Using wordpress

Michael Dale

If I were to use wordpress, I'd use this. Much faster.

OSX Tiger Gold Master

Michael Dale

Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger build declared gold master I can not wait!

email about setting up a cron file

Michael Dale

I received an email earlier today from a reader who has a better way to manage and run backups. Here is a slightly edited version of the email.

I tackled the same problem at my own company and I think my solutions a little nicer than yours so I thought I'd share it with you :)

Ok so this is how I do backup for the local server at my company:

General Steps:

1. Take a snapshot of everything I want to backup (every night)
2. Archive and compress that snapshot (once a week)
3. Upload that snapshot to a remote location (once a week)
4. Leave the compressed archive lying around in a samba share so I can  burn it to DVD from my desktop machine whenever I get around to it.

The process is very similar to yours, the main difference between our implementations is that I use rsync to speed everything up and my scripts log their actions. I also wrote a couple of tests scripts to automate testing and prove everything works. The whole thing is a little hacky and I'd like to make the format of the log files look nicer but it does work :) It's also a really really fast way to do backups. The technical details are:

1. Use rsync to copy your data from it's current folder to the snapshot folder. This is really fast as rsync only copies the differences not the entire tree. Logs on my server shows it usually takes about 3 mins. I call this script 'snapshot.sh'
2. Use tar to create an archive.
3. Gzip the archive with a version of gzip that has the '--rsyncable' patch applied[1]. I call the script that does 2 and 3 'archive.sh'
4. Upload the compressed archive to the remote server using rsync. I call this script 'upload_archive.sh' (I'm really creative)

I wrap these scripts in two scripts called 'everyday.sh' and 'weekly.sh' depending on what needs to happen on each of those days. There also a little timer script that writes the time each command takes.

For connecting to the remote server I use ssh with keys so I don't need to worry about storing passwords in any of the scripts.

The really cool part of this whole thing is in step 4 where rsync will only copy the different bits in the compressed archive. I don't know exactly how this brilliant piece of magic works[2] but it's save me and my clients quite a bit of time and money.

[1] The patch is already in redhat's gzip so hopefully it's in the default freebsd one. Nothing in the man page about it yet though. [2] I first read about it here where the guy provides some explanation of what its doing: http://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-devel/2005-January/003327.html

 

--

Myles Byrne Web Architect

IPv6 tunnel

Michael Dale

I have setup an IPv6 tunnel through AARNET E:\>tracert vee-six.telstra.net Tracing route to vee-six.telstra.net [2001:360::3] over a maximum of 30 hops: 1 22 ms 19 ms 18 ms 2001:388:f000::246 2 39 ms 53 ms 40 ms gigether0-2-0.bb1.a.syd.aarnet.net.au [2001:388:1:5001:204:e0ff:fe00:1022] 3 19 ms 17 ms 19 ms gigabitethernet2.7304.syd.aarnet.net.au [2001:388:1:5006:20f:23ff:fea3:ef02] 4 26 ms 26 ms 39 ms 2001:388:200:4::2 5 26 ms 24 ms 26 ms vee-six.telstra.net [2001:360::3] Trace complete. I'll have a play around with it some more later. :)

The case of the crashing iPod

Michael Dale

I’ve got a Generation 4 20gb iPod that I’ve had since late last year. It is a pretty cool device and is built well. But I always had the problem of it crashing on me once or twice a week. Worse than my Windows box! Now I also used to charge it via Firewire on either the PC or the Mac laptop. But anyway a few months ago I decided to setup my dock for it properly. I didn’t want to have to turn the computer on to listen to music. So I decided to play everything through my iPod. The dock is connect via the lineout to my amplifier and also connected to the 240v AC to Firewire power converter. Since I’ve been charging my iPod through the mains power it hasn’t crashed since. It’s the same Firewire cable as I used to charge with on the computer. I also charged the thing on two different computers. So for some very odd reason, the iPod crashes every now and then if you don’t charge it at least once a week through mains power. So now my iPod is as stable as my Mac. Cool.

Spring Timetable

Michael Dale

Updated Spring timetable can be found here

Spring Timetable

	Monday	Tuesday	Wednesday	Thursday	Friday
This will most likely change.
8am					Networking 2 (31471) Itl, 07 TBA
9am		Introduction to Collaborative Systems (31472) Lec, 01 TBA	Object-oriented Design (31469) Lec, 01 TBA
10am
11am			Object-oriented Design (31469) Itl, 01 TBA	Distributed Computing Architecture (31470) Lec, 01 TBA
12pm		Introduction to Collaborative Systems (31472) MTP TBA		Distributed Computing Architecture (31470) Tut, 01 TBA
1pm			Object-oriented Design (31469) Tut, 07 TBA
2pm
3pm				Distributed Computing Architecture (31470) Itl, 04 TBA
4pm
5pm
6pm
7pm
8pm
9pm

I am able to change that 4 hour networking session to Wednesday, but I'm unsure if I want to...

Autumn Timetable

Michael Dale

Let us see if this comes out correctly, I think I'll need to hack at my filter thing...

Autumn Timetable

	Monday	Tuesday	Wednesday	Thursday	Friday
This will most likely (90% chance) change.
9am	Database Fundamentals (31474) Lec, 01 CB06.03.28	Information, Classification and Control (31468) Lec, 01 CB03.05.10		Object-oriented Programming (31465) Lec, 01 CM05B.01.11
10am
11am		Information, Classification and Control (31468) Itl, 04 CB10.02.430
12pm	Database Fundamentals (31474) Tut, 02 CB10.02.460
1pm				Object-oriented Programming (31465) Itl, 03 CB10.03.210
2pm				Object-oriented Programming (31465) Tut, 07 CB10.04.470
3pm
4pm	Principles of Distributed Computing (31466) Tut, 08 CB10.03.410
5pm
6pm
7pm
8pm	Principles of Distributed Computing (31466) Lec, 01 CB06.03.28
9pm

Wordpress 1.5

Michael Dale

Wordpress 1.5 has been released and can be downloaded here

Entourage 2004 [added screen shot]

Michael Dale

I was looking a purchasing Office 2004 for Mac as I would like Word and Entourage (email client). I mainly need Entourage 2004 as it can connect to Exchange servers (the older versions can't). Anyway today I work I was handed a copy of Entourage 2004, they have a site license for it here. Cool! So I'm going to install it and see how I like it. Hopefully it's good. I'm looking forward to it! Pity it didn't come with Word :p [ADDED] Now here is a screen shot of the program http://www.bluetrait.com/images/Entourage.jpg

Mac mini

Michael Dale

Apple released a low-end headless Mac, the Mac Mini. The newest Mac offers the following features: 1.25GHz G4 or 1.4GHz G4 for $US499 (listed at $AU799) or $US599 (listed at $AU949) 6.5 inches wide and 2 inches tall 2.9 pounds Up to 1GB of Memory supported (comes with 256MB) ATI Radeon 9200 iLife '05 Keyboard, Mouse, and Monitor sold seperately It can be found on the apple site here: http://www.apple.com/macmini/ They have also released the ipod shuffle, a flash based mp3 player. Found here: http://www.apple.com/ipodshuffle/ The Mac mini looks pretty sexy, and I know of a friend who really wants one. I might look at getting on too. Although it isn't any faster than my ibook. Still it is a very small sexy little computer. These things will also run linux and other unix operating systems. Quite a few people are looking to turn these things into mini servers.