Author: sajolida Date: To: Tails user experience & user interface design Subject: Re: [Tails-ux] Clone Persistence option in Tails Installer (#7049)
segfault: > intrigeri:
>> sajolida:
>>> intrigeri:
>>>> sajolida:>>>> - Is it fine to copy the content of the current Persistence while it is
>>>>> being used?
>>>>
>>>> Doing so creates inconsistent backups: among a set of files that are
>>>> supposed to go together (be it config, program data, user data), some
>>>> of them are backup'ed at version N while some others at version N+1.
>>>>
>>>> Inconsistent backups ⇒ inconsistent data sets. That can break
>>>> software's ability to use the data at various degrees. I can't tell
>>>> off-hand how bad this can be but it has the potential to make software
>>>> with large and complex data store, such as Thunderbird,
>>>> really unhappy.
>>
>>> Understood. Then we should prevent users from updating their backups
>>> while the problematic applications are open.
>>
>> Yep.
>
> Note that we need the same functionality for #11529.
Good point!
>>> I assumed that working on the block device level would mean copying the
>>> whole Persistence partition block by block every time. Doing a dd of
>>> Tails (1.2 GB) to a USB stick takes around 5 minutes, so doing full copy
>>> of a 5.5 Persistence would take around 30 minutes. Not fast. Especially
>>> if you can't use Thunderbird while your backups are updating.
>>
>> That's of course a no-go.
>
> I think doing a full dd copy is a no-go anyway, because it just takes
> too long. Users might also have a lot bigger persistence partitions. IMO
> we should use the filesystem both to create and update the backup.
+1
I updated the blueprint with our discussion here: 126c6115bc.
