Archive management scripts

Although Tarsnap archives are cheap, they are not free, so many people prefer to delete (some of) their old archives. The most well-known method of removing (or "rotating") old archives is the grandfather-father-son scheme (also known as the "time machine" scheme due to its use in a well-known Apple product).

There are many helper scripts which automate backups and backup rotation. Here are some of the more widely scripts, in rough order of popularity. This is not an exhaustive list; searching github for "tarsnap" or google for "tarsnap script" reveals many more options.

• Tarsnapper: Python script which implements a grandfather-father-son backup rotation scheme. Custom scripts can be run before or after running backups (for example, to create a database dump).
• ACTS (Another Calendar-based Tarsnap Script): Very portable /bin/sh script which rotates through 31 daily archives, 12 monthly archives, and an indefinite number of yearly archives. Supports pre-backup and post-backup scripts.
• Feather: Python script to create a highly flexible system, allowing different types of backups to be taken at different intervals on the same computer.
• Tarsnap-generations: Bash script to cycle backups in a grandfather-father-son scheme. This project has not been updated since 2012, but many forks are available.
• Tarsnap Manager: Go script to create and remove backups.
• tarsnap-cron: Cron scripts for creating and deleting backups.
• tarsnap-backup: Haskell script to create and remove backups.
• Tarsnap Always Rotating: Bash script to manage grandfather-father-son archive rotation.
• snapbak: Python script to manage rotating backups.
• prunef: Go script to produce a list of backups for deletion.

Software deployment tools

Scripts have been written to deploy Tarsnap to various configuration management and software deployment tools.

• Chef-Tarsnap: Tarsnap module for Chef.
• Puppet-Tarsnap: Tarsnap module for Puppet.
• Ansible-Tarsnap: Tarsnap module for Ansible.
• Tarsnap Docker image: Tarsnap module for Docker.
• Heroku Tarsnap backups: Tarsnap module for Heroku.

Other Tarsnap-related tools

These scripts assist with other Tarsnap tasks.

• redsnapper: Simple tool to run parallel tarsnap clients to do faster extraction of archives with lots of files.
• Archiving cryptographic secrets on paper: Printing your Tarsnap key file as a 2D barcode can simplify the restoration process if you lose the digital copy.