Where is ability to backup and restore backups on 4?

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Ro...@tuta.io

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Dec 7, 2017, 9:04:12 AM12/7/17
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Dont tell me the geniuses behind this thought it was more streamlined to remove the feature and make it only command line....

Zrubi

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Dec 7, 2017, 9:37:47 AM12/7/17
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It was part of the Qubes Manager, so... it is gone with the wind ;)

- --
Zrubi
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Ro...@tuta.io

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Dec 7, 2017, 9:45:56 AM12/7/17
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Lmao wow... usually developer's try to progress forward in their projects not backwards...

Connor Page

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Dec 7, 2017, 10:08:12 AM12/7/17
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There are more critical problems than lack of gui frontend at the moment.
Still, backup ui is on the devs' list. See issue #3354

Jean-Philippe Ouellet

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Dec 7, 2017, 11:38:44 AM12/7/17
to Ro...@tuta.io, qubes-users
On Thu, Dec 7, 2017 at 9:04 AM, <Ro...@tuta.io> wrote:
> Dont tell me the geniuses behind this thought it was more streamlined to remove the feature and make it only command line....

On Thu, Dec 7, 2017 at 9:45 AM, <Ro...@tuta.io> wrote:
> Lmao wow... usually developer's try to progress forward in their projects not backwards...

Remember that the "R4" you're speaking of is still just a release
candidate - it is *not* finished!

It's not that "the developers have stupid priorities" or something,
it's that there are many lower-level less user-visible things which
need to happen first.

Many things in R4 were redone completely from scratch. You are arguing
about why the brand new house being built doesn't have the doorknobs
you loved from the last one, when the people actually building it are
still concerned with getting all the plumbing in place. We personally
don't see doorknobs as the highest priority right now, cause we still
enter the house through the giant un-finished hole in the wall.

Remember that you're running pre-release software, and try not to give
it a bad reputation simply for not being finished yet. The Qubes
development team has limited resources, and individual contributors
have limited free time. You're always welcome to contribute. Pull
requests welcome, as are checks, bitcoins, etc. ;)

Bernhard

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Dec 7, 2017, 11:59:11 AM12/7/17
to qubes...@googlegroups.com
On 12/07/2017 03:37 PM, Zrubi wrote:
> On 12/07/2017 03:04 PM, Ro...@tuta.io wrote:
> > Dont tell me the geniuses behind this thought it was more
> > streamlined to remove the feature and make it only command
> > line....
>
>
> It was part of the Qubes Manager, so... it is gone with the wind ;)
>
I am not really in position to answer this question correctly, but I
backup "by hand". How that? Well, put uour favourite backup system to
your computer. A disc to sys-usb for example. Mount it in sys-usb &
generate a sufficiently large file on it ("truncate -s 200G
qubes.backup.luks" for example generates a 200G filke in < 1s. If you
are paranoid you overwrite it with random data).
(1)  losetup -f                       #   to get a free llop devicename
I call ip lloopXXX, then 
(2)  losetup /dev/loopXXX   qubes.backup.luks              # now your
file il looped to /dev/loopXXX, so it "is" a device.
(3)  cryptsetup  luksFormat   /dev/loopXXX  BACKUP    # Now you create a
luks volume on it. Check Luks doc for parameters.
(4)  cryptsetup  luksOpen   /dev/loopXXX  BACKUP       # open it (need
your pwd once more)
(5)  mkfs.ext2 /dev/mapper/BACKUP                             # create
filesystem on the new backup volume
(6)  mount /dev/mapper/BACKUP    /yourmountpoint.   # and mount it

Now generate one folder in  /yourmountpoint for each qube ; the point is
that the Q-menu allows to attach any qube's private image to sys-usb as
well, so you may mount it there to some folder, say /source and then
rsync your data in the right backup-subfolder. This sound complicated,
but is really fast to do. At the very end you should

(7) umount     /yourmountpoint           # unmount backup
(8) cryptsetup  luksClose   BACKUP     # close luks container
(9) losetup -d   qubes.backup.luks       # free the loop-device

If I were better in bash-scripting I would do that automatedly, but I
regret that ...    Bernhard



Jean-Philippe Ouellet

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Dec 7, 2017, 12:20:28 PM12/7/17
to Bernhard, qubes-users
That's way more complex than it needs to be, and also does not provide
integrity protection.

Is there a reason you do not just use qvm-backup?

Tom Zander

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Dec 7, 2017, 12:22:51 PM12/7/17
to qubes...@googlegroups.com
On Thursday, 7 December 2017 17:38:15 CET Jean-Philippe Ouellet wrote:
> Remember that the "R4" you're speaking of is still just a release
> candidate - it is *not* finished!

To most people the concept of a "release candidate" is that the software
released is possible the final version, if there don't appear to be any
show-stoppers.

As such, the Qubes devs consider it feature complete. Otherwise it would
have been marked as beta.
So we have to conclude that missing features (like not having a UI for
backups) is not planned for 4.0, maybe for 4.1.

--
Tom Zander
Blog: https://zander.github.io
Vlog: https://vimeo.com/channels/tomscryptochannel

Jean-Philippe Ouellet

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Dec 7, 2017, 1:00:51 PM12/7/17
to Tom Zander, qubes-users
On Thu, Dec 7, 2017 at 12:22 PM, 'Tom Zander' via qubes-users
<qubes...@googlegroups.com> wrote:
> On Thursday, 7 December 2017 17:38:15 CET Jean-Philippe Ouellet wrote:
>> Remember that the "R4" you're speaking of is still just a release
>> candidate - it is *not* finished!
>
> To most people the concept of a "release candidate" is that the software
> released is possible the final version, if there don't appear to be any
> show-stoppers.
>
> As such, the Qubes devs consider it feature complete. Otherwise it would
> have been marked as beta.
> So we have to conclude that missing features (like not having a UI for
> backups) is not planned for 4.0, maybe for 4.1.

That's fair. You're right.

I suppose expectations vary.
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