Mondays mean: manually backing up my #YunoHost system.

[elena@aseachange.com]

Mondays mean: manually backing up my #YunoHost system.

Speaking of YH, in case you missed it, here is my latest guide for newbies about how to install an app with YunoHost - I showcased NextCloud in my tutorial: https://blog.elenarossini.com/a-newbies-guide-to-self-hosting-with-yunohost-part-3-lets-install-nextcloud/

I'm always surprised by the sheer size of backups - this time 15GB (ugh!) broken down as follows (from biggest to smallest):

#GoToSocial: 6.2 GB
#PeerTube: 4.3 GB
#NextCloud: 3.0 GB
#Pixelfed: 1.5 GB
#LinkStack: 91 MB

I'm brainstorming ways to make my GoToSocial backup size go down... I have cache set to 1 day only, so I'm trying unfollowing a few accounts (that I already follow from my Mastodon profile) to see if that makes a difference.

Anyway, wishing you all a great day & week!

#MySoCalledSudoLife #selfhosting

[hikingdude@mastodon.social]

@elena I'm just wondering, have you ever tested a restore?
I'm also backing up regularly but never restored 🤔

[elena@aseachange.com]

@hikingdude I was going through YunoHost's documentation yesterday and they recommend testing the restore function.

Now, my backups are so big and contain such precious data that I never dared do so... I may try from my second VPS that runs Umami, CryptPad and Wordpress.

As a backup strategy, I also have full daily backups done automatically by my VPS, with servers in multiple locations...

[zeitverschreib@freundica.de]

@elena Here's the result after cleaning up my single-user Mastodon:

Object Total Local
Attachments 7.28 GB 189 MB
Custom Emoji 1.76 GB 543 KB
Avatars 1.27 GB 189 KB
Headers 2.13 GB 865 KB
Preview Cards 182 MB
Backups 0 Bytes
Settings 933 KB

I keep 3 days of data.

IIRC my GTS is about the same size, as is Friendica.

Unless you're actually running out of space, you should not drop accounts you follow just to safe a few MB.

[elena@aseachange.com]

@zeitverschreib thank you for the heads-up and wow, that is A LOT 😲​

re: unfollowing, there are a lot of overlaps between my GoToSocial and my Mastodon accounts, so if I unfollow someone here, I would still see their content from my Mastodon. But I hear what you say!

[zeitverschreib@freundica.de]

@hikingdude

I have restored several applications without problems, e.g. Mastodon and Friendica.

Peertube, however, does not work in its current state. Backup yes, restore fails every time.

github.com/YunoHost-Apps/peert…

So it's always important to test restores or at least check the repositories regularly for signs of problems.

@elena

[elena@aseachange.com]

@zeitverschreib @hikingdude OMG thanks for letting us know about PeerTube 😨​ I will try to be super careful with it (Snapshots are my new best friends)

[hikingdude@mastodon.social]

@zeitverschreib @elena
ehhhh damn. The only thing I host is Peertube 🙈. Houston, we might have a problem

[elena@aseachange.com]

@hikingdude @zeitverschreib as long as you take regular snapshots I think you'll be fine. right, right?

[sascha@bonn.social]

@elena Do you know ncdu? Its a terminal command that helps me to find the culprits on the server that steal my precious space. Pressing D then deletes (after confirmation).

[elena@aseachange.com]

@Sascha thank you Sascha. I used to be stuff like that on my other VPS - which had a Ghost-CLI installation. With YunoHost I don't dare go in the backend to touch anything, lest I disrupt something. I have too many important apps in that installation. I'm not incurring in any extra costs... it's just that a social networking app caches media, avatars and emojis of everyone I follow. I found an old backup from December 2024 when I was only following one account and it was 256 MB! Pruning the list of people I follow - it overlaps with my Mastodon account - may be the way to go 😅​