Creating a Simple, Cheap, and Automated Backup Solution with Tarsnap

Background:

So I host a variety of small websites on a VPS at Ramnode (affiliate link). I’ve been extremely happy with their service, and their performance per dollar ratio. Previously I had been using DigitalOcean, but their VPS performance lately was a bit lacking compared to other providers (sorry DigitalOcean, I still love ya). As part of my evaluation of a handful of providers I performed extensive benchmarking to determine which VPS provider would be best for my (amateur) needs. It was also an excuse to use Excel again — oh Excel how I miss thee — but I digress.

I’ve been a very happy camper at Ramnode until I realized the weaknesses of having picked OpenVZ Linux containers vs. KVM virtualization which I’ve used in the past. Long story short, with OpenVZ containers the user (me) does not have access to much of the low-level system (including the kernel). This leads to problems with things like iptables logging, syslog, or when trying to access information about a given partition within your container. This lack of partition information unfortunately means that when you try to backup your data with a traditional backup solution like R1Soft you — as a lowly user — do not have the right permissions to read and then backup your data within your own container. Not a problem I said — Ramnode provides customers with regular backups. That was one of the reasons I picked them.

Well, that was the case until recently: https://clientarea.ramnode.com/announcements.php?id=368 They casually announced that they had disabled the weekly automated backup system. So that sucks, a lot.

My VPS provider decided to stop backing up my data (even though they sold me plan saying they would) and due to OpenVZ limitations many of the common automated backup tools simply won’t work.

So I needed to come up with a solution.

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NodePing vs. Pingdom — server monitoring

Pingdom:

Positives:

mobile app
large number of testing locations
10 checks at the yearly price is reasonably priced.
Built-in “PageDuty”-lite incident response is handy, though overkill for personal web servers.
I like the root cause analysis any time a check fails. Provides full connection output, response headers, etc. Extremely helpful when troubleshooting the cause of the failed check.

Negatives:

New website design is painfully slow and confusing.
Can’t add a new check via the mobile app
No option to specify host headers for a check — such as specify IP and specify the hostname directly.
No public status page unless you pay 2x per month.

NodePing:

Positives:

Free public status page
Website is fast and clean, though lacking some features
Pricing is attractive, even without a yearly agreement.

Negatives:

No mobile app
Relatively few testing locations
No option to specify host headers for a check — such as specify IP and specify the hostname directly.
Virtually nothing in the way of detail when a check fails. Also no easy way to go back and find a failed check after 300 successful checks have passed.

They both have a variety of checks — HTTP/HTTPS, UDP/TCP arbitrary port check, POP/SMTP/IMAP, and DNS checks. Both send me an email and push notification via Pushover whenever there’s an issue. Both use 1 minute checks, and confirmation from 3 locations before an alert is triggered.

I like StatusCake, but their checks seem spotty at best. They report all kinds of intermittent downtime when every other monitoring service sees zero issues. Not exactly great when your server monitoring tool is lying to you.

I also tested Monitus and CopperEgg. Didn’t like either one. I use New Relic’s free plan which is handy, also Linode’s Longview tool with the free plan.

Ultimately it looks like I’ll be going with Pingdom, even though it’s not my favourite choice.

How to download any song from Favtape.com

I’ve had my doubts about posting this information because quite honestly I’m a big fan of Favtape.com and I don’t want to see them get in trouble and/or close. That being said, I suppose it can’t hurt that much to put this information out there. Here’s a quick and simple way to download any song that you can play on Favtape.com

Use Firefox (it’s not required but we all know that when you use IE god will kill kittens).
Go to Favtape.com (duh) and find a song that you want.
Click the name of the song to begin playing it.
When you hover over the name of the song you should see something like this in the status bar: http://favtape.com/play/**Artist**/**Song**.mp3Â (**Artist** and **Song* obviously replaced with the appropriate information). Click on the image to the right if you don’t understand what I just said.
Now you can’t simply right click and “Save link as”. You actually can’t right click at all. So how do you get the MP3 file?
Method 1 – no tweaking involved:
1. Open a new tab in Firefox (control + t).
2. Click + hold the Artist – Song Name and drag this onto the new tab you just created.
3. That’s it! The song should not start to download, but you’ll need to rename it because it’ll save as “fetch.mp3”.
Method 2 – tweaking the Firefox settings:
1. In Firefox goes to Tools –> Options
2. Go to the “Content” tab
3. Find “Enable Javascript”. To the right of this you will see “Advanced” click on this.
4. Find “Disable or replace context menus”. Uncheck this box.
5. Click “OK” and then “OK” again.
6. Now you can right click on the Artist – Song Name and select “Save link as”.
7. That’s it! You can now just save the MP3 file we saw in the status bar earlier.
8. Important Note: You may want to re-enable the “Disable or replace context menus” option because many web applications use this functionality.

Interesting Links 5.30.08

TimesMachine – New York Times – TimesMachine can take you back to any issue from Volume 1, Number 1 of The New-York Daily Times, on September 18, 1851, through The New York Times of December 30, 1922.
SuperLame! Comic Word Balloon Engine – Simply add speech bubbles to photos you upload. Useless? Sure, but fun.
Introduction to CSS3 – Part 4: User Interface – CSS3 brings some great new properties relating to resizing elements, cursors, outlining, box layout and more.
Introduction to CSS3 – Part 5: Multiple Columns – CSS3 introduces a new module known, appropriately, as multi-column layout. It allows you to specify how many columns text should be split down into and how they should appear.
Design Critique: Blog Platforms – Most designers are familiar with the relative pros and cons of different publishing tools â€“ but what about the websites of the blog platforms themselves?
TinySong – type a song, get a link, share the full song with your friends. It’s really that simple. Works great for those “have you heard this song?” moments.
Adobe Labs – Adobe has released the first betas for Dreamweaver CS4, Fireworks CS4, and Soundbooth CS4. Note: betas only work for 2 days unless you have an existing CS3 serial number.
Fixing Twitter – I am getting sick of talk about twitter and itâ€™s scalability problems and also frankly unqualified people slagging the service for itâ€™s unreliability and also coming up with stupid ignorant answers to how it should be fixed.
Read at Work – it looks like you’re being productive, but you’re definitely not. Kind of funny, but I can’t imagine actually using it.

Interesting Links 5.16.08

picasa2flickr – A simple “plugin” that allows Picasa users to upload their photos to Flickr.
Pimp my Outlook Today – I’m a big fan of TiddlyWiki so it seemed an ideal candidate for integration with the Outlook Today screen.
CSS Attribute Selectors: Built-In Classes – Classes and IDs arenâ€™t the only ways you can describe the elements in your website in order to style them. You can also make use of attribute selectors.
Introduction to CSS3 – Part 1: What is it? – This first tutorial will give you a very basic introduction to the new possibilities created by the standard.
Introduction to CSS3 – Part 2: Borders – CSS3 takes borders to a new level with the ability to use gradients, rounded corners, shadows and border images.
Introduction to CSS3 – Part 3: Text Effects – CSS is already reasonably versatile in the way in which text can be displayed, but still constricts design in quite a few areas. CSS3 goes some way towards removing those limitations.
15 Great Examples of Web Typography – It may be that not all the sites listed here are to your taste, but itâ€™s hoped that something will inspire you.
Web Based Workflow: Tale of the $0 Studio – In the past few years weâ€™ve seen an explosion of free, web and open source alternatives to popular, often expensive, design programs. With this workflow itâ€™s all pure profit!
10 Things I Learned from Mental Detox Week – Getting rid of technology (or most of it) for one week.
5 Psychological Experiments That Prove Humanity is Doomed – A number of psychological experiments over the years have yielded terrifying conclusions about the subjects.
Ad*Access – The Ad*Access Project presents images and information for over 7,000 advertisements printed in U.S. and Canadian newspapers and magazines between 1911 and 1955.