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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
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