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sysadmin advice concerning backups

1. Matthew Graybosch (hello (a) matthewgraybosch.com)

I could use a little sysadmin advice, because this is really my first
time hosting other people and I don't want to screw it up.

I've got weekly backups arranged via Vultr, but I'm also thinking of
setting up a cron job that takes nightly backups of all users'
public_gemini directories using tar and gzip.

Admittedly this is something users should be doing for themselves if
they're using their shell accounts to write instead of uploading from
their own machines, but I want tanelorn.city to be a welcoming place
for writers even if they aren't Unix wizards, and I think that means
making sure their data is safe.

Is this something that other pubnixes provide for users' home
directories? Are there any downsides I should be aware of aside from
the impact on CPU and storage as more people join tanelorn.city?

-- 
Matthew Graybosch		gemini://starbreaker.org
#include <disclaimer.h>		gemini://demifiend.org
https://matthewgraybosch.com	gemini://tanelorn.city
"Out of order?! Even in the future nothing works."

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2. James Tomasino (tomasino (a) lavabit.com)

On 6/13/20 5:55 AM, Matthew Graybosch wrote:
> I could use a little sysadmin advice, because this is really my first
> time hosting other people and I don't want to screw it up.

I run {https,gopher,gemini}://cosmic.voyage which I believe to be quite 
similar to what you're doing. I have a cron that grabs all the writing 
content, commits it to a git repo, and pushes it up each night. In fact, I 
do it with the wiki on the site too.

https://tildegit.org/cosmic/cosmic-backup

Since it's all text content, relying on git's diffing saves me the 
overhead on filesize of binary blobs. I also have a way to roll back 
through time in case someone accidentally does something horrific. If 
nothing changed, the git commit is empty and I waste nothing. Honestly, 
it's worked out great so far as my community's content is all text.

Oh, and yes, I also run backups on Vultr. :)

Best of luck to you!

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3. Matthew Graybosch (hello (a) matthewgraybosch.com)

On Sat, 13 Jun 2020 14:49:07 +0000
James Tomasino <tomasino at lavabit.com> wrote:

> On 6/13/20 5:55 AM, Matthew Graybosch wrote:

> I run {https,gopher,gemini}://cosmic.voyage which I believe to be
> quite similar to what you're doing. 

I've been to cosmic.voyage a few times, actually. Lots of good stuff
there, and I love the premise. I actually plugged cosmic.voyage in my
ballots for the 2019 and 2020 World Fantasy Awards.

tanelorn.city is a little different, though. The name might be inspired
by Michael Moorcock, but there's no unifying premise or theme to what
people write there. You don't have to write Moorcock pastiches to be
welcome. :)

> I have a cron that grabs all the writing content, commits it to a git
> repo, and pushes it up each night. In fact, I do it with the wiki on
> the site too.

Thanks. I've implemented something similar with tanelorn.city users'
public_gemini directories. However, I think I'll combine it with a
strategy involving rsync and rdiff_backup that Thomas Karpiniec
suggested off-list.

> Best of luck to you!
 
Thanks. I appreciate the help.

-- 
Matthew Graybosch		gemini://starbreaker.org
#include <disclaimer.h>		gemini://demifiend.org
https://matthewgraybosch.com	gemini://tanelorn.city
"Out of order?! Even in the future nothing works."

Link to individual message.

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