Choosing a new file backup "system"

"Hey you're a computer person.  How you backup your stuff?"

"I hate to admit it, but less often and in different ways than I should."

Yep, it's time to get going with rsync, or a package that uses it.  (This is a Linux blog, but Windows and Mac users will find the following useful as well).

In the past, I've duplicated important data to a secondary hard drive on occasion.  At some point, I've burned some of it to cd.  There are problems with this.

For those of you who aren't well-versed in data storage and backup theory:

Considerations:

• backups should be done regularly
• backups must be verifiable (a backup that isn't working is useless)
• backups should probably be done automatically (or else we forget to to them and and cry in our pillows later)
• backups should be done on a reliable medium (CDs/DVDs may not suffice, neither will the USB stick if you let your cat use it as his toy)
• backups that save new stuff since the last backup are ok (aka differential backup), but occasionally should save the whole thing too
• for the paranoid, back up on two different mediums in different locations (if you copy stuff from your hard drive to another hard drive, CD and USB stick and then house catches fire, you're still screwed)

For home use, you may want to consider tradeoffs for some circumstances.  You may accept some risk for the sake of convenience.  For example,

• If you don't have much that's important, then maybe it's not worth effort of backing up off-site.  Acknowledge that the risk of the hard drive or CD dying is much higher than the computer and disc catching fire.

• Using CDs for backup can be risky.  CDs/DVDs burned at home have a limited shelf life. Some authorities on the matter estimate 5-10 years before it disintegrates or data loss happens, but a crappy lesser-known branded disc will likely be even more susceptible to failure.  Sometimes you'll get lucky and it will last a long time, but you never know until you need to use it a few years down the road.  If you burn to disc, caveat emptor.

Don't worry, pressed discs from a manufacturer are different, they last a lot longer.  They're not made via the same methods you use at home.

Cloud/Internet storage raises other concerns a lot of people don't realize.  Whether you send something in email to yourself, save something in skydrive, google documents, or elsewhere, or use dropbox, beware the fine print and risk.

- you're trusting another entity to "keep it safe" for you
- some items are illegal to store (movies, music, etc.)
- some items you really shouldn't store (really private info)
- storage can cross international boundaries, which may be subject to other laws.  As a Canadian, I have to give this more consideration as much of my online presence resides on servers in the United States. 

Even if it doesn't cross boundaries, there may be other circumstances you don't expect (ie. a Slashdot user noted that Dropbox will unencrypt your data and hand it over to the law, possibly without a warrant.)

Even some cloud storage claims they encrypt (privatize) the contents so no one can see them, however, consider these places also scan the content to check for illegal content.  Think about that for a minute.  That means the data is private to the general public, but not to thousands that work at that company.  And if you picked a poor password, or if the company that has a security flaw that leaves them open to hacking, your stuff REALLY isn't private at all.  If you're considering internet/cloud, beware the risk (and make sure you pick a good password).

My recommendations for the average schmo:

• copy exceptionally important information to a trusted family member, or to media you keep in a safe deposit box (A friend of mine uses Quickbooks, as does his Dad.  They swap backup files to each others' computers via USB stick on occasion.)

• use tape media when possible (tape is the gold standard for industry - it's slow but resilient).  Remember still that tape is susceptible to magnetic fields, so keep it safe from anything that generates a field.

• use hard drives over CDs.  If buying a hard drive, do your research first, some models for certain years are notorious for kicking the bucket way too early.  If buying CDs, buy brand-name, not some weird crap at the dollar store.  Actually, stay away from the dollar store for media unless you don't mind it being potentially temporary.  Ask yourself how the dollar store got it so cheap in the first place... that's right, either the factory doesn't have high standards, or the some batches frm a better-known company don't meet quality standards.

•  use USB sticks if you're not a schmuck who always looses stuff.  Buy one that you keep attached to something, like your keys.  Buy one that has an integrated cap that you can't lose (protect the plug end when possible).  And for the Love of God, NEVER wiggle a USB stick when inserting it or pulling it out.  Usually the side that's labelled with a light or the USB log is mean to be up when you insert the thing.  If you break the plastic around the four metal prongs, you can easily end up bending the prongs and  shorting your computer.

The USB sticks that have "U3", "protection" or some advertised variant on them technically do protect the average person from finding your lost stick and accessing the contents.  However, they're hackable to anyone who knows what they're doing, and very annoying otherwise (unnecessary software installed on every computer it touches).  Some are so annoying they actually don't work on a machine you don't have administrative privileges to (i.e. your work computer).  So it's up to you, but I think they're crap.   Then again, I don't ever put anything too personal on my USB drive.  Nah, they're still crap.

• Store less important stuff in the cloud.  I use Google Docs for some stuff, but it's for stuff I might need to work on elsewhere, but isn't too personal.  The most personal thing I had on there is a documentation about an apartment I used to have (I had to initiate terminating the rental contract.)  Since I was in the middle of moving, I decided creating that document on Google Docs was probably more secure than moving my computer to a new place and having it dropped, etc.  I needed the document accessible because I needed it quickly available in case of a dispute.  If it's moderate importance, store a copy on your computer back home every now and then.

• I've only known one person to have one of the newer all-in-one hands-off backup systems.  It's basically a box you plug into you computer, and comes with some software.  She used it to back up her karaoke files, but then it seemed to die.  I'm not sure if she doesn't know how to use it, of if it actually died.  This system may be an option, but as I am unfamiliar with them and don't even know what brand/model she had, I have no opinion on their usefulness.

With any backup system, realize that it's not infallible.  Maybe we'll happen to pick a bad hard drive or bad DVD despite our research.  What you have to decide is how much effort you're going to put in to migitate any risks of the medium or methods you choose.

New Methods

I need to get serious about my methods, but I'm still a Canadian with a cheap Ukrainian background, so I won't be running out to buy a tape backup system.   Up to now, I'm been using what I call the PUP method (procrastinate until panic).

Current methods:

• burned some music a few years ago to DVD
• burned some old coursework I like to think I should keep to DVD (but haven't touched since then)
• manually copied a personal 700+ entry LibreOfflice/OpenOffice database to my secondary hard drive a few months ago
• some things I like to keep readily accessible are in the cloud.  None of it is too personal.

Incidentally, the database is what really precipitated this blog post.   I went to use it the other day and go the message 

"The connection to the data source "" could not be established. The driver class " could not be loaded".
SQL Status: HY000
The connection to the external data source could not be established. No SDBC driver was found for the given URL. 

It turned out the .odb database was corrupt; I had to use a tool to extract my table from the corrupt file.  I had to rebuild my SQL queries and forms, but at least I had an old backup for that.  If the tool hadn't worked, I would have lost 1/4 of my data table.


New methods:

• move and organize files to one hard drive with a good file folder and tagging system
• set up rsync or a rsync-based program to use my secondary hard drive to automatically back up those files
• generate occasional reports that are emailed to me automatically so I know it's working well.
• maybe burn some stuff on DVD and store it off-site somewhere for a duplicate backup

Next post will be on delving into rsync and possibly ready-to-go programs such as GAdmin-Rync, Grsync, luckyBackup, Unison, Back-In-Time, File Backup Manager, Deja Dup, Nepomuk etc.

Firefox makes strange sound when loading a new page or tab

A couple of weeks ago, when I'd open a new page in Firefox, there was a loud sound on my speakers.  It sounded a lot like the sound you get when you would press rewind and play on a cassette tape.

Turns out an update to NoScript must have done it.  There is option to play a sound when something is blocked.  I looked in Tools -> Add-Ons -> NoScript -> Preferences -> Notifications, and sure enough, the notification sound was turned on, and playing the sample gave me the same sound as what I was hearing.

Partition Setup

I got a new (terabyte) hard drive and wanted to plan out a secondary partition to host /home. Unfortunately, I couldn't remember how much space I needed for swap, and how much Ubuntu itself may need. I was ok with Ubuntu having a fair bit more space than I needed as I could always store stuff on there if I really had to - I just didn't want to be caught with a hard drive that is too small two months down the road.

I read through my old Linux course notes, but that didn't help me much. The Wikipedia page on disk partitioning isn't too bad on refreshing you on how primary & secondary partitions work.

I found a site which makes it pretty clear, with screenshots of examples (though it's not an exact example because they've got a Windows install on there, and they're talking about dual-booting). In the end, I ended up choosing:

Primary, 5000 bytes (=500MB), for boot partition, mount point "/boot"
Logical, 5000 bytes (=500MB), for swap area, no mount point (none will happen)
Primary, 300000 bytes (=30GB), ext4, mount point "/" (this will host Linux)
Primary, 8000000-ish bytes (~800GB, remainder of the drive), ext4, mount point "/home" (to house our users' files)

The numbers you get picked will get fudged slightly because of sizes that disk blocks require, etc.

To view a simple list of disks, usages, and mount points after it's all installed, use

df -h

in a terminal (command line).

Upgrade to Ubuntu 10.10 leaves some pictures in Firefox with a strange green hue

Version of Firefox is 3.6.15. After an upgrade, some, but not all, pictures have a greenish color to them. We're talking things like jpg, not flash or anything like that.

Fix:

In the Firefox address bar, type:
about:config

Yeah, yeah, you'll be careful. Set:
gfx.color_management.mode

to 0 (zero, if you can't decide whether that's "oh" or "zero"). My setting that had not been working was 2.

Sysadmin: an exercise in being functionally lazy.

I'm sitting on my couch, working really hard on my laptop. Everything is perfectly arranged around me while I study.

The linux box sitting 15 feet away from me has an internet radio station playing on amarok. The next song comes on, and it's louder than the other songs.

I really don't want to get up.

Surely some linux user has had this grave problem before. I was about to do a google search for an app on my Windows 7 laptop that would do it, then i realized I already had Putty set up to connect to my pc. All I need is the command for the command line.

To reduce your volume 15%

aumix -v-15

Too much? Increase 5%

aumix -v+15

(You may need to install the aumix package to use the commands above)

apt-get install aumix

I'm sure there's many other ways to pull this off (it is Linux, after all). Feel free to share if you have one!

How to Mount an ISO file

One of the things I love about Linux is many solutions are already made. Sometimes you need a little skill to piece together ready-made solutions, but many times they're already there.

For example, you have an .iso file, but don't want to burn it yet. You just want to see its contents.

Create a directory where you will view the iso:

mkdir /media/myiso

Then mount it:

mount -t iso9660 -o loop image.iso /media/myiso

The iso I used had spaces in the filename, so I just used

mount -t iso9660 -o loop "my image.iso" /media/myiso

(which works.)

Combine multiple images or multiple single-page PDFs into a multipage PDF

This method requires installing a (great) image-manipulation package, and using the command line, but it's very simple - suitable for someone new to using a command line.

If you do a lot of work with images, or have to do a lot of repetitive work or batch processing, I really recommend looking into ImageMagick. You can do things like make thumbnails of a certain size out of a directory, with just a few words.

Get Imagemagick if you don't have it already.
Open a commmand prompt and install ImageMagick:

apt-get install imagemagick

Now to combine your images into a multi-page PDF:
Go to the directory where are your images are.

cd /home/computername/pics

Convert the JPG files to PDF:

convert *.jpg foo.pdf

It will create a multi-page PDF, named foo.pdf in the directory you're in. Just make up whatever name you like for "foo". The pages will be arranged by alphabetical order (the filename). This method will use ALL of the jpg's in the directory. If you aren't familiar with using wildcards (*, ?) or are unfamiliar with command line, I recommend making a directory that only has the files you want to use, and put it in your /home directory so it's easy to find. If you want to only include files that differ by a letter, you can use something like

convert sample?.jpg samplepkg.pdf

...which will only place files like sample1.jpg, sample2.jpg, sample3.jpg in the pdf.

I have noticed the file size gets pretty large using this method. There are probably some command line options to set to manipulate this. Something that does make it smaller is using a graphics program like Gimp, and using the "print" option to "print to" a pdf. Then you can use the command line to combine the single page pdf's into a multipage single pdf.

convert *.pdf multi.pdf

"*" means everything, so keep in mind it will use every pdf in that directory to make a new one... even if it's multipage!

Common Ubuntu Keyboard Shortcuts

I've finally started on my Network Technology course, where I will be doing and MCSE, CCNA, and possibly prepping for a Linux+, all in the next eight months. Stay tuned for some more interesting tidbits on the blog as I have time.

On another note, I am aware of some OS keystroke shortcuts, but had the urge to use more. Why don't I know the one for Show Desktop, for instance (it's Ctrl-Alt-D). You can also map keyboard shortcuts, which is really handy if you want to use something like the Windows key.

• Win+E - Shows all workspaces in a nifty way and lets you switch between workspaces easily.
  
• Alt+Ctrl+Left/Right Arrow – Move to Workspace on Left/Right
  
• Alt+Ctrl+Shift+Left/Right Arrow – Move current window to another workspace
  
• Alt + Shift+ Up Arrow – This initiates a cool looking window switcher interface with which you can switch between windows using Arrow keys while holding Alt + Shift
  
• Alt+F9/F10 – Minimize/ Maximize current window
  
• Alt+F5 – UnMaximizes Current Window
  
• Alt+F7 – This shortcut activates the move window option that lets you move current window using arrow keys. You can even move window to other workspace, try moving it to extreme right.
  
• Alt+F8 – Resize current window with arrow keys
  
• Ctrl + Alt + D – Show Desktop/ Restore open windows if show desktop used earlier
  
• Alt+Shift+Tab – Switch Windows in Reverse Direction as done using Alt+Tab
  
• Shift+Ctrl+N – Create New Folder, Very useful shortcut
  
• Alt + Enter – Show properties of a selected file/folder without requiring to right click on it and select Properties.
  
• Ctrl + 1/2 – Change folder view to icon/list.
  
• Ctrl + W – close current Nautilus Window
  
• Ctrl + Shift + W – close all open Nautilus Windows
  
• Ctrl+T – Open a new tab in Nautilus
  
• Alt + Up/Down Arrow – Move to Parent Folder/ Selected folder
  
• Alt + Left/Right Arrow – Move Back/forward in Nautilus
  
• Alt + Home – Move directly to your Home Folder
  
• F9 – Toggle display of Nautilus Sidepane
  
• Ctrl + H – Toggle Display of hidden files and folders
  
• Ctrl + Alt + L - Quick shortcut to Lock Screen if you need to be away from your desktop for few moments and don’t want others to see your desktop.
  
• Alt + F1 – Open Applications Menu
  
• Alt + F2 – Open the Run Application dialog Box
  
• Win + Mousewheel – Zoom in / Zoom out Desktop. This one’s pretty useful if you are having a wireless keyboard/mouse.
  

(shamelessly stolen from TechnoTraits... if you found these of use, be a sport and visit them!)

Fonts Not Displaying Properly on Web Pages

I noticed one day that some webpages were a little difficult to read as the (sans-serif) font it used looked borked, for some reason. The first time I noticed this, I viewed the source, but didn't find a font declaration in that page. The most recent time I looked at a sample, I found this

<FONT face="sans-serif,helvetica,arial">

I haven't done much work with CSS, so I wasn't aware that order matters when declaring a font to use with CSS. If the first font in a list exists on your system, it will use that one first.

There are several font declarations in the HTML source, but for the main text, the results are:

It's just strange. Off. It's lacking some sort of smoothness. The vertical alignment of each letter also seems to be slightly different. Kerning is yucky. Though it is a sans serif (screen) font, I just don't find it very readable or pleasing to the eye.

FYI:

• sans serif (clean) fonts are intended for reading on screen
• serif fonts (fonts with little flicks or marks on the corners) are intended for printed text

The paradigm is that legibility is best when fonts are used this way.

What's funny is this situation appeared on a The Linux Documentation Project page. A Linux page viewed in Linux looks funny.

When typing an Openoffice document, all fonts appear, and are as expected (from screenshot:).


...despite sans-serif having no kerning and ugly tracking.

However, bump that font size down from 24pt to 10pt, and Helvetica is ugly! What the hell happened to those e's and a's?

("Font Darwin Award" once again goes to sans-serif, for its display of horrid kerning and tracking. If it wasn't obvious before, it sure is now.)

Theoretically, since sans-serif exists on my system, that should be the one being used in a web page (because it's first in the web page's font list). However, the evidence suggests it's actually using Helvetica. Why is Helvetica on my machine so ugly once it goes below 14pt or 12pt? I don't know. Still investigating. My monitor is a few years old, and my graphics is a good graphics card less than a year old, so I doubt those are the issue. Even so, why is this an issue with Helvetica, but not with the other fonts?

The only solution I can think of so far is to uninstall Helvetica. The print nerd in me really doesn't want to. If you really want to nerd-out, this is a great guide to fonts on Linux.

Please let me know if you figure this one out!

Apple Patents Computer Hardware that Freezes your Computer to Make you Watch Ads

Apple has patented computer hardware that freezes your computer to make you acknowledge an ad. Adware at its most obnoxious (because it wasn't obnoxious enough as is?)


Apple's patent application.
Article in the New York Times.
Covered on Boing Boing.

"Its distinctive feature is a design that doesn’t simply invite a user to pay attention to an ad — it also compels attention. The technology can freeze the device until the user clicks a button or answers a test question to demonstrate that he or she has dutifully noticed the commercial message.Because this technology would be embedded in the innermost core of the device, the ads could appear on the screen at any time, no matter what one is doing."

If you read the patent application, they're talking hardware, not software. Ouch. Basically, your computer or device has this mechanism built into it. (It's harder to remove a car horn built into the car than an air horn that's duct-taped to the side mirror.)

Depending on how it is implemented, it could be a firmware rootkit, or a hardware equivalent of a rootkit.

In any case, thanks in advance to all the white hat crackers.

Or, you know, just don't buy an Apple device that has this.

On another note, it occured to me applying for a patent for something like this guarantees no one else could implement it... or not for long, anyways. If you never plan on implementing it yourself, you could use it as a tool for protecting users. That being said, I doubt that's Apple's intent. I would guess they're keeping the option open until such time as they figure they can get away with using it. So the more you get hooked on Apple...

Maybe the EFF should apply for a whole whack of patents?

Yet another compelling reason for the general public to take an interest in alternative computers and media players.

As Steve Gibson says, "It's MY computer."