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Yaesm is a configurable Linux backup tool that links utilities such as Btrfs, ZFS, rsync, tar, GnuPG and Zstandard into YAML-defined pipelines. Its co-creators built it to move beyond the limits of an earlier Btrfs-focused tool; Nicholas Hubbard describes using it to move laptop backups to a home server, then copy them to an external drive for longer retention.
Why Yaesm was built
Nicholas Hubbard and Connor Gallivan began Yaesm as a more flexible successor to Yabsm, Hubbard’s earlier Btrfs snapshot manager. Hubbard’s September 12, 2026, DEV Community article describes Yabsm’s limitations: it used a custom configuration language and had restricted scheduling. The authors wanted a tool that could support backup tools beyond Btrfs and allow backups to run on demand or on a schedule.
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Rather than hard-code one backup method, Yaesm connects tools into user-configured pipelines. The design evolved from interchangeable backends toward drivers that advertise capabilities—such as creating snapshots, compressing data or encrypting it. Type annotations determine which capabilities can connect, according to the article.
What Yaesm does—and what was planned
A Yaesm pipeline can combine existing tools, including Btrfs, ZFS, rsync, tar, GnuPG and Zstandard. YAML provides the configuration format, while the selected components determine how a particular backup is created and handled.
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Hubbard named rclone, bcachefs, pigz and age as planned driver additions. Those were plans reported in the article, not confirmation that the drivers were supported at publication or are supported now. Check the project’s current documentation before relying on a specific integration.
How Hubbard’s backup workflow is arranged
Hubbard says both his laptop and home server use Btrfs. Yaesm runs on the server, which pulls backups from the laptop over SSH through Tailscale. His arrangement uses three storage tiers, each serving a different role:
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- To get set up, connect the portable hard drive to a computer for automatic recognition no software required
- This USB drive provides plug and play simplicity with the included 18 inch USB 3.0 cable
- The available storage capacity may vary.
- Laptop: Frequent local snapshots provide a nearby recovery point.
- Home server: Btrfs send/receive transfers backups from the laptop to the server.
- External drive: The server copies existing backup artifacts to a drive connected to it. Hubbard keeps these copies longer, so most of his backup history resides on this tier.
“I use Yaesm to back up my laptop and home server, both of which use Btrfs.” — Nicholas Hubbard
This is one author’s setup, not a universal prescription. The account establishes how Hubbard combines snapshots, SSH transfers and a separate copy; it does not compare the tiers’ cost, capacity, speed or durability.
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How the example retention policy works
The article’s example external-drive policy keeps 365 daily backups and 48 monthly backups. These are configuration counts in the example, not measured results or a guarantee of a particular calendar span.
Count-based retention keeps a specified number of backups. If unchanged data causes a scheduled backup to be skipped, a count can cover a longer period of time than the interval in its label might suggest. Hubbard also mentions age-based retention, such as keep-for: 1y, which defines retention by elapsed time rather than by a number of backup instances. The choice depends on whether the desired rule is “retain this many backups” or “retain backups for this long.”
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Release status and testing described in the article
At the time of Hubbard’s September 12, 2026 article, he described Yaesm as pre-release and said CI packages were built only for Debian and Fedora. That is a dated release snapshot; packaging and project status may have changed. The article points readers to the GitHub project for code, packages and the manual.
The authors said they used pytest and Vagrant to test in virtual machines with real filesystems, simulating local and SSH backups. Hubbard characterized test coverage as “very high” but did not give a percentage or an independently verified result, so the description should not be read as a quantified coverage claim.
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