Tink vs Mondo Rescue
Mondo Rescue writes a bare-metal image. That is not a mechanic. Tink installs in one command, watches the Linux host, explains what is wrong, and helps you fix it.
Mondo Rescue writes the ISO. Tink answers “why is this VPS sick?”
Accidental sysadmins land on Mondo Rescue because a bootable restore image looks like insurance. Then the host volume fills, nginx dies, and the last mondoarchive still looks complete — no mondorestore match for host fill. A filling /var is a Tink warning; it is not a Mondo Rescue job unless you scraped cron mail and watched it.
Tink is the other job: detect the issue on the machine, say why it happened in plain English, propose the command, and run it only after you approve. Keep using Mondo Rescue if you already run bare-metal images. Use Tink if you run Linux servers and want a mechanic.
| Feature | Tink | Mondo Rescue |
|---|---|---|
| Setup time | 30 seconds (one curl | sh command) | Hours — mindi boot media, NFS/ISO/tape targets, exclude lists, then a host that still has no mechanic after the last mondoarchive exits 0 |
| What you get | Working monitoring, diagnosis, and approved fixes | A bootable disaster-recovery image and a mondorestore path. Disk fill, nginx, Postgres, and certs stay your problem until you SSH past the last mondoarchive |
| Pricing | Free (Scout) / $9 / $29 per machine per month | GPL and free. You still pay the person who owns the VPS after the last ISO looks complete |
| Hidden costs | None — fully managed | A quiet image that is not host fill, a second disk or NFS share for the ISO, and a second tool to tell you the box is sick while mondoarchive still looks finished |
| Monitoring approach | Agent on the server — CPU, disk, services, logs, certs, ports | mondoarchive, mondorestore, and mindi boot media. Mondo Rescue does not watch a quiet cert or host auth.log after the last ISO burned |
| Configuration | None after install — heuristics and AI | Which filesystems, -Oi ISO vs NFS, exclude paths, mindi kernel, and which failed mondoarchive actually pages you |
| Plain-English diagnosis | Yes — AI explains root cause, impact, and fix | You read mondoarchive logs and the mindi boot screen, then SSH into the host to change the Linux box Mondo Rescue already sits on |
| Fix execution | Proposes and executes approved commands with an audit trail | mondoarchive and mondorestore — Mondo Rescue cannot free host disk, rotate a cert, or stop SSH brute-force unless you restore the whole machine |
| Alerting | Built-in across 8 channels | Not a Mondo Rescue job — cron mail from a failed mondoarchive plus a separate monitoring tool have to fire |
| Predictive alerts | Yes — disk fills in ~6 days, memory and CPU trends | Not a Mondo Rescue job — an ISO date does not forecast a quiet host filling up |
| SSH brute-force detection | Built-in — parses auth.log every scan | Never — Mondo Rescue does not read host auth.log, journald, or firewall state after the last image landed |
| Machine offline detection | Agent presence monitoring with multi-channel alerts | Silence if the host dies after the last mondoarchive — unless you built a separate uptime check |
| Public status page | Shareable URL with 90-day history | None — Mondo Rescue has no customer-facing status page for the Linux host |
| Weekly fleet digest | Automated Monday digest + daily brief when issues are open | None — an ISO recap is not a plain-English fleet narrative |
| On-call tracking | Built-in /oncall command + incident acknowledgment | Not included — wire failed mondoarchive into PagerDuty or another incident tool |
| Conversation interface | Telegram, WhatsApp, web dashboard, CLI | mondoarchive logs and SSH. No mechanic you text when /var filled and the last ISO still showed finished |
| Learning curve | None — works after install | Steep — live vs offline mondoarchive, mindi boot, NFS vs ISO, and which failure is the image vs the running host |
| Best for | Freelancers, small teams, accidental sysadmins (1-50 Linux servers) | Teams that already run Mondo Rescue for bare-metal restore, not a sick-VPS mechanic |
When Mondo Rescue is the right choice
Keep using Mondo Rescue when you already want that exact job:
- Bare-metal disaster recovery — you need mondoarchive, mondorestore, and a mindi ISO you can boot, not a mechanic.
- An existing image stack — NFS/ISO targets, exclude lists, and restore from media matter more than guest nginx, certs, and SSH on a quiet VPS.
- An existing lab or nested setup — Mondo Rescue already runs, the last ISO already exists, and someone owns the backup disk.
- Hosts that only page on archive or cron death — you already run failed-mondoarchive cron mail, not a sick-box SSH loop.
The real cost of “just watch the mondoarchive log”
Mondo Rescue writes a bare-metal image. A working ops loop for five Linux boxes is not:
- A healthy ISO still means you SSH into the host and change the box by hand when it gets sick later
- Host fill, nginx, certs, and SSH brute-force never appear unless a separate tool scraped those signals and a rule fired
- A filling /var is a Tink disk warning on every scan — Mondo Rescue will stay quiet until the next mondoarchive fails
- A single VPS with a dead agent still needs a mechanic, not another disaster-recovery ISO
For a 5-server team, Tink Mechanic at $45/month is cheaper than the engineer who keeps failed-cron notifications alive after a green mondoarchive, and every scan includes a diagnosis a quiet ISO list will not type.
No Mondo Rescue mondoarchive homework. No silent host. One command install.
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