One of my favorite Firefox extensions I have been using for a year and a half is called Foxmarks. Foxmarks is a bookmark synchronizer that keeps your different Firefox installs all updated with the same set of bookmarks. For me there is nothing more frustrating than not having that one cool link you saved on your computer at home and for the life of me, can’t remember how or where I got it to begin with.
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Tag Archive: backup
This weekend I finally got around to checking out OpenVZ. With lots of prodding from Scott, not to mention lots of help from Scott, I got this thing installed rather quickly. I pretty much followed Scott’s latest article Intro to OpenVZ: Part II. I started with installing CentOS 4.4 using the custom minimalist install and updated everything. BTW this machine is an old Dell 2Ghz with 512MB RAM and 40GB drive. My plan is to actually use one of the virtual private servers (VPS) as a production backup server. Other VPS’s would be just for fun and possibly exploration of other distributions.
So in short after having my bare bones install here is my quick and dirty easy to follow steps from Scott’s article:
- cd /etc/yum.repos.d
- wget http://download.openvz.org/openvz.repo
- yum install ovzkernel
- nano -w /etc/sysctl.conf with these changes:
- Set the default kernel in grub to the new one
- Reboot using the new kernel
- yum install vzctl vzquota
- service vz start
- yum install vzpkg vzyum vzrpm43-python vzrpm44-python
- yum install vztmpl-centos-4
- nano -w /vz/template/centos/4/i386/config/default.list appending this:
- vzpkgcache -f centos-4
- vzctl create 101 –ostemplate centos-4 –config vps.basic
- vzctl set 101 –ipadd 192.168.0.101 –save
- vzctl set 101 –hostname vps101 –save
- vzctl set 101 –nameserver 192.168.0.1 –nameserver 192.168.0.2 –save
- vzctl set 101 –userpasswd root:areallycoolpassword
- vzctl set 101 –onboot yes –save
- vzctl start 101
- vzctl enter 101
# On Hardware Node we generally need
# packet forwarding enabled and proxy arp disabled
net.ipv4.ip_forward = 1
net.ipv4.conf.default.proxy_arp = 0
# Enables source route verification
net.ipv4.conf.all.rp_filter = 1
# Enables the magic-sysrq key
kernel.sysrq = 1
# TCP Explict Congestion Notification
# net.ipv4.tcp_ecn = 0
# we do not want all our interfaces to send redirects
net.ipv4.conf.default.send_redirects = 1
net.ipv4.conf.all.send_redirects = 0
yum
mc
links
system-config-date
nano
Okay so that is it in a nutshell. Then this is where I start getting into trouble with my wild ideas. I mentioned wanting to make this my backup server and I normally use Dirvish, but this time I want to try out BackupPC. Now I also have a nice 300GB drive I have used for my backups and I planned on just mounting it inside this new VPS. Problem is I couldn’t figure out how to give it enough diskspace quota. The most it would give was from my 40GB drive and that was a 34GB quota. So I called Scott and pretty much just decided to do LVM (logical volume management) and merge the drives together to make it look like one big drive. This however entailed starting from scratch again as I’m pretty lazy when it comes to trying to figure out installing something like this after the fact.
So I find my single CentOS CD and attempt to boot it but my crappy old Dell has an abused CD-R drive. So I borrow the one out of another Dell and off we go. So when I get back to the point I was last, I run this:
vzctl set 101 –diskspace 315621376:315621376 –save
This gives me 301GB disk space to work with in my VPS. Problem is I was told by Scott there is an rpm for BackupPC but currently there are no rpm’s for CentOS. So this brings me to another task… create another VPS with a distribution that includes rpm package management for BackupPC. I found out the hard way that these guys are yet another that uses caps in their package name and caused me a bit of headache searching for it.
I picked FC-5 for the new VPS as it seems to be the latest to carry BackupPC. To do this I needed to build the template similar to building the CentOS template above.
yum install vztmpl-fedora-core-5
The rest was pretty much as stated above. Of course I forgot to edit the default.list and had to later go back and update the cache after already creating the VPS with FC5. So I needed yum installed on this to fill in the blanks and Scott to the rescue again; I could install this from the host with:
vzyum 102 install yum
This is it for now. I have yet to configure BackupPC. I will have to blog about it later.
Okay so today’s troubles weren’t exactly Microsoft related. I was scheduled along with another coworker to attend an online Made2Manage virtual class. I was first to log in and called in soon after for the voice side of the class. Probably about 10 minutes into the class I loose sound in the phone. So I informed the instructor that I was heading up to the coworkers office to attend from there. Then I found she too was not getting sound. All of the office was down! We could call each other inside the office and receive DID calls from the outside, but no incoming to the main number nor could we pick up an outside line to make calls. So I borrowed a cell phone from someone and call our Executone office and they were going to call back on the cell. Needless to say… this techie could not figure out how the dang thing worked to answer it! I kept bringing up the address book. Then when I got it figured out, it wasn’t the call I was waiting for! Oh well, they showed up and fixed it after some time by just resetting the cards. Learning more and more each time he comes out to fix us up. I was telling him if he kept that up they would become obsolete.
Me and the family went to our home town this weekend. Didn’t want to since we had planned to for Easter too. I figured we’d better now before it got any closer. It was supposed to be a non event visit. Turns out they made it a combined birthday party on Sunday for my daughter and nephew who’s birthdays was on the 22nd. We were only there for about 24 hours. Sometimes those short trips are the best but they also kill the weekend. I’d say most of my weekends feel like three days but this kind of trip made it feel like one day. I had a great talk with my grandmother. She is a devout Catholic/Presbyterian. Attends church both Saturday and Sunday to both churches. She also tithes to both! I gave her the “Purpose Driven Life” book for Christmas. I almost thought it was the most meaningful gift I ever gave her. She expressed a satisfying thankfulness for the gift. This trip I see she has read 7 chapters. Doesn’t have a lot of time to read it she says. Not sure if that is the case but rather a hard to swallow conviction maybe. Her beliefs go deeper into tradition than I could expect her to give up. She thinks the death of so many churches is because of the parents. She thinks having a personal relationship with God means feeling his presence as a physical touch. She prays in memorized prayer. She has a problem with the woman’s position God has given them in the world. This was an awesome opportunity to tell her about what my relationship was like. I told her that the death of so many churches are due to their inability to change tradition to accept younger people. Our church is well aware of this and employs ongoing changes to the music worship ever year. Not to mention many other youth inviting places to server. Having a relationship with God could include feeling his touch, but there is a more indescribable feeling when you are close to Him. Having a continual chit-chat with Him throughout the day. Not getting stuck in repetitive meaningless chants. The Lutheran church we attend there sounds so robotic! Every prayer is written in the handouts and there seems to be no prayer from the heart. Everyone prays with their eyes open reading the words instead of listening. Not going to mention the off key tone deaf singing. But then again God does love all forms of worship! My point here is finding the reason why churches are dying today. If God has answered me, he has mentioned that nothing will save these dying churches. Only new born-again churches will rise. Some will occupy the same buildings, but most will not be of the same denomination. Religion is spelled as “D-O”, what I can do to get what I want. Christianity is spelled “D-O-N-E”, what has been done already. Jesus has already made the biggest sacrifice for our eternity and we can’t repay him. To attempt to repay him is an insult. Like paying someone back for giving you a birthday present! I would be insulted for getting the gift back. So I pray that my grandma would think about what I had said and that God would open her mind to a new rebirth.
I think I’m going to just give up on the virus updates. There are just too many to keep up on to mention here. I recommend updating your data files every hour! 
Last Friday I determined this SCSI tape drive we have here has a bad motor for driving the tape reals. Talked with Certance, who handles Seagate tape hardware now. The tech said I needed to call their warranty dept for a swap and pay ~$165 for a refurbished unit that has a warranty of 90 days. The gal I spoke with wants $250! So I flat out said she must be pulling my leg because I could get one elsewhere for less without sending them my broken one. Without the core they would charge another $500 something! So I have now found a few sites selling refurbished units for less like I said without having checked, plus some do 90 days and others do 1 year!
Was unable to post Thursday. Bresnan had upgraded some hardware causing major outages and thus changing my IP again. I had a bigger skuff about this with our business account and the fact that we pay for a static IP. I wanted a discount because of this as well. Point being that they missed our account for calling before the outage. I want to make sure they understand that we are serious about keeping the same IP we pay extra for. On the flip side I got a new bill from USA Digital. They charged us $150 for not returning the cable modem the corporate office already conceded that we own and said they would let the local office know. In my talking with the corporate office again, they got that straightened… I wasn’t going to bring it up but now that this communication problem keeps rolling around with them, I had to mention that we have not been getting our $5 discount for the past 2 years then. So she was going to check into that and get back with me. Sometimes it doesn’t pay to keep dragging your feet. I was going to just let it go, but since they just want to milk us I couldn’t resist.
The Men’s Mentoring Ministry meeting went off last night. Got out about 10PM. Made for a long evening spent at the church with the normal Wednesday night service before that. I mentioned what I guessed the meeting would be like yesterday. I wasn’t too far off! What I feared most was that we’d all be lined up and those in the known click crowd would be team members and hand pick from those on the wall for teammates. But as I had guessed it… the place was packed with very ambitious guys wanting to disciple and mentor. That is awesome you know! A rather large number on hand were very open about speaking out and even against some ideas. Today I (as one who didn’t speak up) emailed the leader of the ministry my thoughts and suggestions. As I am already a part of a couple mentoring groups wasn’t looking for more ppl. I wanted more resource information and training opportunities. The outcome of this meeting has possibly opened my accountability partners eyes to a real need for commitment in getting together. We both suffer sins of the flesh yet need mentors ourselves.
The home PC is still not working in Windows. I had gone into safe mode and removed the hotfix driver and the hardware device listing. Again… in normal mode it detected the device and installs it. Up to the install everything runs fine, but after it’s installed it crawls again. Checking the BIOS I only have the option of PCI or AGP as the video selection. Oddly I did notice the on-board NIC was enabled which I changed, as well as sound was disabled!?! Sound was never a problem however and to the best of my knowledge the change made no difference. So I’m running out of plans. I guess next I just need to go with the flow. You know… “can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em”. Well I will try deleting the Matrox driver and keep the Intel installed or just dump them both. Then try reinstalling the Matrox drivers later. Currently the display properties do show that it is using the Matrox drivers. My guess is that a shared library got overwritten.
Got some progress out of the QC wireless today! Found a driver and firmware update available. The new config utility works great and easier to get around in. Only one problem and that is it’s a bit slower in bringing up the network. But hey, it beats having to set the WEP password every boot.
This week must have had a hex put over the DLT tape backup unit. Friday one workstation was turned off by mistake. Monday the boss turned his PC off. Tuesday had a tape failure. Wednesday I accidentally left the tape cleaner in the drive. However I was able to remember that type of error will start the job the moment it gets a writable tape and so I had the correct tape in for Wednesday. Tonight will prove the broken spell. I should ping the bosses PC since he left on vacation…
Yet another virus out this afternoon! ClamAV calls it Worm.SomeFool, Symantec coins it W32.Netsky.B@mm. So far we have had only four.
This afternoon I offered a suggestion to the church IT manager. Currently the sermons online are in the RealAudio format. It is also packaged as a streaming method. I mentioned that several ppl have asked me how to download them. This proves to be a much larger task for them than they expected. View the ram file for the actual URL and wget the ra file to your disk. Then I run a vplayer command that plays it through RealAudio to a wav file, then I use that to burn an audio CD. What’s so hard about that? So I suggested offering a couple quality versions of a mp3 format. He took the bate! So now he wants me to draw up a plan for the transition. We don’t want to scare the folks already used to this system at hand. Cool, then we could measure the stats to see what ppl like. Now if I could figure how to incorporate using Linux to do this from home. Time to think about this now.
Not a good start this morning. Didn’t even finish shaving this morning before my computer trouble found me! Kassie had trouble booting up the home PC. We have a Dell 2350 with a 15″ flat panel and a add in NIC and add in graphics card. Sometimes that on-board stuff is just crap! The on-board video couldn’t handle high end colors and resolution even in Windows. The on-board NIC kept freaking out in Linux causing me to restart the network to repair. All that got very tiring. So I looked at the Windows updates manually last night and saw a video driver was available. Installed and reboot… into Linux then and wrote yesterdays post and shutdown for the evening. So this morning as Kassie boots up, Windows sat at a black screen. I remove the driver in safe mode but upon entering normal mode again it reinstalled and instantly brought the PC to a crawl. 10 to 8AM and I just couldn’t wait to fix it. So no games for the kids today. However Linux is running just fine. Kassie hadn’t been in her profile for quite some time now. But I did see she had done some emailings. So this evening maybe I can get to that turtle and rip out the hotfix. If not then I’ll have to just reinstall the other drivers once again to override it.
Today at work… The banner ad cleanup seems to be working fair. Nobody has come complaining to me yet. I have seen a few blank spots on pages where the ad should have been but some of these folks need about a week to figure that something was wrong.
Looks like I’m going to get bumped down to #9 in the Gallery forum. Paour is firing off messages like a mad man! He has just released a major release for the Gallery Remote and of course, the trouble tickets come roaring in. I haven’t been in that arena for a bit. My last glitches were proven to be too much for me to debug with him.
I got on an online chat panel with Linksys this afternoon. Trying to troubleshoot the dang wireless access point. This gal didn’t provide a lick of knowledge on the the topic. All she could offer is restart the AP. Or can you ping it? I ended up changing it to use no WEP and it works. I did find that the authentication method had to be set to “both” as in open and (I assume) shared. Seems setting it to either one of those would not work. In that event of turning off WEP I had to re-enter the new keys and noticed key one was different. I should have known. Some how it was buggered up and that was probably it. But as usual around here… nothing ever goes without something else breaking. The QC dept. PC now connects to the secure AP but not after a reboot. So in attempts to go back to the insecure AP I can not get it to connect there at all now. I wrote a note to leave the PC powered one with it working on the secure network. Another priority job to tackle I guess.
The boss is leaving again tomorrow so I need to sync up his “My Documents”. This proves to be a slow and tedious task. I tried using rsync but then I would need to mount both PC’s and that proved to be another stumbling block. Cant seem to mount the damn XP laptop! I’m sure I had this idea once before, but I don’t recall what part I stumbled on. Transferring via MS Networking between XP and 2000 also proves to be tedious. Seems MS had a patch that screwed up network performance.
I just might not get to the home PC. I have church this evening and then a mens mentoring meeting afterword. That should be odd. Guys can’t do much before the comfort level increases. I have a feeling the place will be packed with guys who want to mentor rather be mentored. Well we all need some level of mentoring… it’s just a matter of pride I guess.
Our ISP OneEighty Communications has had major problems with their service since yesterday. When I called, they seemed to have an idea of what it might be and were on it. Today they had no clue yet. I was going to be bummed if I couldn’t post today! Anyway they seem to have it under control now just before noon. Almost seems faster than before too.
Now the QC wireless isn’t connecting properly. I’m thinking it might be an incompatibility issue. Looking into the driver/firmware versions. So It can still connect to the farther but open AP.
First thing this morning at work I had two users with no connection to the AS-400. I used to see this once in a while and just had to recreate their profile for the connection. Luckily I didn’t forget to try that and it worked fine for both. Seems to have been sparked by some administrative duties my coworker was performing to eliminate extra sessions that were laying around. Will have to keep that in mind next time it happens.
Got the dual VCR/DVD unit set up at home now. Haven’t tested any media out yet but was just configuring it for channels and date/time. Seems that it can get the date/time automatically via broadcast from local channels. It didn’t set over night so I just set it manually this morning.
Put the UPS in-line. Seems that one of my plugs on the wall is a little loose and the battery kept kicking in so I moved it to the bottom plug and all is well. Must be a short. Also played with the Seagate tape drive. I recalled working on it once before. Seems that it fails to turn the tape. The only tape motion is by the rubber wheels tugging it but who knows. I’m going to check if they might repair it for a descent price. They are worth about $150. Who knows, maybe I’ll buy it from the company for my home server.
Wow the USA Digital techs came already this morning to pick up their antennae. I think they planned to take their modem as well but I got the manager trained well to call me about everything. I told them to hold off taking it because I wanted to investigate the possibility that they may have taken ours during one of many service calls.
Got a call earlier this week from a fellow Christian friend wanting my assistance with his Quickbook troubles. Seems during an upgrade to 2004 software left him with a malfunctioning application. In attempts to go back to the previous version, he snapped the CD in half trying to get it out of the case. Bummer! Talking with Intuit via India, they offered to restore him for around ~$700. So today I have been scouring the net for a bootleg copy somewhere. He at least has the license to make it somewhat legal.
Installed the replacement PC for Building B this morning. Problem is the optical mouse is a USB mouse and there is no USB connector on the PC. Dates this somewhat eh? But hey this Dell smoked the IBM with less of hardware even. Go figure. So I am working together a shopping list. I need a couple mice and a 5 port switch. Optical mice run nice in the dirty place we have here. Need the switch to replace the base 10 hub that connects our conference room and Building B to the LAN. The wireless to Building B is a max 11 anyway but the conference room needs much faster with Made2Manage classes coming in there. It run like a turtle when we had our M2M consultant come in last week and that was with just an educational company.
I tried upgrading the firmware using Internet Explorer and that seemed to do the trick. A bit disappointed that they Linksys might require such a browser to do such a simple task. Oh well I seem to be buying less and less of their products these days anyway. Had two 5 port switches go bad on me in less than a year.
My brother called me last night from the Big House in OR. Sounds like he has picked up some interest in Linux! So I think I will send him a book on this OS. We seem to have a lot of the same passions. Now if he would only open his mind to what the Lord has to say. I sent him a three book series of John Elderidge’s. Mostly for the Wild at Heart book. Never got a chance to ask him about it tho. He just seemed very interested in a lot of security and such for computers. Well so do I but it’s very hard to grasp even at my status.
Thursday mornings I get together with a few guys from our church for breakfast and do a Bible study. We have been reading a chapter a week out of the Purpose Driven Life by Rick Warren. This is my third time through this book. We often go off on tangents and today’s was on baptism. The oldest in our group seems to be thinking a lot about the purpose for being Born Again as an adult. By this I mean being baptized by water submersion. He, like others in the group was baptized at birth and went through confirmations later in life. Our leader mentioned some one might think this as a scape goat thinking that all I need to do is baptize my kids early and they would be saved automatically. No more worries. Too sad for thinking that way. We all agreed that it’s not required for being saved. I put my thought in saying I did it for two reasons: Worship and as a demonstration of my love for the Lord as a public display. Not as some private back yard hot-tub baptism. I think those who do it that way have a misunderstanding of baptisms purpose. It’s not a form of works! I too was baptized earlier as a child at 8 for the Mormons. I knew at the time I was too immature to understand why I was doing this. So shortly after accepting Christ again back in the Summer of 2001, Kassie and I were baptized again. I denounced the previous baptism based on a disbelief in what I was doing. Besides… my god-parents were split up later in life and were not model godly people. We also spoke about the purpose of god-parents. We don’t do sponsors in our church for dedications or baptism however, but I’m speaking about those churches that do. I often get disgusted when ppl choose ungodly ppl as god-parents for their newborn child. Some even think the purpose is for choosing guardians in the event the parents pass on before the child matures. I find that hardly legal. But today so many ppl choose their cool friends or even their siblings. Not even sure the thought passes their minds as a test. “Do I want these ppl to care for my child after I’m gone?” How does that work anyway if you choose two sisters? Oh the dumb things we humans instill as traditions in our lives!
This afternoon has been fairly productive! Got some petty cash and stopped at the CNC shop to pick up the equipment for USA Digital to cancel the account. Get to their office and find the gal is out to lunch and to return about 2:13PM. That’s just crazy! So I had to pick up a couple switches and a couple mice. Swing through the Arby’s drive thru and get a Jamoca milk shake and back to USA Digital. Had a few minutes to wait yet. Their records state that they own the cable modem! Man oh man! So I get back to the office and try digging up some receipts. No luck. So I figure that with all the troubles we have had with the wireless connections there, they must have switched out our modem with theirs. That could have happened over a year ago. Besides… even if I had the receipt I would need the MAC address to prove. That way they could track down where mine went also. So I called Bresnan to get a leased modem from them before pulling out USA Dig’s. They only charge a $3 lease fee. Besides that Bresnan forgot to not change us the fee anyway. Guess it worked out for him then. So now I have the optical mouse on Building B’s PC and replaced the 10 base hub with the new 100 and bumped the speed for the master port and it’s rocking and rolling!
Tomorrow I need to put my ups in line and test out an old 8mm tape drive out. Just realized it is a 24GB drive! My current one is a 20GB Traven.
This morning started off on the Windows box by running defrag a second time after I left it running last night defragging. Had a bit-o-trouble getting it to go online since the Internet Config Wiz was broke. Seemed to have this kind of trouble with various apps since we came down from Windows ME to 98SE. Finally found one wizard to work from it’s exe and off to the races I went! The bosses son only called me two times today asking how I was doing
Backing up nightly pays off. I had converted another user here at the office from the old Netscape to Mozilla for email. I normally don’t remove the old email app until I know they are happy with Mozilla. Today he accidentally goes into Netscape and proceeds to delete all his Inbox email. Now we run most email from an IMAP server and he doesn’t have a Trash box, it just deletes. Needless to say he waxed them. Fortunately he had read the new ones for the morning and didn’t need them anymore. I keep an rsync copy on my workstation. Every night via cron job, it syncs up and another cron job BRU puts it to my local tape drive. Since he come to me quick enough I only needed to transfer from my rsync copy not the tape. Quick and easy! I thank Scott D for that idea; he does just about the same thing at his office 
A little worried that a discussion on the Gallery forum I help moderate was turning sour. Had a user complaining of a “heavy security bug” with the Nuke version of Gallery. Well there isn’t a Nuke version; the standalone just plugs into some CMS web apps. “I do understand your concern Prokurist, but you’re sounding as if this was [is] some commercial software at the mercy of it’s paying customers (copyright). This is the gnu generation (copyleft).” I thought that was kind of a classic response 
