just use it to copy and backup my /home folder along with music, photosc, videos, etc. I don't have any experience with snapshots using it. Grsync is more to synchronize files and folders, but perhaps if you're willing to build/compile it yourself, you could give rsnapshot a go, which is base on rsync:
        https://rsnapshot.org/
        and for instructions on how to install it here's their actively maintained github:
        https://github.com/rsnapshot/rsnapshot

          Yeah full system snap shots seem pointless to me, your data is the only important thing, I use rsync for home folder.

          rsync -avh --delete --exclude-from='/home/harvey/.rsyncexclude' /home/harvey /run/media/harvey/1TB/Backup/Home

          Break down:
          -avh
          -a, --archive archive mode; equals -rlptgoD (no -H,-A,-X)
          -v, --verbose increase verbosity
          -h, --human-readable output numbers in a human-readable format

          So standard modes keeping file ownership / permissions assuming you backup to a drive that supports Linux file permissions such as EXT4, don't use NTFS for example if you care about ownership / permissions.

          --delete
          Delete files from backup destination if they no longer exist in the source location. To put it another way, delete files from your backup if they no longer exist. Use this flag with caution.

          --exclude-from='/home/harvey/.rsyncexclude
          If there are files / folders you don't want to backup create a text file listing each file / directory, 1 per line and point to it.

          /home/harvey
          Source (What I am backing up).

          /run/media/harvey/1TB/Backup/Home
          Destination (Where I am backing up to).

          Thats a lot to remember so I set a command alias so all I have to type after mounting my backup drive is:
          rsynchome

          If you want multiple backups, create multiple aliases backing up to different locations. There might be a better way for multiple versions of the backup but I don't do that on my home system so no idea. grsync I guess is a gui for this, but I prefer CLI.

          Ok, that sounds reasonable, I guess I was still used to my days of using manjaro 🤣
          Since it seems to be unnecessary I will just keep doing what I'm doing now, Maybe also try Grsync as it sounds like it may be a bit more reliable as Borg is still a bit "young" for my taste.

          Thanks & Regards
          V1T4MiN

            V1T4MiN I was about to suggest borg. I got a new m.2 ssd recently and had the opportunity to test it using the latest of multiple backups on a blank system. The only issue I had was that a few files that had been moved from one week to the next appeared to be back in their original spot. I do weekly backups and I figure it did not pick up on that. But, my swapfile, movies, pictures, mp3s, etc. as well as installed programs, snaps... they all worked after the restore....as well as bash history, eopkg history, etc.I have some spreadsheets that I add to as I go along and it picked up that the spreadsheets had changed slightly as well

              I still use timeshift and it works fine. It doesn't do automatic snapshot but only ondemand. Here on Solus I don't think automatic snapshots are neccesary, just some ondemand snapshots if you are going to change a lot of things on your system or want to try the unstable repository.
              About dcron issue, here are the instructions how to fix it by building from source, or if you know how to package then package it with a different name like "crond" for example. It wont be uninstalled after every update.

              @V1T4MiN
              FSArchiver (not in Solus).

              Static FSArchiver releases may be used in any distro, including Solus - unpack an archive, run the executable.

              I admit the whole not being able to do some stuff while a backup was running is a big downside to borg for me, The Timeshift workaround looks solid but I think if they deprecated dcron, installing it manually might not be a good idea, FSArchiver looks pretty good but I prefer a GUI over terminal for this kind of thing.