greengnu

@greengnu@slrpnk.net

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First principles and practical solutions regarding personal data storage

Hi all, I’m really looking for some help. I need to create a reliable system of backing up and data storage. I’m not tech-savvy (will work on that when it’s a priority in my life, which it definitely can’t be right now) and I’m asking this community because it’s forward-thinking and aligns with my values. There are...

greengnu,

have 2 flash/hard/whatever drives: A and B

once a month (or at what ever frequency you can sustain)

backup your data to A and next cycle backup your data to B

nothing fancy or technical, just some basic consistent backups.

if you can do that you’ll likely be fine. There are nearly infinitely many enhancements you can do if you are more technical or can follow technical instructions.

greengnu,

That is just the gateway drug to bootstrapping.

Check out github.com/fosslinux/live-bootstrap

if you want the real hard stuff.

greengnu,

They already did: www.commanderx16.com

you just probably want something better.

and that is the problem building higher performance requires more advanced lithography and that is expensive and until recently was not even an option for a hobbyist (without taking a mortgage on their house).

Given current stagnation, you need only wait about 10 years for that viable option.

greengnu,

rxvt-unicode with tabbedex.

I refuse to use a terminal emulator that needs more than 100MB of RAM to display 80x24 green text on a black display

greengnu,

No ECC, absolutely worthless for a NAS if you care about your data.

greengnu,

checksums at the filesystem level does nothing to protect against memory corruption which can overwrite everything on your disk with null values and a matching checksum; fail to write anything to disk and/or do nothing.

But that is the gamble you take every day with every GB of RAM you have.

greengnu,

looks interesting but does it have download/clone/mirror setup so that it doesn’t become another data graveyard?

greengnu, (edited )

a git mirror of the content is the golden standard if you can do that.

It is recommended by the permacomputing community

permacomputing.net/cloning/

greengnu,

Raid stopped being optimal now that btrfs and ZFS exist.

If you plan on doing matching drives ZFS is recommended

If you expect mismatched disks, btrfs will work.

If you are most worried about stability get a computer with ECC memory.

If you are most worried about performance, use SSD drives.

If you want a bunch of storage for cheap, use spinning disks (unless you exceed the 100TB capacity range)

greengnu,

the correct answer is Gemini or gopher.

greengnu,

Well the first question is what software you NEED to run, then we can figure out hardware.

greengnu,

So effectively light enough that it could run on a raspberry PI 4. Well that would put you under 10W

greengnu,

Your ZFS backup strategy should be to follow one of the following rulesets:

3-2-1 [3 copies of the data at 2 different locations for the 1 purpose of preserving the data]

4-3-2-1 [4 copies of the data at 3 different locations in 2 different types of media for the 1 purpose of preserving the data]

5-4-3-2-1 [5 copies of the data at 4 different locations across 3 different continents in 2 different types of media for the 1 purpose of preserving the data]

The details of the backup is more if you have a second system to enable ZFS send/receive or if you have to transport deltas from ZFS send

Technology to Manage a New Society

I just finished listening to The Santiago Boys podcast about the attempts to use cybernetics to run the Chilean economy under Allende in the early 70s. It was very interesting and got me wondering what kinds of technology (hardware or software) that you have come across that you think would be good for managing resources/efforts...

greengnu,

The tools are already readily available:

Relational Databases

SAT solvers

The missing bit is social action, which no amount of software can solve.

greengnu,

The tools are already readily available under FSF approved licenses. www.gnu.org/licenses/licenses.en.html

Support the FSF if that is a legitimate concern to you

my.fsf.org/join

greengnu,

Tragically, you might be right about reduction in consumption being a cultural non-starter.

As it would make many things much easier but as you pointed out, advances in battery technology can fill some of that gap.

greengnu,

I am assuming you are referring to: github.com/th3jesta/ha-lcars

greengnu,

Depends on what you mean by a huge problem.

If you are referring to energy loses due to the large distances and the electrical resistance of the wires carrying that power; you’ll discover those loses are directed related to current and that you can trade current for voltage and trade voltage for current; so we can avoid losses by upping the voltage.

If you are referring to the fact that the Earth’s crust is moving, we can have geologists do some work; estimate the distances spaces where we will be running our wires and put in sufficient slack to cover the time period until the next maintenance window.

If you are referring to weather event induced disruptions in the grid (wind/tornadoes/etc taking out power lines) then you build alternate paths to route around damage.

If you are referring to solar storms and coronal mass ejections, then you need standards in your equipment to deal with out of spec distribution lines.

All of which are technical problems and easy to solve.

If you are referring to the bureaucratic hellscape that is international coordination and cooperation, then yes that is the only huge problem preventing such a solution, despite its numerous global economic and environmental advantages.

greengnu,

well no storage can be 100% efficient but you are correct that thermal storage is very efficient if you want a thermal gradient to leverage for heating (cooling as well)

I am assuming you mean Pumped-storage hydroelectricity when you say PHES and no it also falls under F=ma, but when using the terrain is able to increase the amount of mass to a more industrial useful scale. The larger the scale the smaller the losses. Hence most economical when one has mountains for the storage of the water. (metal/plastic tanks on elevated platforms tend to be much less efficient and more expensive).

I guess it depends on what you mean by rare long duration events but yes one can imagine a situation where the burning of hydrogen is justified on an energy needs basis.

greengnu,

There are a great many “promising” technologies in the pipeline, the real question is which of them actually suit our needs and only via real world trials will we discover the flaws and see if the benefits outweigh the flaws.

greengnu,

Yes in a scenario, which you are in a cold climate which it is always cold outside. Then yes, thermal energy storage would be an extremely efficient option.

It doesn’t apply to most living humans but I grant you that special case.

yes, I did look at your link and noted all of sites are those near mountain ranges; which I certainly grant you is near (within 100 miles of) most human population centers.

greengnu,

heating is not done year around (365.25 days/year) for the majority of the world’s population.

Hence why places which need heating year around are generally considered an edge case.

greengnu,

harmonization of grid standards is more than just frequency (it is mostly policy paperwork and the replacement of non-compliant equipment or the installation of conversion equipment) but you are correct high voltage DC is used for long distance power transmission. There are also details such as who is responsible for paying for what, where things are to be connected and various other bureaucratic details.

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