Now that “Networking for System Administrators” is out for review, it’s time for me to dive into my next tech project: Tarsnap Mastery. Tarsnap is an encrypted online backup service run by Colin Percival, retired FreeBSD Security Officer.
Colin has asked me to write some Tarsnap documentation for years. Now that I’ve moved my personal servers from hardware in my control to “the cloud,” I need a solid backup system. Tarsnap fits the bill nicely. If I have to deploy it and get everything nicely working correctly, I’d better document it before I forget it. Otherwise, I’ll be arguing with the software when I’m trying to restore my services after a disaster.
And if I have to document it, I might as well sell the documentation to you lot. Because if you need online backups, you want them to be encrypted, right?
Tarsnap has a decent user base, and it’s growing. Tarsnap runs on everything from Mac to Minix. Hopefully, there’s enough new users to support a book. Worst case, Tarsnap Mastery can’t do any worse than DNSSEC Mastery.
As I write the Tarsnap book, I’ll be prepping to write more books on FreeBSD storage. My goal is to finish the research for one book as I finish writing another, so that I can jump directly from one project to the next. Scheduling this is something of a pain, but it’ll improve with practice.
I’ve spent today reading the entirety of the Tarsnap-users mailing list archive, wrapping my head around typical user problems and Tarsnap’s rougher edges.
I now have a headache. I blame Colin.
This book bodes well for us your readers. I may or may not need a book on tarsnap, but I can think of lots of little-ish utilities it would be nice to have books on. Maybe you’ll write them one day!