David Both is an Open Source Software and GNU/Linux advocate, trainer, writer, and speaker. He has been working with Linux and Open Source Software since 1996 and with computers since 1969. He is a strong proponent of and evangelist for the "Linux Philosophy for System Administrators."
He has written articles for magazines including, Linux Magazine, Linux Journal, and OS/2 Magazine back when there was such a thing. He currently writes prolifically for OpenSource.com. He particularly enjoys learning new things while researching his books and articles, building his own computers, and helping his grandchildren build their computers. He has found some interesting
and unusual ways of problem solving, including sitting on one computer on which he was working.
David has published five books with Apress. Four solo works, “The Linux Philosophy for SysAdmins,” August 2018, and a three volume self-study training course, “Using and Administering Linux — From Zero to SysAdmin,” released in December, 2019. He has also written one book with co-author Cyndi Bulka, "Linux for Small Business Owners" that was released in 2022.
David currently lives in Raleigh, NC, with his amazing and supportive wife, Alice.
He can be reached via email at LinuxGeek46@both.org or on Mastodon at @LinuxGeek46@linuxrocks.online.
Authored Comments
Nice article, Seth. I still have a Pi or two waiting for something useful to do. This would be a good way to do that.
I use a set of scripts that I have created over the years that are based on rsync. I create a new path every day and use the link-dest argument to point to the most recent previous backup. The rsync command in my script then creates hard links in today's backup directory to yesterday's directory. It then checks for required updates and adds new files and modifies existing ones on today's directory, leaving yesterday's alone by creating new copies of linked files that have been altered, severing the links to yesterday for only those files. It then modifies the newly created unlinked files leaving previous versions as archives. I keep 30 days worth of archives.
Your solution looks quite elegant, too.
Once again, the power of open source is displayed by the many powerful and customizable alternatives available for almost any task.
I have a 1st Gen Pi model B, also, but wanted to use the Pi 2 B which is not faster, but has more USB ports and which runs CentOS for Pi; the Pi 1 does not run CentOS so you should o with the Pi 2B.
Remember, I am not using this Pi for traffic, just as a firewall that I can use to login to my network remotely. However, I now have a Pi 3B set up as my firewall / router that does handle all of my outside traffic for three web sites and an email server. Using SAR - see my article on SAR "System statistics with sar and the /proc filesystem" on this web site at https://opensource.com/business/16/3/system-statistics-sar-and-proc-fil… - shows that neither the 2B or the 3B ever uses more than 5% of its CPU power, even during my nightly backups.
Also, very subjectively, the Pi firewalls actually seem to be faster when I login remotely.
I get about 1500 emails (mostly SPAM) and 150 web hits a day so my network is very low volume. I would really like to hear from someone who tries the Pi out on a network with a much higher volume to see how it stands up.
If you would like, I can let you know which USB dongle I used for this. I don't have that info right now as I am traveling.
Thanks for your comment.