
Arq 5.8.5 for Mac Fixes a Bad Bug - ivank
https://www.arqbackup.com/blog/arq-5-8-5-for-mac-fixes-a-bad-bug/
======
k1t
While I agree with others that honesty is best, even if it hurts in the short
term - there was a corresponding (perhaps even far worse) bug in the Windows
version recently with no corresponding blog post or announcement.

I think it was the 5.7.8 (Windows) release that introduced a bug that caused
Arq to believe a budget of 0 should be enforced. This meant if you backed up
to AWS (probably others too) it would delete ALL backup records except the
most recent one (and then immediately cleanup the now unreferenced objects, so
even the reflog feature can't help you)

I had only been using Arq for a few months so I didn't lose anything major,
but if I had been keeping years of historical records, I would be furious.

This was fixed in the next release 5.7.13 ("Fixed an issue that could cause
Arq to enforce a budget when no budget was configured.") but still - I thought
a bigger deal should have been made of this.

~~~
MikusR
Windows users are not that fussy. Mac users are very loud so they require
special treatment.

~~~
x0x0
I dunno, data loss from backup software seems like a pretty big fuckup.

NB: I'm a very happy Arq user; I bought it because Time Machine crapped itself
every couple months requiring me to recreate the backup (a pain in it's own
right: 400g over wifi) and leading to a severe loss of confidence that backups
were actually going to be there if I need them. I tracked it down to Time
Machine gets really unhappy if you sleep your laptop while it's in the middle
of a backup. However, having to check if Time Machine is running before
closing the lid or being willing to run a 1-2% chance of corrupting the backup
isn't really a workable state of affairs.

In a couple years, Arq hasn't eaten my backups. It's like Time Machine except
written by competent people. This situation sucks but I'm sure Stefan will add
enough tests.

On a digression, this is part of my increasing frustration with how shitty
Apple sourced mac software is. This tiny company beats the pants off Time
Machine, even including the recent screwup.

~~~
tunesmith
I've noticed the same problems. Apparently it is possible to write a program
that will keep the laptop from sleeping if the lid is closed.
([https://www.appducate.com/2012/12/keep-laptop-awake-even-
whe...](https://www.appducate.com/2012/12/keep-laptop-awake-even-when-lid-
closed/) is one I found, but I haven't tried it.) Given that, I wonder if it
is possible to write another program that will check to see if a time machine
backup is running, and keep it from sleeping until the backup is completed,
after which it will sleep.

------
heavymark
Adding to the sentiment of others, I've been a long time Arq user and grateful
for Stefan's openness and honesty.

I imagine most or all of us with that sentiment did not suffer any data loss
or rather did not need to do a retrieval and discovered data loss during that
time. So much easier for us to write it off as a non issue. Where is if it
affected us I imagine we'd all be quite a bit more upset.

Though most people use common alternatives such as Time Machine which every
few months runs into data issues and far less transparency. Stefan could have
quietly updated with a fix, and waited to see if anyone discovered the issue
and then only announced the issue if that occurred. But instead he proactive
announced it. So bravo. And I'm sure he will instill new procedures to
hopefully avoid that in the future, but of course with any software there is
always room for error no matter how much testing you do.

------
cdumler
I'm a long time Arq user. I very much appreciate the honesty. I can't solve a
data backup problem if I don't know what that problem is.

Ont this note, I've thought about something at times: If there was one feature
that I would like to see is options to verify backups. Beyond the possibility
of Arq having a fault, it's also very possible that a backup service has
silently failed. Either, the files are corrupted or the service lies that the
files exist but you can't actually download them. I would appreciate the
ability to have files pulled (either periodic random or marked files) pulled
and compared to local files to verify the backup. I would also want to cap the
max files/bytes pulled in a month so that I don't burn too much money.

I know it took guts to make the post. You did well.

~~~
brandon272
I wonder if the easiest way of doing that wouldn't be to compare checksums?
Saves having to re-download portions of a backup set, which could potentially
get expensive in terms of bandwidth costs, and has the disadvantage of only
confirming whatever files you are looking at.

~~~
cdumler
But, that's still trusting the provider. The provider is likely to compute it
at upload time and then store in meta data. So, having that meta result
returned is no more proof your files exist than listing them.

------
jwr
Thanks for the honesty, I really appreciate this.

And BTW, I am a happy Arq user, I've been using it on multiple machines for
the past several years. It is the _ONLY_ backup solution out there that:

* encrypts my data without me having to supply the decryption key to a third party when decrypting,

* decouples backup and encryption from a particular storage provider,

* makes me independent of ebbs and flows of storage providers by supporting pretty much every one out there.

I've learned to value independence over cheapness, so I stick with Arq. Plus,
it's been working really well over the years.

~~~
dsacco
Duplicati hits everything you're talking about (I have essentially the same
criteria for backups).[1] It's cross-platform (Windows, macOS and Linux).

I love using Arq on my MacBook Pro, but since they won't release a Linux
client I use Duplicati on Ubuntu. I like it a lot.

__________________________

1\. [https://www.duplicati.com/](https://www.duplicati.com/)

~~~
jwr
Nice! Thanks for posting this — I've been looking for something like Arq for
Linux, and this seems to be it.

------
arjie
Oof, unfortunate. Can well imagine the sinking feeling that comes with the
discovery.

How do people feel about killswitches connected to C&C servers so that if one
releases broken software, one can block its use, or force an update? I
wouldn't be very upset if it were just a flag you could turn off to prevent
killswitch enforcement.

~~~
striking
Google has a thing like that for Chrome iirc (and its granularity is to the
feature level)

~~~
WalterGR
MSN Messenger had a thing like that, also granular to the feature level.
Disclaimer: I was involved with its development 12 years ago or so.

------
pgtruesdell
As an Arq user, the honesty and openness are greatly appreciated. Hopefully,
nobody has gotten bitten by this issue when attempting to recover data.

------
danieldk
I have been an happy Arq user for years. Thanks for being so honest!

This only increases my trust in Arq. Every program will have terrible bugs
once in a while, even backup software. This shows that we can trust Haystack
software to inform us, rather than sweeping things under the rug.

And as always: make multiple backups to different locations.

------
moduspwnens14
Ouch. The openness is appreciated, though.

Beyond randomly checking a time in the past and trying to download a file, is
there a way I can tell which / how many files are now missing?

------
karmajunkie
This could have been worse. I was using Crashplan and tried to add an
ignorable directory in the web panel, which had no flags or warning labels or
anything around it indicating that it could be destructive. The web server had
some kind of error and when I reloaded the page, my settings were wiped out.
Several hours later I got an email that all my backups were going to be
deleted by 5pm. The email was received at 5:20pm. Customer support basically
just shrugged it off, and I was an ex customer by the next day.

Shit happens, but that was particularly egregious. This is why you should have
multiple backup methods in place, and if you've never restored one, you don't
have a backup.

------
tunesmith
For those that use Arq, but counsel secondary backup tools as well, any
recommendations?

I'm on a Mac - I use Dropbox (with permanent version history turned on) for
common files, and Time Machine to a Drobo for short-term versioned/incremental
backups (short-term because the backup invariably gets corrupted every year or
so and I have to start over). (I also currently use Crashplan but am thinking
of switching to Arq since Crashplan has very slow upload speeds - slower than
my ISPs upload speeds.)

I'm also figuring out a way to remotely have a mirrored boot drive for my
Macbook but haven't quite gotten there.

~~~
kmano8
In addition to Arq, I run a local time machine and backblaze.

Backblaze runs all the time on _everything_ (some 4TB), and I have Arq running
nightly on my most important stuff (photos, documents, music, recordings) to
AWS as well as Amazon Cloud Drive.

~~~
cale250
If you happen to have critical virtual machines or disk images, make sure you
back them up elsewhere, since Backblaze doesn't back them up. Made it an
annoyance for me personally, but it otherwise works rather well for the
typical user.

~~~
kalleboo
Backblaze backs up my virtual machines... You just have to remove those file
types from the exclusion list (where they are by default), and raise the max
file size to "No Limit". Neither of these are hidden options.

------
buildbot
Wow, as a Mac user of arq I've completely lost any trust I had in this app. I
guess I'll have to run both arq and something like duplicati...

~~~
leejoramo
Never trust one backup solution. While I am happy to see people use any backup
at all, as a professional and as someone who cares about my own stuff I feel a
much more sophisticated approach is needed.

Since 1980, I have learned to keep multiple backups, using multiple
independent software, stored in multiple locations, on multiple types of
media, overseen by multiple people.

An overview of my personal backup system for my primary system a MacBook Pro:

* Boot able mirror to remote hard drive via Carbon Copy Cloner * Data backup using Arq to home file server with RAID, and Google Cloud (previously to Amazon and Microsoft) * Data backup using Backblaze * Data sync via Resilio to home server * Code stored in Git * Some stuff in DropBox primarily sync with iOS apps * FastMail IMAP email synced to a local backup store * I just stopped use of CrashPlan after 9 years

I have other backups going for the home file server.

And of course, my servers for work have a whole other multilayered backup
system.

~~~
brandon272
How often do you create the bootable mirror to an external drive?

~~~
leejoramo
I have it set up to do it once a day. I rotate that between two drives. This
part is done by hand, I try to rotate once a week, but more likely every two
weeks.

------
mkj
Guess it's a clear case why diversity of backup formats is a good thing.

"If we could, we’d make backup copies of our valuable data on clay tablets"
[https://landing.google.com/sre/book/chapters/data-
integrity....](https://landing.google.com/sre/book/chapters/data-
integrity.html)

------
imfletcher
bad things happen; its all in how you respond. keep up the good work.

------
masterleep
The blog post doesn't actually say that 5.8.5 repairs old backup records. Does
it?

~~~
tunesmith
I read it as that it will re-upload files that still exist on your live system
that aren't (but should have been) in your backups, but will not recover
deleted files that should be in backups.

------
Ecco
It's a bit off topic, but I wonder why they add such a visible ® after their
name in the navbar.

~~~
marpstar
I've worked with clients who were very adamant about the trademark and
registered trademark logos overly apparently. Can anyone explain why?

~~~
npongratz
[https://www.inc.com/guides/201101/how-to-protect-your-
tradem...](https://www.inc.com/guides/201101/how-to-protect-your-trademark-
from-infringement.html)

------
lapp8866
This is a part of a rather disturbing trend to ship frequent and not-well-
teated updates. Another example of this is 1Password.

~~~
ioquatix
What did 1pw do recently?

