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Off topic: This is a great example why github stars don’t mean anything, such a great tool like this is ~600 while other repos that are basically toys compared

Off topic: This is a great example why github stars don’t mean anything, such a great tool like this is ~600 while other repos that are basically toys compared to this have ~12k stars!

mekster 3y ago
Can you be more specific? What makes this so much better than others?
- r1ch 3y ago
  For me one of the key features is the integrated TLS server, so my backups can be transferred over the internet at decent speeds. Tools based on SSH all suffer from the SSH window limit and will never reach high speeds over the internet.
  - sgarland 3y ago
    I missed that when I was comparing them - good point. Right now my ZFS backups are on the same LAN, and stuff going off-site isn’t using send/recv, but this is an excellent point.
  - havnagiggle 3y ago
    You have just blown my mind. I can't believe I did not consider this before. Much thanks!
  - candiddevmike 3y ago
    I can't find anything about this SSH window limit, or really anything around SSH being slower than TLS, aside from a limit to the number of concurrent sessions. Any links?
    - r1ch 3y ago
      https://www.psc.edu/hpn-ssh-home/hpn-ssh-faq/ https://www.psc.edu/hpn-ssh-home/hpn-ssh-faq/
  - ilyt 3y ago
    What are you talking about? Is this some '00s problems that were fixed long time ago and now you're repeating some myths ? I'm getting same (~300Mbit) speeds via nginx+ TLS as I get via SSH for just file download
    - r1ch 3y ago
      It is indeed an old problem (small fixed size buffers) but it hasn't really been fixed, they only increased the buffer size. You'll only run into this on high bandwidth, high latency connections, e.g. between NYC and AMS - you'll be limited to about 300mbps with stock OpenSSH. https://www.psc.edu/hpn-ssh-home/hpn-ssh-faq/ https://www.psc.edu/hpn-ssh-home/hpn-ssh-faq/ has a patchset that fixes the problem.
thejosh 3y ago
Niche tools usually have low star count.
alias_neo 3y ago
They do though, don't they? They indicate interest or popularity. Their purpose is not to demonstrate the quality or usefulness of a thing, but how popular it is. When I choose libraries or tools for work, let's say I need a Go library for something; I use the star count and the commit activity together to determine whether a project is popular enough (vs others) to use over the others.
jraph 3y ago
Maybe users using such a tool are less likely to use stars. I don't look at stars or fork count. To see if I should use a tool or a library, I'll be seeking technical blog posts and reviews. I don't like how software development is centering around GitHub, and how it is handled like a social network. Wha's more, you can't know why someone added a star. Maybe they found something random cool in the project, or found it looks cool but haven't really tried, and most importantly, you don't know if they added a star after some time, building some solid experience with the library or the tool. This metric doesn't even exist for projects not developed on GitHub and many worthy ones are indeed elsewhere. And I suppose many of us don't use stars on GitHub, so you are only ever going to measure "popularity" aka "I liked something here" of only a part of the population that is willing to star things. It's also probably a self-sustaining process: people are not going to give stars to alternative projects they haven't tried... because the first one had more stars in the first place! This feature is probably quite misleading in the end. In a previous job, the number of forks and stars, as well as recent commits played an important choice when choosing a library. I hated this. It lead to some bad choices and technical dept. In short, when you are considering stars, you are looking at a self-sustained process, sustained only by people who participate in it, and that is GitHub-specific (excluding interesting projects that happen to not be hosted there). This thing probably pushes the actual popularity of some projects for reasons that are likely very random, at times. GitHub is not making us a favor with this feature. Commit history or activity in the bug tracker is somewhat important (though sometimes a project doesn't receive so many commits because it is stable enough). The social media gamification things on GitHub like counts and badges should just be ignored, don't fall for it and its addictive aspect.
- tamimio 3y ago
  Couldn’t agree more!
sgarland 3y ago
This has 695 stars, pyznap (what I’ve been using) has 187 stars, and sanoid has 2.6K stars. They all seem roughly at parity in terms of features, with one notable exception: Prometheus endpoint (and a preconfigured Grafana dashboard). I monitor mine with a fairly hacky script that parses logs and then sends a push to my phone. It’s very brittle, and I’ve found edge cases where it fails, but reports success. I’ll probably give zrepl a try based solely on that.
- tamimio 3y ago
  I meant repos in general not specific to zfs/backup tools, without mentioning some of these repos as it might end up in flame wars.
Femolo 3y ago
I do my zfs snapshots with a few lines of script with what zfs offers out of the box. I like this script but never heard from it and probably will not look at it for a while.

Off topic: This is a great example why github stars don’t mean anything, such a great tool like this is ~600 while other repos that are basically toys compared to this have ~12k stars!

mekster 3y ago

Can you be more specific? What makes this so much better than others?

r1ch 3y ago
For me one of the key features is the integrated TLS server, so my backups can be transferred over the internet at decent speeds. Tools based on SSH all suffer from the SSH window limit and will never reach high speeds over the internet.
- sgarland 3y ago
  I missed that when I was comparing them - good point. Right now my ZFS backups are on the same LAN, and stuff going off-site isn’t using send/recv, but this is an excellent point.
- havnagiggle 3y ago
  You have just blown my mind. I can't believe I did not consider this before. Much thanks!
- candiddevmike 3y ago
  I can't find anything about this SSH window limit, or really anything around SSH being slower than TLS, aside from a limit to the number of concurrent sessions. Any links?
  - r1ch 3y ago
    https://www.psc.edu/hpn-ssh-home/hpn-ssh-faq/ https://www.psc.edu/hpn-ssh-home/hpn-ssh-faq/
- ilyt 3y ago
  What are you talking about? Is this some '00s problems that were fixed long time ago and now you're repeating some myths ? I'm getting same (~300Mbit) speeds via nginx+ TLS as I get via SSH for just file download
  - r1ch 3y ago
    It is indeed an old problem (small fixed size buffers) but it hasn't really been fixed, they only increased the buffer size. You'll only run into this on high bandwidth, high latency connections, e.g. between NYC and AMS - you'll be limited to about 300mbps with stock OpenSSH. https://www.psc.edu/hpn-ssh-home/hpn-ssh-faq/ https://www.psc.edu/hpn-ssh-home/hpn-ssh-faq/ has a patchset that fixes the problem.

thejosh 3y ago

Niche tools usually have low star count.

alias_neo 3y ago

They do though, don't they? They indicate interest or popularity. Their purpose is not to demonstrate the quality or usefulness of a thing, but how popular it is. When I choose libraries or tools for work, let's say I need a Go library for something; I use the star count and the commit activity together to determine whether a project is popular enough (vs others) to use over the others.

jraph 3y ago

Maybe users using such a tool are less likely to use stars. I don't look at stars or fork count. To see if I should use a tool or a library, I'll be seeking technical blog posts and reviews. I don't like how software development is centering around GitHub, and how it is handled like a social network. Wha's more, you can't know why someone added a star. Maybe they found something random cool in the project, or found it looks cool but haven't really tried, and most importantly, you don't know if they added a star after some time, building some solid experience with the library or the tool. This metric doesn't even exist for projects not developed on GitHub and many worthy ones are indeed elsewhere. And I suppose many of us don't use stars on GitHub, so you are only ever going to measure "popularity" aka "I liked something here" of only a part of the population that is willing to star things. It's also probably a self-sustaining process: people are not going to give stars to alternative projects they haven't tried... because the first one had more stars in the first place! This feature is probably quite misleading in the end. In a previous job, the number of forks and stars, as well as recent commits played an important choice when choosing a library. I hated this. It lead to some bad choices and technical dept. In short, when you are considering stars, you are looking at a self-sustained process, sustained only by people who participate in it, and that is GitHub-specific (excluding interesting projects that happen to not be hosted there). This thing probably pushes the actual popularity of some projects for reasons that are likely very random, at times. GitHub is not making us a favor with this feature. Commit history or activity in the bug tracker is somewhat important (though sometimes a project doesn't receive so many commits because it is stable enough). The social media gamification things on GitHub like counts and badges should just be ignored, don't fall for it and its addictive aspect.

tamimio 3y ago
Couldn’t agree more!

sgarland 3y ago

This has 695 stars, pyznap (what I’ve been using) has 187 stars, and sanoid has 2.6K stars. They all seem roughly at parity in terms of features, with one notable exception: Prometheus endpoint (and a preconfigured Grafana dashboard). I monitor mine with a fairly hacky script that parses logs and then sends a push to my phone. It’s very brittle, and I’ve found edge cases where it fails, but reports success. I’ll probably give zrepl a try based solely on that.

tamimio 3y ago
I meant repos in general not specific to zfs/backup tools, without mentioning some of these repos as it might end up in flame wars.

Femolo 3y ago

I do my zfs snapshots with a few lines of script with what zfs offers out of the box. I like this script but never heard from it and probably will not look at it for a while.