Archive for the 'Computers' Category

Just upgraded to KDE 3.5.1 on my work box, which includes an upgrade to Konqueror. Not sure what the full set of changes are but there is at least one fix to the CSS rendering that means the text on Bloglines is black again. During KDE 3.4 the text was the same blue as their links, making it pretty tough to read.

Now that I’ve started backing up data to a remote server, the importance of the copy on my laptop has been reduced dramtically. I recently came across an interesting post about securing your data if your laptop gets nicked.

Basically the idea is to setup a cron job to check for a file on a remote server (probably your website), and if that file is there, destroy all data on the laptop. It’s an interesting concept but having an automated task to wipe out all your data is a frightening one. Something I’ll think about once my backups are a lot more comprehensive, and if I ever start taking my laptop outside of my bedroom.

My backups with rsyncbackup worked like a treat. I decided to just let it do it’s thing and rsync the initial backup rather the try to save time and copy the data myself. It went very smoothly except for two minor glitches:

• It helps to point at the correct directory
• It helps if you have permissions to read the files you want to backup

Once those problems were fixed it just worked. Incremental backups now take less than a minute. The only tricky bit is automating it. Normally I’d just setup a cron job but my laptop spends most of its time in hibernation, so for the time being I’ll just do it manually.

Like with most people I don’t do regular backups, and at best I only copy it to another hard disk. This has proved sufficient in the past and I haven’t lost a serious amount of data. In fact I can probably dig up every email I’ve sent and received in the past decade. Part of the neglect is that I was just shuffling data between PCs in one room, so that only really covers me against hardware failure. Fire and theft, I’m screwed.

Why am I thinking about backups again? A couple of things. First was my recent hardware issues, for a while I thought about scrapping my desktop and only being left with my laptop. I’d also like to make the desktop into a media PC and could use every ounce of disk space. There are several gigs of backup living on it that could be better used for a hard disk recorder. This would make my laptop the only copy of my data, I’m not comfortable with this, a laptop is fragile and prone to theft. If I was to make it my only PC I’d need proper backups. The second thing is the proliferation of online storage companies. Now there’s a viable place to store things offsite.

But why pay for something I already have? With DreamHost I have 26GB of storage and 1TB bandwidth a month doing nothing. Time to put it to use.

The tool I chose to use it rsyncbackup. It’s a perl script that lets you define various sets to be backed up, specify several destinations and have them backup at different times. At first the config files can be a little confusing but they’re reasonably well documented. Here are my test configs (the default config files have more detailed examples):

backupset.conf

[default]
test|test|true|

destinations.conf

test|ssh[key=id_dsa]:user@host:~/backup/laptop|true|

sources.conf

##################
# SOURCE FILE
##################

# This file includes all sources
# Syntax:
# tag|path|conditionalShellCode|rsyncoptions

test|local:/home/miles/test|true|-a

Then you can run it with:

rsyncbackup -b

N.B. This assumes you’ve got a ssh key pair and you’ve setup your remote server to accept it. If your key has a password, you’ll also need to be running keychain to automate this process.

One slight hitch I encountered was that it wanted the executable and all the config files to be in a directory called ‘backup’ in your home directory rather than in the directory structure in the zip file. A quick glance shows it’s hard coded in the script, that can be sorted out later.

The test run went smoothly so I’ll try it with some chunkier data. But I think for most of the data I’ll bzip2 it copy it over manually to prep the backup directories. No point it letting it take longer than it should. Another hiccup I can see is that my current wifi driver (hostap) doesn’t like large transfers, i.e. it has a habit of dying if you copy a large file. But this was only locally and maybe the bandwidth restriction of my ADSL line will keep it alive. If it fails I can always fall back onto ethernet.

Amarok have announced the beta of their next version, ‘Fast Forward’. One feature I’m exciting about is the improved iPod support. They’ve switched to use libgpod, which is supposed to add a lot more features than the kioslave they used to use. I’m hoping this makes Amarok into a true iTunes replacement and kick starts me into transferring my music from a dormant Windows machine to a Linux box.

Recently I’ve starting using the FM radio on my phone for music. But a recent change in work policy has meant I have to be in the office by 9.00, this has the unfortunate side effect that for half my walk I have to listen to adverts/news/travel info instead of music. Time to dig out that iPod.

The Nvidia card decided to come back to life again so I could continue my upgrade but it still didn’t want to work in X. I found a Matrox G550 for £20 on eBay. Stuck it in last night and now everything is working like a charm. Only slight hitch was in my rush to find a card I failed to notice the card was designed to fit in a low profile case, but that was nothing that a pair of pilers couldn’t fix.

Another way…better leave the credit card in the wallet until I have a chance to sleep on it.

What’s a reliable video card for Linux? Google says: Matrox G550. Let’s see if I can find one on the cheap.

Update: Damn my greed. I found two G550s on eBay with a Buy It Now of £12, but there was also an auction ending this morning so I bid on that instead. It looked like I could get one for £4, but of course I got outbid at the last second and the two other auctions for £12 have been snapped up. Now the cheapest one is hovering around £30, maybe it’s a sign.

Just put the old card back in and the box failed to boot and spat out one long beep and three short beeps, which means “No video card or bad video RAM”. The video card is seated fine and I reseated it to make sure. How much do I hate computers, let me count the ways…

Turns out I actually have a GeForce2 MX-400, the GeForce2 Ti was living in a Windows box. I switched the cards and got the same response from the Ti. So that confirms it’s a driver issue not a hardware one. No I really regret chucking out that Matrox…