- main - earth.li

Best way to backup a server prior to decommissioning
by Mark Rogers 17 Oct '14

17 Oct '14

What's the best way to backup a (virtual) server prior to shutting it down and disposing of it? Assume only a single filesystem, which in turn means that the backup will have to go onto that filesystem (obviously on completion the file would be copied off before the server was killed!); also assume no access to it except via SSH so no image backups etc. Objectives: To have access to everything in case it was needed, and ideally to be able to rebuild the server as it was should it be needed again in future. Mark -- Mark Rogers // More Solutions Ltd (Peterborough Office) // 0844 251 1450 Registered in England (0456 0902) @ 13 Clarke Rd, Milton Keynes, MK1 1LG

2 3

Thunderbird and LDAP
by Jenny Hopkins 15 Oct '14

15 Oct '14

Hullo, I've set up an LDAP server for a client to share his address book between thunderbird (running on Ubuntu 14.04) and webmail. A new entry can be added manually from thunderbird, but there is no option to auto-add new addresses to any other address book than the thunderbird one. I've had a google goggle, and it seems I can't do anything about this - can anyone tell me I'm wrong and it is possible? If not, are there any clients that will allow this option? This is a serious drawback. Thanks, Jenny

2 2

My incremental/snapshot backup system - now working
by Chris Green 09 Oct '14

09 Oct '14

Well I have implemented my simple incremental/snapshot backup strategy and it works pretty well. The whole thing comprises an rsync backup run daily by anacron in /etc/cron.daily, an rsync server/daemon on the backup NAS and a script on the NAS that rotates the backups. The whole lot is probably 100 lines of code in total - and that's *with* lots of comments! :-) I have appended the three main component files for those who want to see. The 'clever' bit is that all of the backups on the NAS except the two latest ones are completely inaccessible from the outside, you can only get at them if you have a login on the NAS. That's the bit that is rare in most backup systems I've looked at. You could maybe get a similar result with a 'pull' system run from the backup server but then that would be very slow on the underpowered NAS processor, on my system most of the work is done at the sending end (my desktop). ... oh and the *BIG* advantage is that all the backups are complete mirrors of the backed up files, no compression, no tar archives, you can navigate around the backups exactly as you can navigate around your current home directory. It means it's *very* eay to check that backups are OK and no special tools at all are needed to restore files, just copy the file you want. So, here is the rsync bit that is run by anacron on my desktop every day. The password is *only* for the rsync server on the backup machine, so access to the script only allows someone to run backups, nothing more. #!/bin/sh export RSYNC_PASSWORD='XXXXXX' # # # Daily backups, copy everything important to the backup machine # EXCLUDE1='--exclude tmp/ --exclude 'Mail/??/' --exclude .VirtualBox/ --exclude .gvfs/' EXCLUDE2='--exclude .cache/ --exclude lost+found' # # # Home directories # rsync -a --port=874 $EXCLUDE1 $EXCLUDE2 --link-dest=/old/home /home/ chris@dlink::chris2day/new/home # # # /etc # rsync -a --port=874 --link-dest=/old/etc /etc/ chris@dlink::chris2day/new/etc This is probably the most difficult bit, the rsyncd configuration file on the backup NAS. I could relax the security somewhat and it would be shorter and simpler. The 'post-xfer exec' runs the rotate.sh script after rsync has transferred the data. hosts allow = 192.168.1.4 hosts deny = * use chroot = no uid = chris gid = allaccount secrets file = /mnt/HD/HD_a2/chris/rsyncd/secrets pid file = /mnt/HD/HD_a2/chris/rsyncd/pid timeout = 300 strict modes = false # log file = /mnt/HD/HD_a2/chris/rsyncd/log [ chris2day ] path = /mnt/HD/HD_a2/chris/today read only = false list = yes post-xfer exec = /mnt/HD/HD_a2/chris/bin/rotate.sh auth users = chris ... and finally the rotate script which is the bit I was asking about previously. I had the algorithm pretty much right. It's a bit clumsy in the shell (ash, it's a busybox based NAS) but it's not quite messy enough to want to move to something better like Python. #!/bin/sh # # # Script to 'rotate' snapshots, runs after rsync creates a new # backup in the today/new directory # cd /mnt/HD/HD_a2/chris/bak # # # Get day, month and year # day=`date +%d` month=`date +%m` year=`date +%Y` # # # Check for first of the month # if [ $day = "1" ] then if [ $month = "1" ] then mv month12 $year else rm month12 fi # # # Move all the months up one # m=11 while [ $m != "0" ] do mv month$m month`expr $m + 1` m=`expr $m - 1` done else rmdir day31 fi # # # Move all the days up one # d=30 while [ $d != "0" ] do mv day$d day`expr $d + 1` d=`expr $d - 1` done # # # and copy the new day1 from today # # # Move the older backup from 'today' to 'bak' and change the # name of the newer one # mv ../today/old day1 mv ../today/new ../today/old mkdir ../today/new chown chris:allaccount ../today/new Like I said I really don't quite understand why rsnapshot et al manage to make it so complicated. OK, the above has 31 days and 12 months hard-coded but given that they're hard-linked snaphots that many backups doesn't take much space at all. -- Chris Green

1 1

Unwanted hardware
by Chris Walker 08 Oct '14

08 Oct '14

I realise that it's unlikely but does anybody here have a use for an Asus desktop machine and a load of floppy discs? The desktop machine was originally running Windows XP but now has a copy of Robolinux on it - it's had various distros on it as I was trying them out for ease of install among other things. It only has 512MB of RAM but does come with an NEC LCD monitor, keyboard and mouse. Also kicking about are several boxes of 3.5" floppies totalling around 150. A few are 720k but most are 1.44MB and some are unused although I did buy them in 1994! If nobody wants them, they'll be going on Freecycle/Freegle. -- __ __| |_ __ __ .----------------------------------------------. / _/ _` \ V V / | mailto:alug_cdw@the-walker-household.co.uk | \__\__,_|\_/\_/ |______________________________________________|

1 0

[ALUG Announce] ALUG Norwich Pub Meet Thursday 9th October
by Viperfang 06 Oct '14

06 Oct '14

ALUG Announce Please send announcements to Announce(a)lists.alug.org.uk Unsub, change settings via http://lists.alug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/announce ----- Hello Norwich Aluggers, Our monthly ALUG Norwich social meeting will be held this Thursday, 9th October at The Coach and Horses (82 Thorpe Road, Norwich, NR1 1BA). The meeting officially starts at 8pm, although some people may arrive earlier. More information on those people can be found on the list and the IRC channel. If you are unsure if you will recognise us then make yourself and your intent to attend known by either posting on list or visiting us on IRC so we can look out for you rather than hiding in the corner. Optionally you could ask at the bar if they know where the geeky computer weirdos are and they'll point you in the right direction (seriously!). Another possibility is look for heaps of electronics on a table that may possibly look like movie props that would used for detonating explosives. Feel free to bring electronics/laptops/gadgets to the meet, you will by no means be alone. Ben Bewick aka Viperfang NB: This mail is automated, please refer to the usual sources for more information. ALUG Contact Details: Website : http://www.alug.org.uk/ IRC : #alug on irc.alug.org.uk List : http://lists.alug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo Twitter : http://twitter.com/anglianlug Identica: TBA Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=2381613902 ----- Send discussion replies to main(a)lists.alug.org.uk (Reply-To set) Unsub, change settings via http://lists.alug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/announce

1 0

Default anacron run time of 07:30, what's the logic (if any) for this?
by Chris Green 03 Oct '14

03 Oct '14

I was just wondering why my system is sometimes somewhat busy in the morning and it occurred to me to that anacron might be something to do with it. This is my desktop system which is left turned on all the time. So, after digging around a bit I found that anacron gets run (via /etc/cron.d) at 07:30. So anything that takes a while, like a weekly incremental backup, can often be running when I'm using the computer. What's the reason for choosing 07:30? If the computer is never turned on at 07:30 then does anacron ever get run? Presumably it must get run as part of system start-up otherwise anacron tasks would never be run. So, why not set the default time to 02:30 or something similar so that, if the computer is turned on tasks get run in the small hours? It's easy enough to change of course and I will do so, but the default seems a little odd. -- Chris Green

2 1

.deb vs .rpm (or apt-get vs yum)
by Mark Rogers 03 Oct '14

03 Oct '14

It's been many years since I last used a .rpm based distribution in anger, but the experience lead me to dislike them compared with .deb based distros. In particular I had a number of occasions where an installation issue lead me to a system that I could not fix, where that has never happened to me yet in all my years with .deb-based systems (Debian and Ubuntu). Sure I've had conflicts and problems, but I've always been able to get pas them. Am I right to trust .deb more than .rpm? Should I give (eg) Fedora another chance? Incidentally I also found package management faster with .deb (eg apt-get update vs yum update, apt-get install vs yum install). Stable beats speed but .deb seemed to give me both. Mark -- Mark Rogers // More Solutions Ltd (Peterborough Office) // 0844 251 1450 Registered in England (0456 0902) @ 13 Clarke Rd, Milton Keynes, MK1 1LG

5 15

Command line database editor (for sqlite3)
by Chris Green 01 Oct '14

01 Oct '14

Is there such a thing? Of course I know and use the sqlite3 command line utility but that's just a way of running SQL from the command line. What I want is some sort of wrapper/utility that reads the data from the database, presents it to me in some sort of reasonably editable format and then, when I've changed something writes it back. I'd be happy enough with a simple browse facility plus some sort of way of changing individual fields. So "dbedit xyz.db table1" just presents me with the data in some sort of reasonable, scrollable column layout. Then some sort of command says "change column 10, row 4 to 'ABCDE'". -- Chris Green

3 8

OT Domain name hosts
by Bev Nicolson 01 Oct '14

01 Oct '14

A bit off topic perhaps but I thought I'd ask you lot. Domain name hosting. Ted might be puzzled by this since I recommended 1&1 a while ago now. They haven't been a bother but it looks like I should think about transferring things for various reasons. Who out there is cheap and reliable? How do you find out exactly how much any one package will cost per year? I'm just talking about a domain name and related email address. Bev.

12 18

Linux (Debian) boot problem
by Barry Samuels 30 Sep '14

30 Sep '14

I want to move my wife's operating system to another computer so that should involve a simple 'move the hard drive' operation shouldn't it? Wrong! I've not come across anything like this before. The drive boots happily in my wife's computer but if I move it to either of two other computers it starts to boot and then stops with various errors. mount: mounting /dev/root on /root failed: No such file of directory the same with sys and proc. Then there is a Busybox line and I end up in a shell prompt: '(initramfs) but the line before that says: /bin/sh: can't access tty; job control turned off and nothing appears when I type on the keyboard so I'm stuck. This is using Squeeze with a standard Debian linux-image package, 2.6.32-5-686, which includes an initrd image. My wife's current computer uses an Athlon XP CPU and the one I'm trying to move to uses a Core 2 Duo both of which are covered by the linux-image. Any ideas would be very welcome. -- Barry Samuels http://www.beenthere-donethat.org.uk The Unofficial Guide to Great Britain

7 12