zfsnapr VS anki

FreeBSD had a pretty decent option in the base system two decades ago - FFS snapshots and a stock backup tool that would use them automatically with minimal effort, dump(8). Just chuck `-L` at it and your backups are consistent.

Now of course it's all about ZFS, so there's at least snapshots paired with replication - but the story for anything else is still pretty bad, with you having to put all the fiddly pieces together. I'm sure some people taught their backup tool about their special named backup snapshots sprinkled about in `.zfs/snapshot` directories, but given the fiddly nature of it I'm also sure most people just ended up YOLOing raw directories, temporal-smearing be damned.

I know I did!

I finally got around to fixing that last year with zfsnapr[1]. `zfsnapr mount /mnt/backup` and there's a snapshot of the system - all datasets, mounted recursively - ready for whatever backup tool of the year is.

I'm kind of disappointed in mentioning it over on the Practical ZFS forum that the response was not "why didn't you just use ", but "I can see why that might be useful".

Well, yes, it makes backups actually work.

> Also, it's unclear to me what happens if you attempt a snapshot in the middle of something like a database transaction or even a basic file write. Seems likely that the snapshot would still be corrupted

A snapshot is a point-in-time image of the filesystem at a given point. Any ACID database worth the name will roll back the in-flight transaction just like they would if you issued it a `kill -9`.

For other file writes, that's really down to whether or not such interruptions were considered by the writer. You may well have half-written files in your snapshot, with the file contents as they were in between two write() calls. Ideally this will only be in the form of temporary files, prior to their rename() over the data they're replacing.

For everything else - well, you have more than one snapshot backed up, right?

1: https://github.com/Freaky/zfsnapr

I make remote snapshot backups with Borg using this: https://github.com/Freaky/zfsnapr

zfsnapr mounts recursive snapshots on a target directory so you can just point whatever backup tool you like at a normal directory tree.

I still use send/recv for local backups - I think it's good to have a mix of strategies.

This is why I made https://github.com/Freaky/zfsnapr

Instead of working out how to teach my backup tools about snapshots, I just mount them in a subtree and use that as a chroot env.

borg-backup.sh, which runs my remote borg backups off a cronjob: https://github.com/Freaky/borg-backup.sh

zfsnapr, a ZFS recursive snapshot mounter - I run borg-backup.sh using this to make consistent backups: https://github.com/Freaky/zfsnapr

mkjail, an automatic minimal FreeBSD chroot environment builder: https://github.com/Freaky/mkjail

run-one, a clone of the Ubuntu scripts of the same name, which provides a slightly friendlier alternative to running commands with flock/lockf: https://github.com/Freaky/run-one

I wrote https://github.com/Freaky/zfsnapr a few months ago so I could finally have point-in-time consistent Borg backups with ZFS snapshots, without having the mess of teaching Borg where every .zfs directory was.

It recursively snapshots mounted pools, and recursively mounts snapshots of the mounted datasets into a target ready to point your backup tools at. I do so via a chroot so I didn't need to make any changes to my Borg setup - just to how I run it.

This is the approach I take with zfssnapr - make a recursive snapshot of pools and then use mountpoint/canmount to recursively mount datasets on a location. Then I can just point borg at it without having to teach it where exactly each .zfs directory is.

Try the Anki system…there was someone who learned over 10 languages with that method:

https://apps.ankiweb.net/

And here is the source code for Anki: https://github.com/ankitects/anki

If you want to convince people to use your spaced repetition software over Anki, you need to tell us what's so wrong with Anki that can't be fixed with plugins and that's worth $10 per year.

You must demonstrate value above what Anki does.

I look at your list of projects in https://0xdev.gumroad.com/ and they're all pre-order of things that already exist elsewhere. To me, this smacks of "give me money, and I'll give you promises." Especially the project https://0xdev.gumroad.com/l/HelpFundMe?layout=profile

You want something for free? I'll give you something for free.

Anki absolutely can be improved. For new users, it's very confusing: having multiple decks, the separation between cards and notes, and the search interface are hard for new users.

Combine something that is simpler for new users with a demonstrably better algorithm and you might have a minimally viable product. But you need the product FIRST before you request money.

Give us something that we can run for one week and know that it's better than the free software that is Anki.

This support landed late last year as part of https://github.com/ankitects/anki/releases/tag/23.10

> .apkg imports are able to merge changed notetypes, and can exclude scheduling data

My main use case is for managing my Azeron Cyborg profiles. And recently I have been experimenting with using the mobile controller feature to help do Anki spaced repetition reviews.

Anki Flashcards