“Poor man’s snapshots” and documentation

In this section, we record how we keep a “restore point” without a VPS snapshot feature.

Goal: if we break something, we can quickly recover configs and rebuild the server without starting from zero.

---

10.1 Why we need a “snapshot”

We noticed:

• Our VPS provider (VMISS) does not expose a public one-click “snapshot” feature in their panel.
• Sometimes a risky change (kernel / network / firewall) can lock us out.
• Even if the project is not huge, rebuilding from scratch is annoying.

So we decided to keep a “poor man’s snapshot”:

• Archive the important config files and directories into a single tarball.
• Copy the archive to our local machine as a safety net.

---

10.2 What we save (The critical pieces)

We focused on saving “the important state”:

• SSH hardening

  • etc/ssh/sshd_config (SSH port/root-login rules)

• nginx config + website files

  • etc/nginx (all nginx vhosts, TLS settings, and /etc/nginx/cert paths)
  • var/www/html (our website content)

• TLS / cert management

  • home/vpsadmin/.acme.sh (acme account + issued certs + renewal config)

• Xray config + service

  • usr/local/etc/xray (Xray config.json)

Important note:

• do NOT publish private keys / sensitive configs in a public repo
• keep snapshots locally or in a private storage location

---

10.3 Create snapshot archive (tarball)

We created a tar archive that bundles key paths.

• go to filesystem root (so paths in archive are clean)

  cd /

• create a tarball with date tag

  sudo tar czvf /home/vpsadmin/server-backup-$(date +%F)-reality-working.tar.gz \
  etc/nginx \
  etc/ssh/sshd_config \
  usr/local/etc/xray \
  var/www/html \
  home/vpsadmin/.acme.sh

---

10.4 Copy snapshot to local machine

After tarball is created on VPS, download it to your laptop:

scp -P 3145 vpsadmin@www.curvature.blog:/home/vpsadmin/server-backup-*-reality-working.tar.gz .

Notes:

• use your custom SSH port (example: 3145)
• keep snapshots in a local folder with clear naming

---

10.5 Restore idea (when something breaks)

If we ever totally ruin the server and reinstall Debian 12:

• Reinstall base packages (nginx, sudo, etc.).
• Upload the tarball back to the VPS /home/vpsadmin.
• Extract it from the root directory:

  cd /
  sudo tar xzvf /home/vpsadmin/server-backup-YYYY-MM-DD-reality-working.tar.gz

• Restart services to apply the configs :

  sudo systemctl restart nginx
  sudo systemctl restart xray
  sudo systemctl restart ssh

• We are almost exactly where we left off.

---

10.6 Documenting the whole setup

We discussed multiple documentation styles:

• LaTeX notes (good for PDF, print, long-form)
• Markdown in a GitHub repo (good for copy/paste, browsing, version control)

We decided to use Markdown because:

• easy to maintain and update
• great for code blocks and configs
• can be published as GitHub Pages (github.io) if desired
• can still be converted to PDF later if needed

---

10.7 Quick checklist for this stage

After finishing this section, you should have:

• A repeatable command to archive key system configs.
• Snapshots securely copied to your local machine.
• A safe habit: snapshot after major milestones .