Backup your RPI!

Configuration
41

@mitsumaui are you running Jessie in a VM or some Linux Distro?

42

Iā€™ve thought about it, but the process is interactive, so Iā€™m not sure how I would script for that and rpi-clone has to be ran as root, which the hass user doesnā€™t have access to.

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43

No I am running HASS on top of Ubuntu Server 16.04 LTS :slight_smile:

I just went to where my comfort level is - which is with Ubuntu. I have got homebridge running on Arch Linux but that was a steeper curve to climb - the upshot is a very small footprint!

44

Excellent, thank you for that info. I have a couple laptops and a desktop laying around that I had thought about putting into service as a home automation server. I may have to set one up with VirtualBox and give it whirl.

45

There are a lot of replies, but I think I did not see a mention here. Just and fyi. If it was mentioned before, sorry my bad.

I am using HASS on RPi also, but I am using it on the latest Raspbian. This one has a backup tool included and it will clone your microSD card on a second microSD attached via USB to RPi.

So basically when your microSD will crash just swap the microSD with the backup and restart the PI.

Or if you have the guts or cli is your call: sudo dd bs=4M if=/dev/sdb of=raspbian.img

LE: I forgot to mention on the first method, the backup is live :wink:. This was a must for me. :smiley:

46

Iā€™ll put in a word here (hopefully without duplicating) for rsync to another location.

47

Iā€™m sorry, can you clarify, is this the command to run -

sudo dd bs=4M if=/dev/sdb of=raspbian.img

assuming /dev/sdb is path of my USB mount SD card? will this account for similar or larger sized sd cards?

48

If youā€™re burning through SD cards this quick you may want to check that you are using tmpfs for temporary files.

Hereā€™s an example
https://www.a-netz.de/blog/2013/02/ramdisks-for-the-raspberry/

Devan

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49

your link isnt working but i checked it out.
i think i will go with an usb hardrive mounted to my pi and run from there.

50

Updated link, sorry about that

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51

Is there anything special required for virtual machine - this sounds like the road I want to go down and I plan on doing some test installs soon, any advantage to running Server or will almost any flavour of linux work?

52

Not particularly over and above the documentation thatā€™s already here:
https://home-assistant.io/getting-started/installation-virtualenv/

Reason I chose Ubuntu server is because resources are scarce on my hypervisor host, and I have the VM running with 1 CPU and 512Mb RAM happily. By default Ubuntu server does not have any UI etc installed, so you donā€™t have the overhead of these to consume resources.
I expect Debian or any any other flavour you are used to will work, but you might need to tweak the instructions if that Linux version does not have apt-get or the systemctl daemon handling.

Over and above those instructions, only other thing I did (apart from selecting to enable SSH at install) was install samba so I could edit the configuration files on my PC. Let me know if you need help on this piece - as I ended up creating a group to ensure the access worked.

53

Thanks - my only experience of linux really has been home-assistant on a pi so no ingrained preferences. Happy to do a few test runs and keep the pi running while I work it out, machine wont be used for anything else. Iā€™ll probably just start with Ubuntu.

54

how would you suggest to do it?

55

please, thanks

56

depends on your wishes.

from sd to sd over USB or
from sd to networkdrive to sd or
any of the above named possibilities.

there are lots of different ways, all i intended is to make people aware off how important it is.

57

the full SD, or?

58

yeah, if you have a good working enviroment the full SD.
after changes in the config, the config env. only
after big changes in the program (like updates or new deps) again the whole sd.

59

Thatā€™s right, get things stirred up without any answers. LOL

60

i really dont know why you see it that way.
there are many ways to make a backup, and in this topic there are a few mentioned.
and i am not the one to decide for you what is the best way.
all i can do is tell you how i do it (and that i did)

so if you see warning people for a problem that can happen as stirring up, oke thats your view, but not without answers, because all questions are answered here.