Backing up Addon and system

Saving the config is a manual process, there is no way to schedule it. The output zip is created in /tmp, and then is copied over the network. With Chrome I am not getting a prompt to choose the destination folder, and it would be copied over the network twice if I could chose a networked destination or a mapped drive.

I think selecting "everything" does include /data/.apps (which is /apps), but on my RN102 that is a very slow option (and in my case the folder holds about 350 MB). I am thinking it is not the right way to do what you need even with the faster 316.

Are you backing up the full data volume? If so, /data/.apps may already be there (though I am not sure, as I don't use this particular option).

You can copy /data/.apps using a frontview SMB backup job. Select "remote Windows/NAS (timestamp)" as the source, with the NAS IP address as the host. Use data/.apps as the path (using NAS admin credentials for the login fields). Then select a local share as the destination.

I haven't implemented a backup yet. It was my intension to get another one of these units and have a remote replicate off site which could be recovered in the case of a disaster but Ive struggled with this device enough that its really put me off.

Your suggestion about .apps folder makes me think I could created a share and symlink what I want from the system to it then back up that share with a normal job. Will give it a go.

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Can't see symlinks in a share through front view but can see a mount. So I could create a backup job of a share with a set of mounts and hard links in it from the system files. I could also have continuous protection on the share

So then there is the recovery process. Not at all sure about that.

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I am not sure that will work without also backup up the "system" as well. I know I have installed a few packages and I suspect that the apps that get installed are likely being managed as dpkg installs. As such they can put files anywhere.

I am also looking for a real mechanism for safeguarding not only my data files (which I am happily using crashplan for) but also the system so that I could really restore the entire system in the event of a catastrophic failure.

Nice post!

One of the most common way to backup a linux is to use TAR + CRON but this would require SSH and Netgear may deny support after that. Moreover I never tried to restore such backups of the whole system, I'm used to backup only useful data and have an install procedure/script. That way I can reinstall the system quickly then restore the data. The other trick is that I mainly work with VM, so I can backup virtual disks anyway.
For MySQL DB you can use Mysqldump and use CRON for automation. Think about setting alerts when script fails otherwise you could end up with a failed backup and never know until it's too late.
To summarize my approach is to save the DB and the files you have modified. Your problem is to determine where they are, that's why I always prefer manual install for the apps I want to backup/configure.

By the way storing a backup on the device you would want to restore if anything go wrong is a bad idea... If you have no access to your data how would you restore ?

I confirm addons are .deb so dpkg is called in the process.