OpenBSD now synchronised with Unison as 'offline' copy

So yesterday I tested unison would be a decent tool to synchronise the git source repositories between my Debian laptop and my Macos laptop.

With that tested and working, I figured doing something similar between my Debian laptop and my OpenBSD laptop would also work. And it would be an easy way to implement having an 'offline' copy of my data. With a process that is not too involved.

So sure, a laptop running on a network is hardly 'offline', but I did take some steps to make it a safer extra backup:

• The OpenBSD laptop is connected to its own RunBSD wifi ESSID. This connects to the seperate RunBSD VLAN.
• The OpnSENSE firewall does not allow inward connections to this RunBSD VLAN
• It only allows traffic FROM the VLAN to the http proxy on the firewall and to ssh port on my Debian laptop
• The OpenBSD laptop exposes no services, I disabled an unused syncthing proces I left last year and removed sshd from the startup procedure

So now the OpenBSD laptop has a list of 'sync-something' shell aliases defined which run Unison for the various document repositories I want to keep 'offline'.

The OpenBSD laptop is configured as a XFCE desktop system, complete with Libre Office, a media player and all sorts of goodies. So even if the complete network or Internet connections fails, I will still be able to see and edit all sorts of personal documents and documents for organisations I am involved in. The only thing I need is this working laptop and enough power to keep it running for some time.

The idea is the sync alle the data back and forth once a week or so. The only thing missing now is some kind of snapshotting of the files, both as a history and an extra layer of safety for data corruption and user error. The snapshotting is where my planned FreeBSD + ZFS comes into play. It will be added at some later stage.

As a stretch goal I could set up and USB connection to my printer to see if I cloud print stuff with a direct connection to the printer. I have zero clues how printer support is on OpenBSD :-)

And yes: this is not a complete backup solution. This is just an extra copy of things, that I might be able to use in case or pretty catastrophic disasters.