Backup while VMs are running??

[Claudio Chinicz]

Hi All,

I make few backups because I fear doing backups while using my VMs, specially Windows 10 and Linux Mint HVMs. So, I do it once in a while, when I have have some free time and can spen not using the computer while it prepares the backups, after having shut down the VMs.

All the discussion about updates breaking Qubes makes me wonder I should do backups more often.

Is it possible to do backups of HVMs and VMs in general while using them? I'm afraid I may have an issue when restoring.

Thanks in advance,
Claudio

[Chris Laprise]

If you installed Qubes with the disk/storage defaults, which uses LVM
snapshots – or if you manually set it to install with Btrfs – then its
safe to backup while VMs are running. The backup will simply use the
snapshot from the last time the VM was shut down.

OTOH, if you manually changed the Qubes install to use Ext4 filesystem,
there might be a problem in that case.

The disk usage widget in the system tray will tell you what kind of
storage system your Qubes is using; if you used the default LVM it will
say "lvm" with the usage stats to the right.

--

Chris Laprise, tas...@posteo.net
https://github.com/tasket
https://twitter.com/ttaskett
PGP: BEE2 20C5 356E 764A 73EB 4AB3 1DC4 D106 F07F 1886

[unman]

If you backup a running qube with Qubes backup, it will backup the state before you
started it. May or may not be what you want.

You can use file backups to capture anything since qube started.

btrfs will let you snapshot running systems.