I spent some time thinking about backup strategy, and I decided for my purposes, I’d like to handle the staging process (getting all the files put together), and I’d like the backup solution itself to simply upload the files – but since I want to do nightly backups, I’d like the backup solution to have […]
FreeBSD Backup Using dump and duplicity Read More »
The FreeBSD console is colorless by default – but most terminals and SSH clients these days support color. The benefits of colorizing your console should be pretty obvious. It makes your life a little easier – you don’t have to do as much mental processing.
FreeBSD – Colorize Your Console Read More »
The Duke URLGrabber package for Python makes it incredibly easy to retrieve files from remote servers, and it abstracts urllib2 for you in a protocol-independent way, so you can focus on your application instead of spending time working with Python’s built-in urllib2. On Windows and Mac OSX, by default, urllib2 (and therefore URLGrabber) will use
Python URLGrabber: Ignore System Proxy Settings Read More »
Whether you’re using FreeBSD for your workstation, a simple home server, or in a complex IT environment where reliability is critical, losing the data on your hard disk(s) is probably the worst type of failure you can have. I’ve already gone over a backup strategy for FreeBSD, but it’s best to try to prevent data
FreeBSD: Monitor Your Disks’ Health with Smartmontools Read More »
When Wonderful Remote first starts, you’re asked to enter your registration information (or leave it blank for the 48-hour trial), and then you’ll enter your TiVo’s IP address on your network. You’re then presented with the main screen, which provides a reference on the available functions. I went through and tried all of the options.
Control Your TiVo From Your BlackBerry Bold with Wonderful Remote Read More »
I previously discussed configuring JungleDisk on FreeBSD. It’s not quite the easiest to install since FreeBSD isn’t officially supported. To take that a step further, I’m now going to show what I do to back up my FreeBSD box at home. Update, November 2009: I am no longer using JungleDisk to back up my FreeBSD
FreeBSD Backup Using JungleDisk and Dump Read More »
I wanted to follow up a previous post with some additional comments. This past week, a popular social bookmarking service called Ma.gnolia went down and lost all of their users’ data. Their users were understandably angry and frustrated. Citizen Garden did an interview with the guy who created Ma.gnolia and he brings up a question
What’s Your Cloud Backup Strategy? Read More »
For those of you who don’t know, JungleDisk is a utility that allows you to back up data to Amazon’s Simple Storage Service (S3). Soon, it will also allow you to use Mosso’s Cloud Files service, which is similar to S3 but hosted by RackSpace. I recently won a free subscription to JungleDisk, thanks to
JungleDisk on FreeBSD Read More »
Over the past few years, a major paradigm shift has occurred in how (and where) our data is stored. We’ve had data online for quite a while – ever since the first “guestbook” applications appeared on peoples’ GeoCities home pages (usually right next to the animated “Under Construction” GIF). I’m not going to discuss identity
Do You Trust Your Data Online? Read More »
I am a strong believer that most non-IT people don’t take seriously the need to have a reliable method of backup for their important data. Just ask yourself: What happens when you can no longer access the data on your computer? It doesn’t matter what happens – you could or lose your laptop or have it stolen, or the hard drive in your computer could fail. Any way you look at it, your data is toast. What, then, would you do to recover it? It’s always a good time to think about backups, and to help, I’ll show you what I do.
A Simple Backup Strategy Read More »