[plug] Workshop Proposal: Hack on my collection of Rpi Zero W (e.g.micro backup server)

[John McCabe-Dansted]

I was thinking a high endurance SD Card. It is possible to add a usb2 drive too.


On Wed, 8 Oct 2025 at 07:25, <privatemailbox at fastmail.com.au> wrote:
>
> Hi John
> Your proposal certainly sounds interesting and very useful. I would be interested in attending.
> One thing I don't understand is where the back up data is to be stored.
>
> I recently purchased a HP thin client on eBay for $45 to do exactly this. Your workshop will be very helpful for me to finish off my project.
>
> I have been using Dietpi as my server and found it great for learning.
> https://dietpi.com/
>
> Have not covered any of your ideas yet, so looking forward to it.
>
> Regards Ivan Fetwadjieff
>
>
>
> On Tue, 7 Oct 2025, at 9:07 PM, mccabedj wrote:
>
> I have a proposal for a workshop. I bought a bunch of Rasberry Pi Zero Ws in bulk. They are lite but have everything you need to run them as a real Linux machine, e.g. 512MB of ram, networking (WIFI) and even micro-HDMI out if you really want. My proposal is to spend workshop(s) hacking on the Pis. In particular, I thought it would be interesting to convert them into low end backup servers. Draft proposal follows:
>
> Raspberry Pi Zero W Backup server
> =================================
>
> Problem statement: People tend to store data on Windows desktops. Even a Linux desktop runs a large amount of software, which may be compromised in some way. For this reason, I am investigating using a small $10+ Raspberry Pi dedicated to file backups that does not allow regular users to trash the backups. (Regular users should have read-only access to backups)
>
> What to bring: Raspberry Pi zeros will be provided. Bringing your own USB power supply and MicroSD card will help. Also, bring a laptop to work on.
>
> -- Server software --
> ---------------------
>
> Linux only. Feel free to investigate a microkernel or Rust-based OS which may be more secure, but I guess they would be more troublesome than they are worth at this point.
>
> Btrfs: The Btrfs filesystem allows us to take frequent snapshots and do live compression. A true write once read many filesystems may not be appropriate as it would be handy for an admin to be able to delete files.
>
> Snapshot schedule: Crontab or Demon. Keep n minutely, hourly, daily, weekly, monthly and yearly backups. Only take a snapshot if the last snapshot differs from live data.
>
> Deduplicate Btrfs: Btrfs allows you to deduplicate existing files. Existing software may be appropriate. Investigate and integrate, or write new.
>
> Smart Features (optional): Fuse Filesystem that allows to download directory as ZIP etc.?
>
> SSH, Samba: Install, integrate.
>
> Current Status: See tiny GitHub repository https://github.com/gmatht/btrnas
>
> -- Easy Installer --
> --------------------
>
> (Linux and Windows)
>
> Windows users need a heterogeneous Linux backup server immune to Windows viruses even more than Linux users. (Do not install Wine).
>
> See (and modify?) the new RPi installer. -- https://www.raspberrypi.com/software/
>
> There are fewer MacOS machines out there. If we port to Linux and Windows, MacOS should be trivial to support for someone who has a MacOS machine to test and use.
>
> -- Client Software --
> ---------------------
>
> (Linux and Windows)
>
> RSync not suitable for Windows? What about live sync, e.g. lsync?
>
> Many options, e.g.: https://www.goodfirms.co/file-sync-software/blog/the-top-11-free-and-open-source-file-sync-software
>
> Update in place to not flood the server with duplicates on a small change to a large file?
>
> Avoid placing load on the small weak server for files that haven't changed.
>
> Should we notify the server that a backup has been completed? It may be unnecessary complexity if we use lsync.
>
> __
> John McCabe-Dansted
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>
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-- 
John C. McCabe-Dansted