I have recently repurposed and old Hp Stream to a home server and successfully run Immich. I really like it and even a small 500GB disk is way more than the 15GB Google offers.
My issue though is about backup. I would only be comfortable if all the data is backed up in an off-site server (cloud). But the back up storage will probably cost as much as paying for a service like ente or similar, directly replacing Google photo.
What am I missing? Where do you store your backup?
I backup to a external hard disk that I keep in a fireproof and water resistant safe at home. Each service has its own LVM volume which I snapshot and then backup the snapshots with borg, all into one repository. The backup is triggered by a udev rule so it happens automatically when I plug the drive in; the backup script uses ntfy.sh (running locally) to let me know when it is finished so I can put the drive back in the safe. I can share the script later, if anyone is interested.
Please! That sounds like a slick setup.
I followed the guide found here, however with a few modifications.
Notably, I did not encrypt the borg repository, and heavily modified the backup script.
#!/bin/bash -ue # The udev rule is not terribly accurate and may trigger our service before # the kernel has finished probing partitions. Sleep for a bit to ensure # the kernel is done. # # This can be avoided by using a more precise udev rule, e.g. matching # a specific hardware path and partition. sleep 5 # # Script configuration # # The backup partition is mounted there MOUNTPOINT=/mnt/external # This is the location of the Borg repository TARGET=$MOUNTPOINT/backups/backups.borg # Archive name schema DATE=$(date '+%Y-%m-%d-%H-%M-%S')-$(hostname) # This is the file that will later contain UUIDs of registered backup drives DISKS=/etc/backups/backup.disk # Find whether the connected block device is a backup drive for uuid in $(lsblk --noheadings --list --output uuid) do if grep --quiet --fixed-strings $uuid $DISKS; then break fi uuid= done if [ ! $uuid ]; then echo "No backup disk found, exiting" exit 0 fi echo "Disk $uuid is a backup disk" partition_path=/dev/disk/by-uuid/$uuid # Mount file system if not already done. This assumes that if something is already # mounted at $MOUNTPOINT, it is the backup drive. It won't find the drive if # it was mounted somewhere else. (mount | grep $MOUNTPOINT) || mount $partition_path $MOUNTPOINT drive=$(lsblk --inverse --noheadings --list --paths --output name $partition_path | head --lines 1) echo "Drive path: $drive" # Log Borg version borg --version echo "Starting backup for $DATE" # Make sure all data is written before creating the snapshot sync # Options for borg create BORG_OPTS="--stats --one-file-system --compression lz4 --checkpoint-interval 86400" # No one can answer if Borg asks these questions, it is better to just fail quickly # instead of hanging. export BORG_RELOCATED_REPO_ACCESS_IS_OK=no export BORG_UNKNOWN_UNENCRYPTED_REPO_ACCESS_IS_OK=no # # Create backups # function backup () { local DISK="$1" local LABEL="$2" shift 2 local SNAPSHOT="$DISK-snapshot" local SNAPSHOT_DIR="/mnt/snapshot/$DISK" local DIRS="" while (( "$#" )); do DIRS="$DIRS $SNAPSHOT_DIR/$1" shift done # Make and mount the snapshot volume mkdir -p $SNAPSHOT_DIR lvcreate --size 50G --snapshot --name $SNAPSHOT /dev/data/$DISK mount /dev/data/$SNAPSHOT $SNAPSHOT_DIR # Create the backup borg create $BORG_OPTS $TARGET::$DATE-$DISK $DIRS # Check the snapshot usage before removing it lvs umount $SNAPSHOT_DIR lvremove --yes /dev/data/$SNAPSHOT } # usage: backup <lvm volume> <snapshot name> <list of folders to backup> backup photos immich immich # Other backups listed here echo "Completed backup for $DATE" # Just to be completely paranoid sync if [ -f /etc/backups/autoeject ]; then umount $MOUNTPOINT udisksctl power-off -b $drive fi # Send a notification curl -H 'Title: Backup Complete' -d "Server backup for $DATE finished" 'http://10.30.0.1:28080/backups'
Most of my services are stored on individual LVM volumes, all mounted under
/mnt
, so immich is completely self-contained under/mnt/photos/immich/
. The last line of my script sends a notification to my phone using ntfy.I am super curious about the udev triggering, didn’t know thats possible!
See my other reply here.
This sounds really interesting, please share.
I would love to see your script! I’m in desperate need of a better backup strategy for my video projects
Fireproof safes don’t protect against heat except what’s high enough to combust paper. Temps will still probably be high enough to destroy a drive with a regular fireproof safe.