Hi guys! I think I’m over Joplin. Don’t get me wrong, it’s simple, it works, but… why is it Postgres db…. I have the server on a small box with like 250 GB of space and backing it up with kopia to Backblaze with free 10 GB, so I’m a bit storage cautious.
With each snapshot, it seems like a good chunk of the database changes, even when I don’t use Joplin that day. That results in kopia backing up those changed files, and backups keep growing. Right now the Joplin database is like 200Mb, BUT when I export the notes from the app… all of them weigh 2Mb… including images. Yes there is versioning of notes, but they shouldn’t be that big after one-two months lol.
I know I know, I’m being a bit weird about it, but I’m getting daily notifications about backups and I see how they grow each day.
Anyway, do you have any alternatives that have an app on iOS and on Linux? Or should I just use Apple Notes in the browser? Thanks
EDIT: The answer was easier than I thought. Just don’t back it up, it’s synced which means each device has a copy of it anyway so there is not really need for it, thanks @vvv@programming.dev !
Why do you need to back up that server data? The great thing about joplin, is that the full content of your notes (and history) is distributed, like a git repo. As long as you have one device left with your notes, everything else can be bootstrapped from there. If your sync server burns down, start a new one and sync your notes to it again.
True, should’ve thought of that. Well, at least this gives me a chance to explore and learn alternatives :P
Genuine question - doesn’t this leave you open to loss of data from database corruption or an app failure (or human error, accidentally deleting a bunch of pages, for example)?
I’ve used “sync as backup” a lot, and run into these kinds of issues (it’s my current OneNote “backup” strategy). I’m just not familiar enough with Joplin to know what risks this exposes.
There is a fail-safe switch in settings preventing the deletion of local copy if the remote is empty
Well that’s something anyway, though I wouldn’t rely on it - sometimes things happen.
I’m sure there’s a way to do proper backups of database data (e.g. Incrementals, full, etc), that would get the changes.
That’s always handled by other teams for systems I’ve deployed, so I’m joy familiar with current approaches.
I’d rather backup a stack of plain text files, personally. So Obsidian for me.