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I finally picked myself up and created a video about raspiBackup and published it on Youtube. Topics in the video are

  1. Introduction of raspiBackup
  2. Visit of the most important websites for raspiBackup
  3. Visit of github which is used as a question- and issue handling tool for raspiBackup
  4. Live installation of raspiBackup with the menu driven installer

Slides used in the video can be downloaded here.

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Users of raspiBackup in the world (Status 01/2024)

Countries: 70

 

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In general using the installer is the fastest method to install raspiBackup. The installer also can be used to install raspiBackup with it's default configuration via the commandline. If you want to install raspiBackup manually execute the following steps:

 

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Following pages describe different usage scenarios and configurations. They should help to find the right usage configuration out of the various configuration options of raspiBackup. Later on these usage scenarios can be customized further. An overview of all option is available here. The different ways to restore a backup are described here.

All configurations which don't use a dd backup save an external rootfilesystem together with the SD boot partition. If the USB bootmode is used and no SD card is used any more the whole rootpartition is also saved.

 

Usage scenarios described:

1a. A Windows user wants to backup his Raspberry and restore it with windisk32imager on Windows.

1b. A Windows user has a 32GB SD card but uses only 12GB and 12GB should be saved only.

1c. A Windows user wants to use pishrink to create a minimal backup image.

2. Raspberry should be saved very fast. Backuppartition is a nfs mounted EXT4 partition which is provided by a Synology.

3. Raspberry should be saved on a Samba mounted filesystem, which is provided by a Windows box.

4. A snapshot should be saved because there are some major changes planned and it should be possible to revert quickly.

5. A USB boot system backup should include an additional partition.

6. Raspberry should be saved on a local USB stick or a local USB disk.

 

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Any recognition of raspiBackup development- and maintenance effort and any support is greatly appreciated. There exist following donation alternatives:

1) Become a github sponsor for raspiBackup

2) Paypal: The eMail framp att linux-tips-and-tricks dott de  is known by PayPal and everybody who owns a Paypal account can donate to this eMail.

3) Neither one: Just contact me with at the eMail above and we will find a solution. For example I already received multiple times donations in a good old postal letter :-)

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raspiBackup is developed primarily on a Linux desktop. But finally raspiBackup is tested on a real Raspberry. There exist various raspibian images on disk which are restrored with raspiBackup on a SD card and/or USB stick and then the new or changed functionality of raspiBackup ist tested manually.

At some point in time a new version of raspiBackup has to be published. Initially I tested a lot of different variants by hand which takes a long time and reduces the number of my SD cards.  Therefore I set up a Raspberry simulation environment on Linux. Now every new raspiBackup version is regression tested in the simulation environment. That's much faster and I don't have to buy new SD cards all the time any more.

On the following picture you can see a 3B Raspberry I use for tests together with various SD cards of different size and USB sticks.

 

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Every new version of raspiBackup is regression tested before it's published. There are a lot of options and hard- and softwareenvironments possible which cannot be regression tested - unfortunately. Following page describes how the regressiontest is executed and which tests are executed.

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raspiBackup has some helper scrips which are available on github for download.

1) raspiBackupWrapper.sh : Helps to do additional stuff before and after invocation of raspiBackup. The backuppartition is mounted already before starting raspiBackup and unmounted if it wasn't mounted when starting. Some basic bash scripting knowlege is required to customize the script for individual needs.

2) raspiBackupNfsWrapper.sh: Check if a NFS server is online and start raspiBackup. Don't start raspiBackup if the server is offline. This script can be used out of the box. Some constants regarding the nfs server have to be customized.

3) raspiBackupRestore2Image.sh: This script allows to convert a tar or rsync backup which was created in normal backup mode into a dd image. pishrink is used to make sure the image is as small as possible. kmbach suggested to create this script. No customization of the script required.

4) raspiImageMail.sh: THis script was created by raspiBackup user kmbach. He wanted to get an eMail at the end of raspiBackupRestore2Image.sh. eMail configuration is extracted from raspiBackup configuration file.

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raspiBackup creates a backup which contains all required information to restore a backup manually. User Micha wanted to restore a backup manually and kindly documented the steps in detail in a comment in German. I transleted his comments into English:

 

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So many people from the community helped to improve raspiBackup with their comments, improvement requests and beta- and fix test support and execution. It's time to mention them now.  I unfortunately don't remember everybody - sorry about this.

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It's possible to add custom code which is executed before and after the backup process via two script extensions. They are useful if modification of the backup script is required to extent the script capabilities and will be lost and thus have to be merged again and again every time when raspiBackup will be updated.

Three sample plugins are available and can be used as templates for new plugins. The first three report the CPU temperature, memory utilization and backup partition usage pre and post a backup run. The last one is called at the end of the backup and can be used to execute different actions depending on the success or failure of raspiBackup.

If you create your own plugin please share it with the community and announce it's availability in a comment. If there is any function missing for the plugin please write a comment and I'll check whether it's possible to provide the missing function.

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Die latest list of raspiBackup releases with their new features and bugfixes you find here.

 

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With raspiBackup you can create regular backups of your Raspberry. In addition you can restore a backup to any SD card. A new partition table is created on the target SD card and the backup data is restored on the partitions. If an external root filesystem was saved with raspiBackup this filesystem will also be restored to an external device.

Recently I got issues in github because restore failed. It's strictly recommended to restore your backup with the same OS the backup was created with. You're free to use another Linux release but this may the restore to fail because of different versions of the Linux tools which are usedto backup and restore the backup. In particular it's because of an incompatible change in sfdisk in Bullseye. Just use the OS the backup was created to restore the backup!