write intro texts for the various projects

content/dev/alex/_index.md

@@ -8,4 +8,24 @@ params:
           url: 'https://git.rustybever.be/Chewing_Bever/alex'
 ---
 
+Alex was created to solve an issue I'd been having: inconcistent Minecraft
+server backups.
 
+My original backup system involved compressing the server world and config
+directories in a tarball. While this usually worked, the command regularly
+failed due to conflicts while reading a file the server was writing to. Because
+the Minecraft server is unaware of the fact it's being backed up, it
+continuously writes data to disk, preventing the tar command from doing its
+job.
+
+My solution for this consisted of designing a process that wraps the Minecraft
+server process and interacts with its standard input. The Minecraft server
+accepts certain commands (`save-all` and `save-on`/`save-off`) that allow an
+admin to control when and if the server writes data to disk. Using this, the
+wrapper process tells the server to flush all data, stop writing to disk, and
+only resume writing after a successful backup has been created.
+
+This idea was then expanded to implement incremental backups, which greatly
+reduced the time and disk size needed for the backups. For reference, our
+~2.5GB world folder can be backed up incrementally in less than 5 seconds, with
+backups running every thirty minutes, without ever turning off the server.