mfsbsd VS tarsnap

I'm very new to BSD in general, but I find it very fun and interesting!

However, I need pointers to get started.

> You won't be spoon-fed, and are expected to have read the manuals and other documentations...

I read a lot of FreeBSD and NetBSD documentation to get to the point of compiling my own kernels, but I don't think I ever read about the equivalent concept of Linux cpio/initramfs for BSD. My minimal images use a UFS filesystem.

Here, after checking https://mfsbsd.vx.sk/ and https://github.com/mmatuska/mfsbsd/blob/master/scripts/mdini... I think mfsbsd is just a using tmpfs so it may not exactly the same thing as initramfs, that allows booting linux from a bzImage + initrd

I'll keep searching, it's not super high priority at the moment, but it's something I'd like to do with (Free|Net)BSD.

I suspect it depends on how much support and/or hand-holding you need from your hosting provider. I'd hesitate to run an unofficial build/image but I believe the alternative on DO is to use mfsbsd (a memory-file-system installer for FreeBSD) which is also an unofficial build/image.

The common answer here is to use mfsbsd which puts all the installer's requirements onto a RAM disk so you should (in theory) be able to pull the install media and plug in other devices as needed

I looked into this for a project a couple of years ago and ended up using mfsbsd instead.

https://github.com/mmatuska/mfsbsd

Tarsnap for configs and critical stuff (password database, emails).

Someone does :)

https://tarsnap.com

> Tarsnap uses a prepaid model based on actual usage:

> Storage: 250 picodollars / byte-month of encoded data

Colin Percival's tarsnap

In past threads, people have mentioned enjoying my Tarsnap (https://github.com/Tarsnap/tarsnap) code. I personally think that the spiped (https://github.com/Tarsnap/spiped) code is even better.

I prefer Vorta myself ( https://github.com/borgbase/vorta ) as it also has incremental and encrypted backups, as well as being a fraction of the price, but tarsnap seems to still be in very-slow development: https://github.com/Tarsnap/tarsnap , so I'd say from a quick look it's still trustworthy.

Each server also upload their configs and « important » data (my mails and git repos) to tarsnap 3. Tarsnap storage is not as cheap as B2, so I try not to upload too much data there, but it's reliable and easy to use. It was also my first backup solution, and barely cost me 10$ a year so I keep it as a secondary backup.

Not foolish! The Tarsnap client code is open source, but the license file prohibits anyone from using the code: https://github.com/Tarsnap/tarsnap/blob/master/COPYING

> Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, without modification,

Yes. For the curious,

https://github.com/Tarsnap/tarsnap/graphs/contributors