USBbackup : ⏬ plug && backup 🔁

Easy user backup solution on USB storage device

USBbackup is a Linux systemd backup solution entirely in user space : once installed, any USB storage device containing a folder named USBbackup/ at the root of one of its partitions becomes a backup medium and automatically triggers a backup when inserted into a USB port.

If partition of your USB storage device selected for USBbackup must remain compatible with other operating systems, choose ExFAT as file system. Otherwise, choose a journaled file system supported by your distribution.

⚙️ Installation

• Download the USBbackup ZIP archive
• Extract the contents of the archive
• Navigate to the USBbackup_main/ folder created by the extraction
• Check the code
• Open a terminal there
• Run the command bash installUSBbackup.sh

$ [/path/to/extracted/USBbackup-main] bash installUSBbackup.sh 

This script will install USBbackup into your environment if all required conditions are met.
Press [Enter] to continue or [Ctrl]-[C] to cancel

✅ systemd
✅ zstd
✅ base64
✅ notify-send
🟡 rsync is missing and must be installed if used
✅ tar
🟡 borg (borgbackup) is missing and must be installed if used

Proceed with installing USBbackup into your environment ?
Press [Enter] to continue or [Ctrl]-[C] to cancel

Copying files...
Installing and starting the service...

borg or rsync will probably need to be installed if you want to use it.

🧩 Missing tools

Here are the commands that should allow to install the missing tools on the three main Linux distributions and their derivatives. The command must be preceded by sudo in order to temporarily elevate privileges.

	Debian	Fedora	OpenSuse
notify-send	apt install libnotify-bin	dnf install libnotify	zypper install libnotify-tools
borg	apt install borgbackup	dnf install borgbackup	zypper install borgbackup
rsync	apt install rsync	dnf install rsync	zypper install rsync

notify-send must be version 0.7.11 or higher to take advantage of the action option, which allows to cancel the backup during startup.

🎚️ Configuration

USBbackup use tar by default, but if you prefer to use borg or rsync, you must modify the USBbackup configuration.

• Edit the file ~/.local/bin/USBbackup@.sh ($HOME/.local/bin/USBbackup@.sh)
• Choose the module to use by uncommenting the corresponding line

USBbackup with borg :

#source ~/.local/bin/USBbackup.tar.sh
source ~/.local/bin/USBbackup.borg.sh
#source ~/.local/bin/USBbackup.rsync.sh

USBbackup with rsync :

#source ~/.local/bin/USBbackup.tar.sh
#source ~/.local/bin/USBbackup.borg.sh
source ~/.local/bin/USBbackup.rsync.sh

borg will be preferred to tar if it is already installed on the system. Using multiple modules is possible but will necessarily require more time and more space on your USB storage device.

👧🧑 Multiple users

USBbackup must be installed for each user of the workstation who wishes to back up their personal folder. The backup is stored in …/USBbackup/{Type}/{HostName}/{User}/.

Provided tar, borg, and rsync backups are not encrypted or protected.

🧰 tar backup

tar backup, which is default backup, is the simplest to implement since everything needed to perform it should be natively present in Linux. Its main drawback is that it systematically backs up all data (no delta). tar backup is perfect for a small or medium volume of data to be backed up.

Files larger than 1 GB and ~/.cache/ and ~/.local/share/ folders are excluded from backup.
Given FAT32, archive (tarball) is split into 4GB chunks.

📦 borg backup

borg is an excellent backup software (developed in Python). Unlike tar, borg uses deduplication, which avoids retransferring all data to be backed up : only changes since last backup are backed up. While first (full) backup may take some time, subsequent (deduplicate) backups are usually significantly faster.

Files larger than 1 GB and ~/.cache/ and ~/.local/share/ folders are excluded from backup.
borg is configured to keep the last 5 backups.

💼 rsync backup

rsync, originally intended for remote synchronization, is also an excellent backup software. Like borg, once first backup (full) is completed, rsync only backs up differences that have appeared. Unlike tar and borg, rsync does not use compressed container(s) to store files that can be naturally retrieved from USB storage device. Difference between file systems (HOME vs. USB) can lead to inconsistencies.

Files larger than 1 GB and ~/.cache/ and ~/.local/share/ folders are excluded from backup.

⚗️ etc… backup

Using scripts provided as inspiration, you can easily set up your own backup solution based on tool of your choice. You can also modify script provided for your chosen solution to reconfigure backup (exclusions, max file size to be considered, encryption, etc…).