alt Hacker NewsHow you gonna leave out the good parts like circa<year> so we can gauge the tech available then? Also, what about the tools you used to sync/backup to owner's house? My personal query, why did you move to freebsd? was it a different application/use? This is an awesome story, our modern approach would be to install nextcloud/owncloud with collaboration and rsync/syncthing to an offsite NAS (owner's house). As for your decision, I would have agreed to a directorship and hired a local MSP to do things the way I wanted. This would have allowed you to have your cake and eat it too. A lot of times, in these situations, all you need is trusted eyes and ears from outside the corrupted fold. This principle is used in the military and diplomatic core, there is a staffing structure, and then there is an XO, who is hired and controlled from HQ. This XO answers to HQ, not the local structure.
We're talking around 2009 — I don't recall the exact period, but that’s the era. For backups, I used rsync-based syncs and kept history by using hard links and rsync on top of those. I also had a Perl script that automated the whole thing, but I’ve long since forgotten its name.
As for the rest — I hear you, and I totally agree. But at the time, I was young and more focused on building things with healthy clients who genuinely wanted to create something good, rather than trying to salvage a situation that, honestly, was nearly beyond saving.
I switched the ALIX to FreeBSD for other tasks, and FreeBSD (with its native read only support) was perfect for the new workload.