DigitalOcean/image migration

In order to maintain backups of disk images without having to pay DigitalOcean for them monthly, it would be useful to be able to download them and then later upload any that need to be used again.

At the present time, downloading does not seem to be possible; the only instructions I have found so far not only don't work, but couldn't even work in theory as I understand it -- in that they use sshfs to mount the volume's filesystem locally, then try to use dd (a volume-copying tool) to do the copying.

Tentatively, uploading/restore is fully supported, although this is still limited to images that are based on a Linux-like filesystem.

Notes

Backup

• https://www.digitalocean.com/community/questions/how-to-backup-droplet-whole-server-to-my-own-storage
  • https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/how-to-use-sshfs-to-mount-remote-file-systems-over-ssh

I got an error with the command they suggested, and modified it to this:

• sudo sshfs -o allow_other root@xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx:/ /mnt/droplet

root@statler:/mnt# sudo sshfs -o allow_other,defer_permissions root@157.245.133.24:/ /mnt/droplet
fuse: unknown option `defer_permissions'
root@statler:/mnt# sudo sshfs -o allow_other root@157.245.133.24:/ /mnt/droplet

...but then this didn't work:

dd if=/mnt/droplet of=tootcat2.hypertwins.net-1523357095826-abandoned
dd: error reading '/mnt/droplet': Is a directory

• https://opensource.com/article/18/7/how-use-dd-linux

Restore

Possibly the "custom images" feature is the way to go?

• https://www.digitalocean.com/docs/images/custom-images/how-to/upload/