Slashdot Mirror

Non-issue as far as choosing between Fedora and Debian-based distros. Runs fine on FC6, and runs fine now on this Debian Etch box.

No matter which distro you try to run it on, remember to look for a writeup on how to install it that's SPECIFIC FOR YOUR DISTRIBUTION.

Then, look for a how-to on getting it to hook up to the rest of your system more efficiently via shared SAMBA (between guest and host) filespace and 1000 mbps virtual Ethernet card... the default is a 10mbps card. This is important because other than the clipboard, the shared filespace and virtual Ethernet card are the only ways that the guest ahd host OSs can run, and the virtual Ethernet card is the only way your guest VM will talk to the outside world.

The way that VMware Server runs on FC6 or Debian is sufficiently similar that I can't remember without referring to the article above which I was running on when I wrote it a few weeks ago.

Your imaginative utopian vision aside, have you heard ANYTHING from Novell about SLED (the Novell SuSE-based enterprise desktop distro) since the MS announcement?

My hands-on review of SLED10 just got published.

In which I say that "Vista-killer" as applied to SLED10 is hype, but SLED11 might actually be a "Vista-killer". I define this as a Linux distro which can be run by an average home user if the OS is preinstalled and will handle what the average computer user needs done and on which that user can install things without the help of a Linux guru.

Of course, this isn't merely true of SuSE distros, Lin/freespire (which I just tested, don't know when that review comes out) is at about that point, and I'd say the same for Fedora Core 6 (which I'm testing right now)... one more rev and we're likely to see "people-ready" Linux distros all over the place.

It's too late to put Linux servers back in the bottle, perhaps the preventive action MS has in mind is to interfere with desktop development.

As for "in at the door of Fortune 500 companies", perhaps you've heard of IBM or HP?

Disclaimer: what's in the above does not represent the opinion of techbuilder.org or its parent company, CMP.

Slipstream SP2
Slipstream security updates as well
Or get updates as ISO images and burn your own CDs

This is a good place to start. http://techbuilder.org/recipes/163101045

My partner and I work with video... and we were sick of backing up our projects to tape.

This is what I just set up for our home office.

I had a old server case (Antec) with a p4 2.8Ghz in it. It had previously had a raid5 array of 3 x 40GB disks + a hot spare that was used for video production.

I added a gigabit ethernet card, a cheap 2 port SATA controller and an external sata back plate (to connect one of the SATA channels externally). I purchased 3 x 250Gb seagate HDDs and put 2 of them into these SATA only (no USB no Firwire) external enclosures. Because they have minimal electronics they are very cheap ($AU55) and because it it SATA all the way very fast.

I installed centos and partitioned the drive with 4 partitions (/ /boot /swap /home). I used samba to share a user under /home which we can write to from our Macs, Windows and Linux laptops.

I disconnected the internal drive and installed centos again on each of the external drives to ensure that the partition structure is the same (I know i could have used DD but i didn't). Then I reconnected the internal and left one external connected.

Every 2 hours (it's not left on 24/7) the machine uses rsync to backup the internal drive to the external drive. It writes a log which include a df -h to the share so all users can confirm the backup process is working. Each week we swap the external drive for the spare which we keep in a fireproof box.

If the hdd in the machine ever fails all we need to do is swap it for the most up to date external. As we fill the 250GB we will archive off projects to offline pairs of external drives.

This gives us a double redundant simple to restore file server with true backup.

To do this I mostly used this howto

Cheers

Nick

I still have some issues, especially with speed. It takes WAY to long to backup 100GB over the network... I figured it would take a few hours... but it seems to take closer to a day... not sure if it is the PCI bus not dealing with the back up to disc happening at the same time as the large file transfer over the gigabit network... or a poor configuration of samba/smb...

any hints?

del.icio.us/cicada for more useful links on this topic.

Finally, some have claimed that the glue on the sticky labels might affect the longevity of the dye in the disc, presumably by leaching through the thin top coating of polymer. Search for "glue" in that story, it's half way down or so.

When you write on the silvery label you're actually writing on the back of the recording medium. The solvents from the sharpie leak right through the thin layer and corrupt the data. Printing out labels or using a special pen made for labeling CD's and keeping the Cd's out of the sun will help the data remain secure.

Labels can be bad too.

There are also some other good tips for archiving CD/DVD type media in that article.

-- Pete.

"They whine all the time. The CEO whined about Opera being undercounted and Firefox overcounted in the stats."

"They whined (and borked!, and apparently sued!!) when Microsoft websites sent them broken code.\"

"They whined when Apple came out with Safari, and made noises like they wouldn't continue developing Opera on the Mac because of unfair competition."

However, your other explaines of "whining" aren't whining at all, and you are making yourself look silly by spreading FUD and lies about Opera.

"And that's just the company itself. Don't even get me started on how Opera's users whine (Hey, Opera had that feature first! They stole it from us!). Damn, I already got started."

And you know what? Opera users are right to be pissed off when a bunch of kids rip off features from Opera and brag about them as if they came up with them. And once they've done the ripping off they'll start lying about Opera and putting it down.

If it hadn't been for Opera, Firefox wouldn't have had half the features or extensions it does today.

So yeah, I think Opera and its users are entitled to criticize Firefox zealots like yourself for lying and misrepresenting facts.

Did you know that the "evil" Opera Software actually pays several people who work on open standards at, among other things, the W3C? That's how evil Opera is.

You Firefox zealots are looking for anything to use in attacks against Opera, but you seem to forget all the stuff Opera makes possible because they actually make money and can invest in open standards and research.

An average user can do all that with a pre-configured Linux box, and without concern about Windows viruses, trojans, and other malware. Here is a how-to piece on building a preconfigured Linux box. Yes, multimedia is included.

What the end user of this box would have to remember to use it without hassle is simply to buy peripherals (scanners, printers, cameras) from the "approved" list provided by the vendor, derived from SANE / CUPS / gphoto supported parts.

Painless Multimedia For Linux: Getting all the needed software can be a hassle. Here's where to look--and how to get it running

You can find all my Linux how-to pieces here. They're more or less FC2 specific, but the procedures I should describe should work on just about anything, with minor distro-specific mods (like apt-get instead of yum, for instance)

You can find all my Linux how-to pieces here. They're more or less FC2 specific, but the procedures I should describe should work on just about anything, with minor distro-specific mods (like apt-get instead of yum, for instance)

Multimedia installation: Install these applications in this order, using an automated installer such as yum, apt-get (preferably with synaptic GUI), or the urpmi mandrake installer: mplayer + components.

USE AN AUTOMATED INSTALLER, DON'T INSTALL FROM RPMS UNLESS YOU ENJOY DEPENDENCY HELL.

1. mplayer
2. mplayer-plugin
3. skins
4. w32codecs
5. xine
6. xine-lib-devel
7. realplayer
8. flash

Switching from windows would make it more difficult to watch music videos and other commercialized content at work Were you planning to disable automatic installation as well or just lock down root access? If you have yum or apt-get or urpmi, installing media apps really isn't a big deal if you know which apps to install in what order. I'm running Xine, mplayer, Flash, and Realplayer, and the multimedia file I can't open is a rarity. Though I have yet to manage to get VideoLAN to play anything back. Your fellow workers can learn how to run multimedia here.

and the editor accepted the article? Dar on the command line doesn't have that problem and I know it restores individual files and directories. I like GUIs, but that kind of loss of functionality isn't worth it.

When I wrote my own how-to piece, it's a good thing I couldn't get kdar to install. Otherwise I might be in that position. Dar also does individual file compression.

At least all 3 of the backup solutions in my article(clone to disk, differential, compress/burn to DVD) actually work as intended.

Depending on the data, you can get several Gig's onto a single CD.

Do you mean DVD-R or are you getting 10:1 or better compression? Seriously, what if you have more than one DVD of info to back up?

I set things up to separate compression from burn on purpose. That way, I can let the compression run overnight and burn all the DVDs sequentially. Since I've got 30G+ to back up, it actually takes that long to do compression. Of course, if one goes that route, one had better have a lot of free drive space.

I back up complete images. That way, I don't have to reinstall everything separately after reinstalling the OS and /home .

This will tell you how to:

• clone your workstation to a backup mirror drive via dd
• how to make a differential backup (I back up every other day) using a rsync script (INCLUDED!!!)
• how to back up using dar (dar backup script INCLUDED) to generate DVD sized archives and how to use k3b (if you don't like k3b, find your own DVD burner!)

If you want tape solutions, there are plenty on the Net, since most Linux backup software is tape-oriented. Most of us don't do tape and I can't think of any good reason why anybody should start.

Now that I've settled this, what else do you want to talk about?

It took me a full month to find Linux backup software that can actually be installed and made to work by a non l33t uberh4xx0r, and all I was trying to do was clone a drive, make incremental backups, and archive to DVD-R. I wound up having to rewrite a rsync script I found to do the incremental backup. Interesting experience, since I haven't had to do script stuff since I had a DOS desktop.

I got the how to back up Linux workstations article done 30 minutes before the deadline. The reason was that it took DAR several hours to make a DVD-burnable backup and I wasn't going to explain how to use it until after I knew it worked, since I'd installed other packages and couldn't get them working.

To claim that the problems are solved is total bullshit. This is stuff that I shouldn't have been able to sell articles about because THIS STUFF SHOULD HAVE BEEN WORKING OUT OF THE BOX (FC2, in my case)

I shouldn't need to run a Windows emulation (Win4Lin) to get my work done, but I do, and I'm finding myself having to install MORE Windows software because dia suxx0rs (I'm using Visual Thought) and it looks like my search for Linux project management software as good even as the original MacProject running on the MacPlus of 10+ years ago has been in vain.

ALL THE PROBLEMS ARE SOLVABLE, BUT THEY WILL NOT BE SOLVED AS LONG AS PEOPLE DENY THE PROBLEMS ARE REAL.

Fix the problems and we can push MS into the tarpits. Telling us that anyone who doesn't know that Linux desktops are ready for prime time is technically clueless only serves the interests of Microsoft.