My old backup method was a little cumbersome. To ensure a good backup set, I’d take down the virtual machine, mount the VM storage on the host (Xen), then perform an rdiff-backup of the entire file system, before bringing the VM back up again. This happened daily, automatically, around 3:30am...
Below is the 3rd of 6 questions from a reader. I definitely don’t have all the answers, but I’m not short on opinions. ;)
Previous articles:
Part 1 – LVM+JFS+RAID | Part 2 – Service Virtualization | Part 3 – Virtualizing Media Storage | Part 4 – Hosting Email
duijf asks:
Q3: I intent (si...
Sometime on Monday the database that we run our blog software on became corrupted to the point that accessing the blog wasn’t possible for hours, perhaps many, many hours.
I don’t know how long the error existed, just that I created a few new articles in the morning and didn’t check...
This weekend, my 3 yr old VirtualBox VDI storage for this, my primary virtual machine, was getting close to 100% filled. It was a 10G partition that started out as a 6.06 installation, then was upgraded to 8.04 and finally to 32-bit Ubuntu Server running 10.04. To get a GUI, I added LXDE a few minu...
Below is the first of 6 questions from a reader. I definitely don’t have all the answers, but I’m not short on opinion. ;)
Part 1 – LVM+JFS+RAID | Part 2 – Service Virtualization | Part 3 – Virtualizing Media Storage | Part 4 – Hosting Email
duijf asks:
I have a total of 5 qu...
May 2021 Update
Added kernel, header, module removed command to purge them from APT.
Clarified /forcefsck options, slightly.
Jan 2020 Update
A little cleanup.
June 2018 Update
The big ideas below haven’t changed. Really the main change is to using apt instead of aptitude or apt-get for pac...
Some days I feel like a broken record. For the last 5+ years, ever since USB v2.x has been available, people have been spending WAY TO MUCH to have an inferior portable hard disk. We won’t get into all the reasons that you’d want an external hard disk here – just know that they ar...
I like backups. I like them more since losing many, many GBs of data over a decade ago – before I got backup religion.
Many of the long term readers know that I’m always looking for a better backup method.
Back-In-Time
Rdiff-backup Isn’t Perfect
VM-Explorer for Backups
I’ve bee...
I was going to create a Top 10 List of 2010 here. Then started looking through the articles and some constant themes can out.
Virtualization For Desktops and Servers
Tagged as Virtualization
Laptop Virtualization
VirtualBox Performance Tips
VirtualBox on Ubuntu
KVM on Ubuntu
Win7 and...
We all get computer viruses, eventually. There is nothing anyone can do, but whether it is a small inconvenience or a major computer-doesn’t-work-for-weeks issue is up to you.
It doesn’t matter which operating system you have. Viruses have been written for it. It is true that since 92% o...
It had to happen eventually. Regardless of how careful we all are, if we run MS-Windows-something, our PCs will get infected. One of my family members, who lives a few states away, got infected with at least 1 virus, probably a botnet and a keylogger too.
I’m working on a plan to deal with th...
One of the main reasons that people give for not performing backups is that it is too difficult. The Back In Time program solves that issue for anyone using Linux, Ubuntu, Redhat, Slackware, etc. Both Gnome and KDE version are available.
Back-In-Time uses file system hardlinks to manage snapshots ef...
Here’s a simple one question test for whether you have good backups or not.
Question: If any of your main hard disks started making a loud clicking sound right now does that idea freak you out or make you nervous?
If you have any answer beside, “No, bring it on” then your backups ar...
I like rdiff-backup to backup your HOME directories and Virtual Machines efficiently. Ok, that is a little understated, I LOVE rdiff-backup.
So, every 6 months or so, when it lets me down in some way, I have to recall all the good things that is actually does solve. Things like:
Efficient backup ...
Each of us use a computer for various reasons. Some just want a system that works, without any hassle. Most of us want to run specific software, work with specific file types, connect with everyone else, and possibly just do what the people around us are doing to be the same.
I’ll be as honest ...
I came across a short article on the Free Software Foundation building a federated social network solution and figured a few of my readers would be interested....
What’s that saying? Some days you eat the bear and other days the bear eats you.
Or perhaps Stupid is as stupid does fits.
Ooops is something you never want to hear your system/network admin say. I’ve heard it said elsewhere and then watched as 200+ NASA servers all started rebooting. No...
Maintaining a computer with all the patching and updating required these days is tough. It is almost impossible to keep everything patched on the most popular OS out there, even for nerds like us. For non-computer people, it is impossible. Often, software updates have costs to get the new version too...
Over the years, I’ve been using this blog to help myself remember how to do things and to share some great tools and techniques with you. I figure it is time to recap some of those articles whether they are computer, financial/retirement, or just interesting things....
The script below was created as part of an Alfresco upgrade process and meant to be run manually. This is fairly trivial cold backup script for Alfresco 2.9b, which is a dead release tree from our friends at Alfresco. It hasn’t been tested with any other version and only backs up locally, but...
You’ve heard it over and over. Backup, Backup, Backup. You are magically supposed to know how to do it and make it happen. This time, I’ll show exactly how I backup my HOME directory and manage those backups with rdiff-backup.
I’ve gone into why rdiff-backup was selected previous...
I came across an old article that I wrote on backups that had some clock times for the different VMs. Since that article was written, I’ve changed the backup methodology from rsync to rdiff-backup.
dms44 → 1m:52s Alfresco
crm46 → 3m:36s vTiger
xen41 → 3m:10s Typo
pki...
As I ponder how to build a redundant file server that serves Linux, Solaris, VMware, Xen, VirtualBox, FreeBSD, FreeNAS, TiVo and Windows systems, a few interesting articles have come to light.
A home file server using ZFS
Snapshots into the cloud
Backups with versioning
10 Reasons You need to Co...
rdiff-backup rocks, mostly. But there are times when it doesn’t work as expected or doesn’t work at all. Usually, the not working at all part is a cockpit error, but sometimes not.
Key rdiff-backup features
Simple 1 line backup command; rdiff-backup source target
Reverse Incremental ba...
Recently, I’ve been running IT for a small business. Backups and Disaster Recovery are critical for us AND our customers. With our background in enterprise solutions, we were limited in knowledge for low-end solutions that didn’t cost an arm AND a leg to implement. High end solutions fro...
