Tarsnap died

[jerry <jerry@tr2.com>]

Greetings tarsnap users.

Not Happy.  But it's my own fault....

I've been using tarsnap for many years.  In general, I do NOT trust the 
"cloud", and do not use google/microsoft/etc to store any sensitive 
data.  The combination of encryption on my home server and deduplication 
is compelling.  I do not know of any big-commercial service that offers 
comparable.  Yup, truly paranoid :).

 I have a script that upchucks my business & personal data once a week.  
Was running about a dollar a day in backup costs because I'm too lazy to 
figure out what to back up or not back up on a regular basis.

Yesterday, I had reason to restore a file that I had stupidly deleted, 
and none of my on-site backups had it.  Nothing
super important, just the latest version of the source code for a ham 
radio gadget I had created.

So I said "tarsnap --list-archives".  The network timed out.  OK, I 
tried pinging the magic tarsnap IPv4 address - that did work.  Telnetted 
to the magic port# of the magic IP...that worked.

I could only guess that I had so many archives that things timed out 
while the tarsnap server was trying to list them.

Came down this morning to try to jigger the code to time out slower.  No 
luck.

Then I tried logging into my tarsnap account on the management web page. 
 "Unknown user"....huh?

OK, I searched though my emails and sure enough there was one of those 
"your tarsnap balance will run out in 7 days" messages from back in 
November.

I get LOTS of emails.  I have had the same email address since 1991 ( 
UUCP back then ) and I am surely on every spam list known to man.  Right 
now, my inbox has over 6000 messages.  That's maybe six months of 
accumulation despite my best efforts to constantly file, respond, and 
delete them.  And running spamassassin to delete crud before it even 
makes it to my inbox.

If I miss an email for a day or two, it's PAGES back when I get back to 
the machine.

This "one terse email then delete your data a week later" thing just 
didn't work this time.

How to get around it?  I could write a procmail script to do something 
when anything comes in from tarsnap.com???
Do what?  Send a text message to my phone?  For me, those are even worse 
than emails.  I follow emails religiously,
text messages not so much.

In my business, I do have access to a web API that sends snail mail ( 
postalmethods.com ).  Have it send me a letter for each "7 days till 
death" email?  Might not get to me fast enough.

A procmail script that fires off a cron job that sends me an email an 
hour for the 7 days?

An asterisk script that calls me up on the phone and says "Whaaaah 
whaaaah whaaaah tarsnap alert!  TARSNAP ALERT!" ?

I guess since November, my cron task has been cheerfully upchucking 
backups to that bit bucket in the sky.

I reasonably expect to be in business another 10 years.  I suppose I 
could guesstimate how much tarsnap I will
use over that period, and just send Colin that much $$.  But will HE be 
in business for 10 years?  What if he
gets run over by a bus?

                             - jerry@tr2.com