Backing up a qube

Please bear with me, as I know that there is documentation but I have had a run with qubes in the last few days that has me jittery so I want to get this right. I will have a couple of other questions later, but for now, I want to get the backup of my data right. I think that what I am doing is correct but I want to double check, so I thank anybody who can assist.

I want to back up one qube only. So I use qubes tools > backup qubes which takes me to a box with all available qubes in the right hand column which is different to some guides that say that they are listed in the left. So I move all the qubes except the one I want into the left column. From there what I have done is format a usb stick to ext4 and attached it to sys-net and then navigated my way and appear to have things set up for this qube to be backed up to my usb vua sys-net.

Is that all there is too this? I haven’t gone and tried to make it happen yet hoping that I can get someone to confirm that I am on the right track. Am I doing this correctly?

Thanks so much for any help.

Yes, that’s all you need to do to backup your qube.

Why would you use untrusted, sys-net, which has unrestricted access to the network, to backup your qube? The backup is encrypted of course, but connecting your usb stick to it may expose it to unnecessary risk. I suggest to use a dedicated (maybe even disposable) qube for that. Or, if you’re lazy (like me!), you can do it in sys-usb, which is also disposable by default.

Thanks for the replies. I will use another qube for the usb rather than sys-usb. I wasn’t even thinking about that when I was investigating this.

So I can pretty much use any qube and attach the storage device to this by the sounds of it in which case I’ll use a disp vm. I can’t be 100% sure, but I don’t think that sys-usb was listed as an option. My system is set up as default so its nothing unusual.

Thanks for helping.

I guess it would help us more to help you enough if you could describe which qube exactly and why only that one you would want to back up.

Sure, no big deal. My most important qube in terms of what I wouldn’t want to lose is on a vm simply called ‘email’. I have all of my emails plus related browsing. Apart from this I have a separate ‘banking’ qubes with just my two banks that I bank. A loss here is no big deal as its just a couple of memorised passwords. I have another general ‘browsing’ qubes which has some stuff which I suppose would be good to back up such as bookmarks and some configured browsers. Apart from this I have a vault with a keepass file and a couple of other thing but these are already safely backed up.

It is the case that I have qubes configured with some things like LibreOffice, gpa and a couple of other things which would be minor inconveniences only. My main concern are my emails I suppose so that is my motivation. As I go I will most likely back all of my vms up to preserve the environment. I have another ssd which is the subject of another post that I hope to get some stuff off. But I still have my daily driver qubes working which is the subject of this post.

Thanks for your interest.

Thanks for your response. So, if I understand well, you want to backup your emails and your browser profile actually?

In essence that’s probably the case. I also want to get into the previously not practiced habit of backing up the important components of my qubes environment.

I could always just back up the Thunderbird profile folder and my firefox configs etc but I want to continue to learn my way around qubes so learning to backing up my vms I feel is essential.

While technically backing up is pretty trivial, I’m kindly offering you to read the topic with a different perspective on a backup itself, not a process.

Thanks for the link. I’ll follow up.

It’s not listed, because every device, when you connect it, immediately goes to sys-usb by default. There’s no need to choose it in the menu.