I used to backup my computer systems (Linux on various architectures, ca. 10 GB only in total) to DDS-1 (4mm DAT, 2 GB native, 4 GB with compression) using Amanda, and I liked it. I had a set of 16 tapes, and took backup every night. All I had to do was insert the right tape, and Amanda took care of the rest. The only `problem' was that I didn't dare to buy an additional hard drive, because I wouldn't be able to back it up (disk partition sizes are limited by what fits on a tape if you use Amanda), but I didn't need the disk space anyway.
Unfortunately my tape drive died a few months ago, so I was looking for a new backup solution.
When I bought the DDS-1 (almost 5 years ago), it was not cheap (ca. 750 EUR for the drive), but reasonable, expecially since the low media cost (less than 5 EUR per tape). CD-writers were only marginally cheaper, but the media was much more expensive. The same for cheap Travan drives.
These days large hard drives are very cheap, but tape price/technology hasn't followed. So a new (larger) tape drive with room for future expansion would be (IMHO) too expensive, and I decided to buy a CD-writer instead. Blank CD-Rs are very cheap, and this turned out to be the cheapest solution (price per MB), for reasonable backup sizes.
So now I'm looking for a good automated system to backup my computer systems over the network. Something like Amanda, but for CD-R(W).
Amanda is great, but it has two limitations:
- Partitions have to fit on one tape.
- You can back up to tape only.
Combined, it doesn't make much sense to write a CD-R backend to Amanda, since your partitions can't be larger than 650 MB (a bit more if you use gzip compression). Unless you write a backend that treats multiple CD-Rs like one virtual tape.
Any suggestions?
Endianness console fixes
on
Linux 2.4.13
·
· Score: 1
... not to mention the endianness console fixes.
With these you no longer get garbage on your screen in VGA text mode if you're using a big-endian (e.g. PPC or PA-RISC) box with a VGA adapter.
I suggest e.g. Debian to file a formal request to receive part of the money. If I put Debian on a CD, should the money go to some music artist or to the SPI?
Currently such pseudo-taxes are meant to pay the copyright owners of music (and perhaps movies?).
Since blank CDs are used to copy free software as well, perhaps free software organizations (FSF, Debian...) should apply for a share as well?
For those interested in code: you can find the GPL'ed C++ code for performing integer wavelet transforms I (and a few colleagues) wrote for my Ph.D. at http://www.cs.kuleuven.ac.be/~wavelets/
Recently a Belgian judge ruled that the Belgian ISP Skynet had to remove web pages that contain links to MP3 sites (for which it was not yet determined whether they contained illegal material or not), as asked by the IFPI.
The ISPA (Internet Service Providers Association Belgium) regrets that, according to this ruling, Belgian ISPs are held responsible for the content of webpages of their customers. Unfortunately the article on the ISPA website is not available in English, only in Dutch and French.
Brute force word lookup is especially difficult with German because German words can be concatenated infinitely to form new German words. In English they just put all words sequentially, while in German they concatenate.
Every time I want to look up in the dictionary a German words that's longer than 10 characters, I have to split it in parts and look them up separately. This doesn't happen with French and English. And Dutch is something in between:-)
Microsoft, the company that abused the 8 MSB in pointers for type information. Worked fine with the plain 68000 (although strongly discouraged by the Motorola M68000 programmer's guide!), but broke horribly on the '020 and up.
Of course M$ isn't the only one that made that mistake: ask Apple (early MacOS) and even RMS (Emacs 19).
I'm afraid SGI still has lots of work with making the code endian clean.
I spoke with the SGI guys at Linux Kongress. Currently XFS works on Linux/ia32, but the disks cannot be moved to a big endian (IRIX/MIPS) box because the version of XFS for Linux is little endian. Since we (the m68k and PPC guys) have quite some experience with bi-endianness in ext2 (originally ext2 was big endian on m68k and PPC), we were able to convince them that XFS has to be big endian on all platforms, just like ext2 is little endian on all platforms.
M$ ported Windows NT 4.0 to CHRP three years ago, and cancelled it. Just like Sun cancelled Solaris for CHRP.
My CHRP box has a Windows icon in it's graphical OF boot menu. OF course clicking on it doesn't do anything:-) Haven't found out yet how to put a Penguin in the boot menu...
If everybody would pay for his/her commercial software, OSS would be much more important. Nowadays people just `get' MS Office and co. from `a friend'.
MS knows that, and that's why the BSA is targeted at business users only. Private persons must get used (addicted?) to MS software, whether they pay for the software or not.
OSses is a different thing. It's nice for them they can make sure it's very difficult to buy a PC without their OS.
If Apple hadn't killed the Mac clones, the IBM CHRP LongTrail including a 604e at 225 MHz would have costed 450 USD (quantities of 1000) in September 1997. I paid 800 USD for my prototype board, which was damned cheap compared to a comparable Pentium II, and of course I run Linux only: http://www.cs.kuleuven.ac.be/~geert/Po werPC/. The LongTrail used off-the-shelf components, and I guess the new reference design is a further evolution, using a G3.
In the mean time Dell changed the case. According to their marketing, it's perfectly possible to buy a PC without OS. But you don't get a discount for buying the PC without Windows.
IBM had a CHRP reference design since a long time, which was supposed to be manufactured and marketed by UMAX and Tatung. But thanks to Apple killing the MacOS clones, UMAX and Tatung cancelled the project: they just couldn't believe CHRP boxes with Linux could be sold. Remember, it was 1997, and Linux was not that well-known in Taiwan then. Of course Linux already ran on the board (link).
Now things are different, and it looks like IBM has updated the design.
FYI, the original LongTrail specs are at IBM's FTP site. I paid 800 USD for my board (incl. 200 MHz 604e) in May 1997. Although this was an (expensive) prototype board, it was much cheaper than a comparable Pentium II board. Production boards including a 225 MHz 604e would have costed only _450_ USD in quantities of 1000, in September 1997.
If it's binary-only (I guess it is), it may be distro-neutral, but not architecture-neutral. When will companies learn to s@Linux@Linux/ia32@ in their commercial software announces?
Of course, different processors use different machine languages. The same is true for Linux binaries. So you cannot say that StarOffice runs on `Linux', it runs on `Linux/ia32' only.
IBM also has an extensive library of ASIC cores. Choose you favorite parts from http://www.chips.ibm.com/techlib/products/asics/co res.html and build your own PCOAC!
Slashdot Mirror
Funny, I was about to post a similar question...
I used to backup my computer systems (Linux on various architectures, ca. 10 GB only in total) to DDS-1 (4mm DAT, 2 GB native, 4 GB with compression) using Amanda, and I liked it. I had a set of 16 tapes, and took backup every night. All I had to do was insert the right tape, and Amanda took care of the rest. The only `problem' was that I didn't dare to buy an additional hard drive, because I wouldn't be able to back it up (disk partition sizes are limited by what fits on a tape if you use Amanda), but I didn't need the disk space anyway.
Unfortunately my tape drive died a few months ago, so I was looking for a new backup solution.
When I bought the DDS-1 (almost 5 years ago), it was not cheap (ca. 750 EUR for the drive), but reasonable, expecially since the low media cost (less than 5 EUR per tape). CD-writers were only marginally cheaper, but the media was much more expensive. The same for cheap Travan drives.
These days large hard drives are very cheap, but tape price/technology hasn't followed. So a new (larger) tape drive with room for future expansion would be (IMHO) too expensive, and I decided to buy a CD-writer instead. Blank CD-Rs are very cheap, and this turned out to be the cheapest solution (price per MB), for reasonable backup sizes.
So now I'm looking for a good automated system to backup my computer systems over the network. Something like Amanda, but for CD-R(W).
Amanda is great, but it has two limitations:
- Partitions have to fit on one tape.
- You can back up to tape only.
Combined, it doesn't make much sense to write a CD-R backend to Amanda, since your partitions can't be larger than 650 MB (a bit more if you use gzip compression). Unless you write a backend that treats multiple CD-Rs like one virtual tape.
Any suggestions?
... not to mention the endianness console fixes.
With these you no longer get garbage on your screen in VGA text mode if you're using a big-endian (e.g. PPC or PA-RISC) box with a VGA adapter.
I suggest e.g. Debian to file a formal request to receive part of the money. If I put Debian on a CD, should the money go to some music artist or to the SPI?
Currently such pseudo-taxes are meant to pay the copyright owners of music (and perhaps movies?). ...) should apply for a share as well?
Since blank CDs are used to copy free software as well, perhaps free software organizations (FSF, Debian
Guess for which machines frame buffer support was developed first? Right, Atari and Amiga :-)
Note that frame buffer devices existed on commercial unices before (e.g. SunOS).
I've been using Amanda for backing up my systems for about 2 years. To me it looks a lot like Solstice/Legato Backup, which is used at the univ/work.
There's one difference: Solstice/Legato has a GUI (which I never really used BTW). I think it would be nice if someone wrote a GTK GUI for Amanda.
Digital Audio Broadcasting is also digital and broadcast using radio. Or doesn't DAB exist in the US yet?
SCO will definitely not be the first. Coherent got killed by Linux already many years ago.
For those interested in code: you can find the GPL'ed C++ code for performing integer wavelet transforms I (and a few colleagues) wrote for my Ph.D. at http://www.cs.kuleuven.ac.be/~wavelets/
Yes there was: AIX/ESA. Discontinued many years ago, together with AIX/386 on PS/2.
The ISPA (Internet Service Providers Association Belgium) regrets that, according to this ruling, Belgian ISPs are held responsible for the content of webpages of their customers. Unfortunately the article on the ISPA website is not available in English, only in Dutch and French.
Every time I want to look up in the dictionary a German words that's longer than 10 characters, I have to split it in parts and look them up separately. This doesn't happen with French and English. And Dutch is something in between :-)
Of course M$ isn't the only one that made that mistake: ask Apple (early MacOS) and even RMS (Emacs 19).
That is (was?) AIX/ESA, one of the four AIX-incarnations (AIX/i386, AIX/RT, AIX/RS6000 and AIX/ESA).
I spoke with the SGI guys at Linux Kongress. Currently XFS works on Linux/ia32, but the disks cannot be moved to a big endian (IRIX/MIPS) box because the version of XFS for Linux is little endian. Since we (the m68k and PPC guys) have quite some experience with bi-endianness in ext2 (originally ext2 was big endian on m68k and PPC), we were able to convince them that XFS has to be big endian on all platforms, just like ext2 is little endian on all platforms.
Best wishes, SGI!
They use the frame buffer device for ATI RAGE128. Currently it works on PPC only, but work for other architectures should be underway.
My CHRP box has a Windows icon in it's graphical OF boot menu. OF course clicking on it doesn't do anything :-) Haven't found out yet how to put a Penguin in the boot menu...
MS knows that, and that's why the BSA is targeted at business users only. Private persons must get used (addicted?) to MS software, whether they pay for the software or not.
OSses is a different thing. It's nice for them they can make sure it's very difficult to buy a PC without their OS.
If Apple hadn't killed the Mac clones, the IBM CHRP LongTrail including a 604e at 225 MHz would have costed 450 USD (quantities of 1000) in September 1997. I paid 800 USD for my prototype board, which was damned cheap compared to a comparable Pentium II, and of course I run Linux only: http://www.cs.kuleuven.ac.be/~geert/Po werPC/. The LongTrail used off-the-shelf components, and I guess the new reference design is a further evolution, using a G3.
In the mean time Dell changed the case. According to their marketing, it's perfectly possible to buy a PC without OS. But you don't get a discount for buying the PC without Windows.
Now things are different, and it looks like IBM has updated the design.
FYI, the original LongTrail specs are at IBM's FTP site. I paid 800 USD for my board (incl. 200 MHz 604e) in May 1997. Although this was an (expensive) prototype board, it was much cheaper than a comparable Pentium II board. Production boards including a 225 MHz 604e would have costed only _450_ USD in quantities of 1000, in September 1997.
If it's binary-only (I guess it is), it may be distro-neutral, but not architecture-neutral. When will companies learn to s@Linux@Linux/ia32@ in their commercial software announces?
Of course, different processors use different machine languages. The same is true for Linux binaries. So you cannot say that StarOffice runs on `Linux', it runs on `Linux/ia32' only.
IBM also has an extensive library of ASIC cores. Choose you favorite parts from http://www.chips.ibm.com/techlib/products/asics/co res.html and build your own PCOAC!
If they're really looking for something useful to add to their BIOSes, I'd vote for serial console support.