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Solved
RN214 refuses to take snapshots
Hi! After factory-resetting and reinstalling my RN214 (check out https://community.netgear.com/t5/Using-your-ReadyNAS-in-Business/Admin-page-unavailable-after-cancelled-backup-job-amp-hard/m-p/21...
VolkerB wrote:[...] snapshots (neither smart nor custom, no matter what schedule) did not seem to work anymore for the home shares of all users. Manual and automatic snapshots for other shares not related to individual users worked fine. There was no issue with insufficient space (no snapshot pruning taking place) [...] So I have created a new user "test" with all default settings in the "Users" group. [...] for user "test" automatic snapshots are actually taken successfully, while at the same time, no snapshots for user "volker" are stored even though he is sharing the same schedule. As it happens to be, [X] Allow snapshot access was enabled for volker and [ ] Protection was disabled, user "test" had it the other way round. [...]
Currently, I'm running a test with various combinations of (dis)allowing snapshot access and en-/disabling the protection feature, (de)activating bit rot protection and compression for the other shares to find out what exactly spoils the fun here.
The tests have completed. Conclusion:
If you don't activate the [X] Protection option in the Home Folders > Settings > Snapshot Access for all the users where snapshots should be taken, no schedule whatsoever is going to work. Everything else (Bit-rot-protection and compression for shares, snapshot access for individual users, the type of schedule and whether you want snapshots even if nothing changed) does not matter.
So if some Netgear dude is listening: Perhaps this critical relationship could at least be made more clear in the manual or probably even a warning displayed if the admin deviates from a setting that implicitely disables snapshots.
HTH & Greets,
Volker
I have two comments on your settings.
- The "Smart" snapshots never delete the monthly snapshots. Over time, that will fill the data volume. While you can go in periodically and deleted the oldest snapshots, it is simpler to switch to "Custom", and set retention. You can also tell the system not to store snapshots if there are no changes.
- Making snapshots visible in Windows has an unfortunate side effect - the snapshots are writeable, so files can be deleted by the user (or encrypted by ransomware). This is a non-started for me - so I allow Windows Previous Version, but I don't allow users to otherwise browse the snapshots.
I'm not sure what's going on in your case. But I am thinking you might try renaming or or deleting a file in one of the home folders, and see if that triggers a snapshot. FWIW, I don't use home folders myself - we don't need or want the privacy feature, and they aren't easy to restore from a backup.
StephenB : I think smart snapshots are quite convenient as daily snapshots are automatically promoted to weekly snapshots every Friday and become monthly snapshots at the end of every month. As only monthly snapshots are kept forever and BTFRS just stores the delta, storage issues are unlikely in low traffic situations. In contrast, the classic method just allows specifying a duration or number for snapshot retention.
For snapshot access via SMB and subfolders in the user's home directory, the RN214 allows enabling "protection" (whatever that is, didn't try so far), so I figure the folder is readonly for the user in that case. I want the system to be as close to a nobrainer as possible so the option that users can browse into snapshots using the system/tools they are accommodated to and restore file versions without my help is a big plus.
Using home folders at all facilitates automatic synchronization of local files quite a lot in my case (rsync, robocopy) and I don't want documents specific to the operating system or the particular user to be spread all across the public shares. The latter are for commonly used media only.
Having said that: Smart snapshots in user's home folders used to work fine before (manual snapshots still do), data has been changed many times after I have done a factory reset and rebuilt the NAS. There is nothing totally obvious that I was doing differently since the first setup (with the potential exception of enabling SSH), so this is quite a mistery to me.
I did compare a configuration backup before and after the factory reset (relevant differences were SSH=1 and
TIMEMACHINE_PROTOCOL=SMB vs. TIMEMACHINE_PROTOCOL=AFP in \etc\default\services) but no changes seem causal to the issue. Of course, I can provide more detailed information if necessary, just tell me where to look.Thanks & greets,
Volker
What firmware are you running?
VolkerB wrote:
I think smart snapshots are quite convenient as daily snapshots are automatically promoted to weekly snapshots every Friday and become monthly snapshots at the end of every month. As only monthly snapshots are kept forever and BTFRS just stores the delta, storage issues are unlikely in low traffic situations.
Up to you of course. It was a problem for me. The "delta" over time adds up - especially in the share where I store my PC backups.
"Custom" is definitely the "no brainer" config for me - it manages my overall space automatically much better. Back when I was using "smart" snapshots I had to manually delete the oldest monthly snapshots periodically.
FWIW, I've never understood the benefit of the snapshot thinning. It seems to me it just risks deleting the version you want to roll back to. I much prefer the "only make snapshots with changes" setting in the custom snapshots.
StephenB wrote:What firmware are you running?
6.10.5 Hotfix 1 - which, as my device tells me, is the latest stable version.
StephenB wrote:"Custom" is definitely the "no brainer" config for me - it manages my overall space automatically much better. Back when I was using "smart" snapshots I had to manually delete the oldest monthly snapshots periodically.
FWIW, I've never understood the benefit of the snapshot thinning. It seems to me it just risks deleting the version you want to roll back to. I much prefer the "only make snapshots with changes" setting in the custom snapshots.
I unfortunately don't quite understand, what "only make snapshots with changes" mean, since the ReadyNAS OS 6.9.3
Software Manual (which seems to be the latest one) doesn't mention it. It could a) mean that I get a snapshot of the entire volume mapped in the /home/<user>/snapshot directory only if at least one file has changed in the entire volume or b) only the delta between the current state and the last snapshot is exposed if - and only if - something has changed. With smart snapshots, a) seems to be the case, I would probably prefer b) but every approach has its benefits. Since this is a feature of BTFRS, you probably don't have a choice and snapshots only contain the delta as "real" data anyway. The rest is just hard(?) links.But that is all a matter of taste and doesn't solve my problem. So I have disabled disk spindown (the manual claims that for hourly snapshots the disks are never spun up, probably ignoring the menu option [X] Spin up disks to take scheduled snapshots), created a custom hourly snapshot schedule but without the "only make snapshots with changes" option set. This should get me exactly one snapshot per hour.
This is to test my assumption, that on this RN214 and for unknown reasons, automatic snapshots are not working anymore, neither smart ones nor custom ones. Perhaps because some daemon is not running or ill-configured. Just for the records: That box is running a 8TB 2-disk XRAID (so essentially a RAID-1) and it has 2.28TB free space. Snapshot pruning occurs at 90% capacity (I left the option at it's default) which the system is quite far away from. I never ran a defrag/scrub/balance since the reinstall.
For the curious: The reinstall became necessary because of a rsync backup gone wrong with the target disconnected and filling the mount point in the OS partion instead of the USB drive that should have been mounted there which had me ending up with the system volume root's usage at 99% and the admin page being unavailable.
No SSH, no other option. I had a backup of my data though.
Addendum: Several hours have passed, no automatic snapshot(s). Just as I expected. What now? What is blocking that job from running?
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