I think most people reading my blog would agree that backups are extremely important. So much important data is on computers these days: family photos, emails, financial records. So I take backups seriously.| The Changelog
What is Filespooler? Filespooler lets you request the remote execution of programs, including stdin and environment. It can use tools such as S3, Dropbox, Syncthing, NNCP, ssh, UUCP, USB drives, CDs, etc. as transport; basically, a filesystem is the network for Filespooler. Filespooler is particularly suited to distributed and Asynchronous Communication. Filespooler is a tool in the Unix tradition of “do one thing and do it well.” It is designed to integrate nicely with decoders (to handl...| www.complete.org
Sometimes we want better-than-firewall security for things. For instance: An industrial control system for a municipal water-treatment plant should never have data come in or out Or, a variant of the industrial control system: it should only permit telemetry and monitoring data out, and nothing else in or out A system dedicated to keeping your GPG private keys secure should only have material to sign (or decrypt) come in, and signatures (or decrypted data) go out A system keeping your tax rec...| www.complete.org
Anything that uses encryption to keep content away from spying eyes. End-to-end encryption is the best, because there need be no trusted intermediary. Some software projects are always fully end-to-end encrypted. Examples include NNCP, Syncthing, Yggdrasil, and Gemini. For more on encryption, see: OpenPGP tools: GnuPG (GPG) Sequoia PGP Age (Encryption) signify (not encryption, but cryptographic authentication) Links to this note Encrypting Filespooler Jobs With Age Like the process described ...| www.complete.org
Asynchronous communication is communication between two endpoints that doesn’t have to happen in real time or near-real-time. Compared to synchronous communication, asynchronous communication lets you trade latency for reliability. Asynchronous communication is closely related to the concept of store-and-forward networking and delay/disruption-tolerant networking. In fact, most asynchronous implementations are also store-and-forward and delay-tolerant, so these terms are often used intercha...| www.complete.org
In my writing about dar, I recently made that point that dar is a filesystem differ and patcher. We can exploit this property to do something really cool: build an Asynchronous rsync. What does that mean? rsync is a tool that has been in may *nix admins’ toolboxes for years. Typically used over ssh, rsync will compare the state of a local directory tree (or file) to the state of a remote tree, and efficiently make the remote match the local (or vice-versa).| www.complete.org
Keeping your data safe in the event of a disaster or compromise is important. That’s why we back up. Here is some information on backups: Backing up every few minutes with simplesnap on ZFS For hosting backups offsite, my 2021 Roundup of Unique Data/Storage Hosting Options can be useful. How and Why to use Airgapped Backups (see also Airgap) Links to this note Dar dar is a Backup and archiving tool.| www.complete.org