I saw a tech news article about a cloud storage provider reducing
their rates ( https://techcrunch.com/2023/06/02/dropbox-like-cloud-storage-service-shadow…
) and this reminded me that I've been thinking about using cloud
storage as backup ... so long as it's encrypted with a key that's on
my side (only). A quick search pointed me to "rclone" (
https://rclone.org/ ) which sounds outstanding if their self-promotion
is to be believed. The fact that rclone is included as a standard
package in Debian stable goes a long way to convincing me.
Ironically, "Shadow Drive" isn't one of the providers that rclone
lists themselves as working with.
This seems like a good starting guide (and makes rclone look fairly
straight-forward). I haven't used it so I'm uncertain of its
accuracy:
https://www.linuxuprising.com/2020/05/how-to-encrypt-cloud-storage-files-wi…
My current backup systems live and die by 'rsync', so I'm quite
familiar with a program rclone seems to be partially based on. I've
been trying/hoping to move to 'rsnapshot', although it's kind of a
PITA (but good). I use Fedora occasionally, but mostly Debian.
This has left me with so many questions, to which I would happily take
any and all answers:
- is rclone good?
- is rclone easy to use?
- does rclone handle encryption of remotes (mostly) transparently?
- in particular, is mounting remote encrypted cloud drives as local
drives fairly easy?
- what cloud storage providers have you used rclone with?
- do you recommend a particular cloud storage provider? Why?
- do you disrecommend a particular cloud storage provider? Why?
--
Giles
https://www.gilesorr.com/
gilesorr(a)gmail.com
One of my gateway machines uses Fedora.
I used to use CentOS for that kind of purpose, but no longer.
When CentOS changed, I decided to try Fedora instead.
The first downside is the torrent of updates. But that doesn't really
seem to be a problem.
The second downside is that support for a release of Fedora is two and a
bit 6-month release cycles.
An upside is that version upgrades are automated (unlike CentOS) and that
automation generally works. This upgrade takes the machine offline for
perhaps an hour at a time of your choosing
(If one isn't diligent, one can fall way behind upgrading distro versions.
This is particularly easy in systems like CentOS or debian where there is
a combination of long support periods and no automated version update
procedure. Ubuntu LTS appears to get this right: long support and
update automation.)
Fedora has been working pretty well on my gateway for the last few
years. I like it that the packages are up to date (CentOS packages
tend to be old).
I upgraded the gateway machine from Fedora 36 to 38 a couple of days ago.
It didn't go smoothly. A couple of small-ish hangups caught me. This
is not ideal in a gateway. Luckily, I have more than one.
====
Problem 1: firewalld
firewalld had a new bug. Or maybe it was iptables. I don't need to
know which.
The firewalld settings could not be loaded. So the firewall had default
settings. These were safe but not functional for a gateway machine. I
could manually install what I wanted in the running firewall but those
settings would not persist. I could not make persistent changes.
I reported the bug: https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=2209199
Within a day or so, a work-around is suggested and a bug fix is initiated.
This shows outstanding support for which I pay nothing. (Actually, I
have done free support for specifically for Red Hat as part of an
upstream project. But there is no connection.)
====
Problem 2: GNOME now suspends the machine when it thinks nobody is using
the console. See
<https://discussion.fedoraproject.org/t/gnome-suspends-after-15-minutes-of-u…>
Guess how I found out? No, not reading the Fedora 38 release notes. I
discovered it when my gateway suspended. What the heck?!?
This is a disaster for any machine that has tasks that need to run all
the time. Clearly this applies to a gateway machine, but even on my
desktop machine, this isn't correct:
- I want to be able to SSH into my desktop at any time
- I run Hexchat IRC client 24/7 on my desktop so that I can know of
activity while I'm not there.
- My desktop is an internal mail server and needs to handle mail at all times.
There is a "Fedora Server" version that gets this right. I haven't
figured out how to get Fedora Workstation to stop suspending generally.
The work-around is that you can get each possible console user to turn
this feature off. And you have to do this for GDM (the login screen) too.
TIL that Chromebooks brick themselves when they hit a hard-coded date:
the date when Google stops providing updates:
https://coloradosun.com/2023/05/26/colorado-schools-chromebooks-churn-outda…
The article's about Denver Public School District, who are finding a
whole lot of their Chromebooks bought during pandemic are running out of
life. The environmental and cost impacts are huge.
Stewart
