Tarsnap

I've been using Tarsnap for a few hours, but I can't see any usage shown on the web interface. What's going on?

All Tarsnap accounting is currently done daily at approximately midnight UTC. Wait until after that point and your usage should be visible. (Payments made should show up immediately, however).

What happens when my account runs out of money?

You will be sent an email when your account balance falls below 7 days worth of storage costs warning you that you should probably add more money to your account soon. If your account balance falls below zero, you will lose access to Tarsnap, an email will be sent to inform you of this, and a 7 day countdown will start; if your account balance is still below zero after 7 days, it will be deleted along with the data you have stored.

Why did my daily storage usage cost change when I haven't uploaded or deleted any data?

Tarsnap's storage cost is priced per month, and different months have different numbers of days.

Is Tarsnap storage reliable?

Yes. Data archived via Tarsnap is stored on the Amazon S3 storage service (the original version, not the new "reduced redundancy" version).

Why doesn't Tarsnap --list-archives print archives in alphabetical (or chronological) order?

The archive metadata which contains Tarsnap archive names and creation times is encrypted; so it's impossible for the Tarsnap client code to figure out in what order the archives should be listed until it downloads and decrypts the metadata. Once it has done so, it might as well just print out the information immediately — if you want a particular order, sort(1) is your friend.

Have you considered accepting bitcoins as payment?

Yes, I have considered it. No, I don't plan on accepting them in the near future. While bitcoins seem to be based on a firm footing as far as security is concerned, I'm rather dubious about the economics; it's hard to see how a currency which is designed to be deflationary can achieve any sort of stable value.

If and when the value of bitcoins stabilizes, I'll reconsider them; but as long as the value is changing so rapidly, accepting bitcoins would be too much of a headache.

Does Tarsnap run on Windows?

Only via Cygwin.

I've forgotten my password; how can I reset it?

Please contact the author.

I've lost the key file for a machine; how can I delete its data so that I'm not stuck paying for it forever?

Please contact the author.

How can I do X?

Please contact the author.

Why isn't my question listed here?

Either it isn't asked frequently enough, or it was forgotten when this page was written. Please contact the author.