GeekTank

I was looking for a solution to backup three of my linux machines that I have running this site and many others. After searching for some time, I didn’t actually need to go with a company. I found a friend that provided me some space. During this time I did find out some useful information.

During my search for an outside provider I did run into a little article about Amazon S3 and a nifty little tool called Duplicity, which is a backup program built on rsync and GnuPG. The means of storage was Amazon’s S3 service, which is a distributed, redundant, web accessible storage service.

Duplicity + Amazon S3 = incremental encrypted remote backup

Duplicity is a backup program that only backs up the files (and parts of files) that have been modified since the last backup. Built on FLOSS (rsync, GnuPG, tar, and rdiff), it allows efficient, locally encrypted, remote backups.

Amazon S3 is a web service that provides cheap, distributed, redundant, web-accessible storage. S3 currently charges only $0.15 per GB-month storage and $0.10 per GB upload. The API is based on HTTP requests such as GET, POST, PUT, and DELETE.

The following is a description of how I made use of these to back up my laptop, which runs Ubuntu Feisty Fawn.

Read the full article at brainonfire.net
Visit the Duplicity website
Sign up for Amazon S3
AWS Simple Monthly Calculator

I also found a means to backup my workstation, both Mac and Windows using a company called Mozy, which provides full backups for a fee.

Mozy currently provides:
* Open/locked file support: Mozy will back up your documents whether they’re open or closed.
* 128-bit SSL encryption: The same technology used by banks secures your data during the backup process.
* 448-bit Blowfish encryption: Secures your files while in storage, providing peace of mind that your private data is safe from hackers.
* Automatic: Schedule the times to back up and MozyHome does the rest.
* New and changed file detection: MozyHome finds and saves the smallest changes.
* Backs up Outlook files: Disaster-proof email protection.
* Block-level incremental backup: After the initial backup, MozyHome only backs up files that have been added or changed, making subsequent backups lightning fast.

Visit mozy.com

I eventually found a friend located on the same network segment that offered to provide space on his server. Although this isn’t 100%, at least for now its something. Hes currently running Windows 2003 Server, which is fine as I could just use cygwin and SSHD for rsync backups. Which is what I have setup now, and eventually if required I will look into something a little more redudant.

Running out of space to place all those Applications you’ve downloaded and tried out on your iPhone or iPod Touch. Instead of using the small OS Partition which is where all the applications are saved, you can use the Media partition instead and continue on the installing spree.

Both the iPhone and the iPod touch include relatively limited space on the OS partition (the part of your iPhone’s memory that stores the operating system and associated files). It’s where Apple, by default, adds its factory-installed Applications but you can save space by installing your Apps on the Media partition instead (that’s the part of your your touch or phone that contains your iTunes musics and videos).

Read the full article and how-to on tuaw.com

PC World reviews the newest release of Apple’s Max OSX version 10.5 codenamed “Leopard”. In this review “Edward Mendelson” states one big remark.

“First: despite minor problems, it’s by far the best operating system ever written for the vast majority of consumers, with dozens of new features that have real practical value—like truly automated backups, preview images in folders, and notes and to-do lists integrated into the mail program”.

I have only played with Leopard in the last few days and seen it in action on a co-workers laptop, and I’m starting to thing more and more about purchasing a Macbook Pro!

What does it do?

Folder Size for Windows adds a new column to the Details view in Windows Explorer. The new column shows not only the size of files, but also the size of folders. It keeps track of which folders you view, and scans them in the background so you can see complete size of all files within the folder. It’s very useful for cleaning up your disk. Once you get used to having that information available, a directory listing simply looks incomplete without it!

Features

* Don’t switch to another program to see folder sizes. It’s always there when you’re viewing your folders (even in Open and Save file dialog boxes, you can change the view), and it’s a great visual cue to help you find the one you’re looking for. Not just for disk cleanup, but for any time you need to choose a folder.
* No scanning phase before you can start. As soon as you display the Folder Size column, you’ll see sizes immediately. Large folders will continue to scan in the background while you browse your folders.
* Explorer will automatically update the folder size column in real-time. No more manual rescanning.
* Background scans won’t monopolize your disk. When Folder Size detects that other programs are doing a lot of reading to and writing from the hard disk being scanned, the background scanning will wait for the other programs to finish.
* If you don’t show the Folder Size column for a while, it won’t forget what it’s already scanned, but the background scanner doesn’t stay active. It won’t waste any CPU time maintaining the cache on your P2P sharing or gaming machine that’s always changing files.
* If your version of Windows is one of the following languages, Folder Size will also display in that language. More translations and corrections to existing translations are welcome.
o French
o Spanish
o German
o Italian
o Dutch
o Swedish
o Japanese
o Traditional Chinese
o Simplified Chinese

Folder Size is Free

Folder Size for Windows may be distributed under the terms of the GNU General Public License. This basically says that it’s free for anyone to use, and the code is free to be read and used, but if you modify the code at all, you must submit your improvements back to the project so everyone can use them.

So far, Kirill Müller has submitted a patch that fixes the sorting and adds new columns, and Markus Cozowicz is reviewing the code for future improvements.

Translations have been submitted by a bunch of people.

Visit the Folder Size website on SourceForge
Download and Installing Folder Size

Just as I was about to hit the sack for the night, more gPhone rumors surfaced. This comes from F. Colton, the editor over at India Street, and a fellow who tends to do his research fairly well, in my experience. He reports this morning that Chinese mobile handset manufacturer e28 is going to be a gPhone handset manufacturer.

Read the full article at mashable.com

If you’ve ever required OpenSSL support enabled for MySQL Server 5.0 under debian, then you will need to recompile MySQL. Under Debian this is very easy.

First you will need to download the package source, as root type the following:


cd /root
mkdir build
cd build
apt-get source mysql-source-5.0


The above commands will create a folder called ‘build’, enter the directory and then download the mysql-server-5.0 package source. The following are the results under an Ubuntu server:


[root@jager:/root/builds]# apt-get source mysql-server-5.0
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
Need to get 16.8MB of source archives.
Get:1 http://security.ubuntu.com feisty-security/main mysql-dfsg-5.0 5.0.38-0ubuntu1.1 (dsc) [1209B]
Get:2 http://security.ubuntu.com feisty-security/main mysql-dfsg-5.0 5.0.38-0ubuntu1.1 (tar) [16.6MB]
Get:3 http://security.ubuntu.com feisty-security/main mysql-dfsg-5.0 5.0.38-0ubuntu1.1 (diff) [149kB]
Fetched 16.8MB in 17s (957kB/s)
dpkg-source: extracting mysql-dfsg-5.0 in mysql-dfsg-5.0-5.0.38
dpkg-source: unpacking mysql-dfsg-5.0_5.0.38.orig.tar.gz
dpkg-source: applying ./mysql-dfsg-5.0_5.0.38-0ubuntu1.1.diff.gz


If you list the directory contents you should have something like this:


[root@jager:/root/builds]# ls -al
total 16408K
drwxr-xr-x 3 root root 4096 2007-10-30 13:08 ./
drwxr-xr-x 15 root root 4096 2007-10-30 13:06 ../
drwxr-xr-x 39 root root 4096 2007-10-30 13:08 mysql-dfsg-5.0-5.0.38/
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 148883 2007-10-10 14:11 mysql-dfsg-5.0_5.0.38-0ubuntu1.1.diff.gz
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 1209 2007-10-10 14:11 mysql-dfsg-5.0_5.0.38-0ubuntu1.1.dsc
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 16602385 2007-04-03 05:03 mysql-dfsg-5.0_5.0.38.orig.tar.gz


Before we proceed we need to make sure that we have all of the necessary tools to compile the new packages and create the .deb:


apt-get install devscripts build-essential fakeroot


You will also want to make sure that you have any dependencies that the package would require:


apt-get build-dep mysql-server-5.0


Now that we have everything we need, we just need to make a modification to the file “mysql-dfsg-5.0-5.0.38/debian/rules” with your favorite editor. Search for the following lines within the file:


--without-openssl
--with-yassl


And change the lines to the below:


--with-openssl
--without-yassl


Basically you’re enabling OpenSSL and disabling YaSSL, make sure that you have OpenSSL installed (apt-get install openssl). Once you’ve finished editing the file, save it and exit out of the editor.

You will then want to start the compiling and build of the Debian packages, run the following command within the “mysql-dfsg-5.0-5.0.3″ directory like so:


[root@jager:/root/builds/mysql-dfsg-5.0-5.0.3]# debuild -us -uc


Everything should process properly, and you should end up with a handful of .deb packages within “/root/builds”:


[root@jager:/root/builds]# ls -al
total 57628K
drwxr-xr-x 3 root root 4096 2007-10-30 14:02 ./
drwxr-xr-x 15 root root 4096 2007-10-30 14:35 ../
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 6411178 2007-10-30 14:02 libmysqlclient15-dev_5.0.38-0ubuntu1.1_i386.deb
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 1426470 2007-10-30 14:01 libmysqlclient15off_5.0.38-0ubuntu1.1_i386.deb
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 45756 2007-10-30 14:01 mysql-client_5.0.38-0ubuntu1.1_all.deb
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 6794738 2007-10-30 14:02 mysql-client-5.0_5.0.38-0ubuntu1.1_i386.deb
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 54466 2007-10-30 14:01 mysql-common_5.0.38-0ubuntu1.1_all.deb
drwxr-xr-x 40 root root 4096 2007-10-30 14:00 mysql-dfsg-5.0-5.0.38/
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 148883 2007-10-30 13:34 mysql-dfsg-5.0_5.0.38-0ubuntu1.1.diff.gz
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 972 2007-10-30 13:34 mysql-dfsg-5.0_5.0.38-0ubuntu1.1.dsc
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 1761484 2007-10-30 14:02 mysql-dfsg-5.0_5.0.38-0ubuntu1.1_i386.build
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 3136 2007-10-30 14:02 mysql-dfsg-5.0_5.0.38-0ubuntu1.1_i386.changes
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 16602385 2007-04-03 05:03 mysql-dfsg-5.0_5.0.38.orig.tar.gz
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 47854 2007-10-30 14:02 mysql-server-4.1_5.0.38-0ubuntu1.1_i386.deb
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 47828 2007-10-30 14:01 mysql-server_5.0.38-0ubuntu1.1_all.deb
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 25522626 2007-10-30 14:02 mysql-server-5.0_5.0.38-0ubuntu1.1_i386.deb


Just run dpkg -i *.deb and all should be good!


[root@jager:/root/builds]# dpkg -i *.deb
(Reading database ... 48209 files and directories currently installed.)
Preparing to replace libmysqlclient15-dev 5.0.38-0ubuntu1.1 (using libmysqlclient15-dev_5.0.38-0ubuntu1.1_i386.deb) ...
Unpacking replacement libmysqlclient15-dev ...
Preparing to replace libmysqlclient15off 5.0.38-0ubuntu1.1 (using libmysqlclient15off_5.0.38-0ubuntu1.1_i386.deb) ...
Unpacking replacement libmysqlclient15off ...
Preparing to replace mysql-client 5.0.38-0ubuntu1.1 (using mysql-client_5.0.38-0ubuntu1.1_all.deb) ...
Unpacking replacement mysql-client ...
Preparing to replace mysql-client-5.0 5.0.38-0ubuntu1.1 (using mysql-client-5.0_5.0.38-0ubuntu1.1_i386.deb) ...
Unpacking replacement mysql-client-5.0 ...
Preparing to replace mysql-common 5.0.38-0ubuntu1.1 (using mysql-common_5.0.38-0ubuntu1.1_all.deb) ...
Unpacking replacement mysql-common ...
Preparing to replace mysql-server-4.1 5.0.38-0ubuntu1.1 (using mysql-server-4.1_5.0.38-0ubuntu1.1_i386.deb) ...
* Stopping MySQL database server mysqld [ OK ]
Unpacking replacement mysql-server-4.1 ...
Preparing to replace mysql-server 5.0.38-0ubuntu1.1 (using mysql-server_5.0.38-0ubuntu1.1_all.deb) ...
* Stopping MySQL database server mysqld [ OK ]
Unpacking replacement mysql-server ...
Preparing to replace mysql-server-5.0 5.0.38-0ubuntu1.1 (using mysql-server-5.0_5.0.38-0ubuntu1.1_i386.deb) ...
* Stopping MySQL database server mysqld [ OK ]
* Stopping MySQL database server mysqld [ OK ]
Unpacking replacement mysql-server-5.0 ...
Setting up mysql-common (5.0.38-0ubuntu1.1) ...
Setting up libmysqlclient15off (5.0.38-0ubuntu1.1) ...
Setting up mysql-client-5.0 (5.0.38-0ubuntu1.1) ...
Setting up mysql-server-5.0 (5.0.38-0ubuntu1.1) ...
* Stopping MySQL database server mysqld [ OK ]
* Starting MySQL database server mysqld [ OK ]
* Checking for corrupt, not cleanly closed and upgrade needing tables.
Setting up libmysqlclient15-dev (5.0.38-0ubuntu1.1) ...
Setting up mysql-client (5.0.38-0ubuntu1.1) ...
Setting up mysql-server-4.1 (5.0.38-0ubuntu1.1) ...
Setting up mysql-server (5.0.38-0ubuntu1.1) ...


Afraid of bricking your iPhone, or not as savy as most to jailbreak your iphone? Well a group hackers have released an instant jailbreak online. You just need to point your iPhone’s Safari to http://jailbreakme.com/ and follow the on screen instructions.

A crew of hackers (including hdm/metasploit, rezn, dinopio, drudge, kroo, pumpkin, davidc, dunham, and NerveGas) have introduced a one-touch instant jailbreak for both iPhone and iPod touch. The jailbreak opens your iPhone for full disk access and installs Installer.app so you can add pretty much any third party application you like.

It looks as though Comcast has fired a few employees for talking out of script.

In the wake of the discovery that Comcast is blocking some peer-to-peer traffic (and even blocking some Lotus Notes e-mails), the company is attempting to keep the PR machine well-oiled by giving customer tech support reps some talking points. And if they deviate from the script and admit that Comcast has been using Sandvine to send forged TCP reset packets, they’re likely to lose their jobs.

Ars has heard from multiple Comcast employees since the story broke, and they’re all telling us the same thing. They’re supposed to tell customers asking whether Comcast limits access to BitTorrent that the ISP doesn’t block access to any application, including BitTorrent. Furthermore, tech support workers are supposed to toe the party line at all times, or they’ll be fired. “Management informed anyone that discussed this issue with any customer or press associate that it would lead to termination,” an internal tier 2 tech support worker told Ars on the condition of anonymity.

Read the full artile over at arstechnica.com

Although this is the first time I’ve heard of Hulu, I’m sure its not the first time most readers have heard of Hulu. A joint venture by NBC and NewsCorp provide its tv shows, moves and mashups of AOL (TWX), Comcast (CMCSA), MSN (MSFT), MySpace, and Yahoo (YHOO). Some of the shows and movies that will be available are shown on Hulu’s main page of their site. Some include Hero’s, Conan, Arrested Development, 24hrs and Battlestar Galactica. I’ve already signed up to be apart of their beta, you can too by visiting their main page at http://www.hulu.com

Read the full article at newteevee.com

As the title reads, “Rumour”. However most are thinking it’s a Photoshopped, since the Rogers logo isn’t correct amongst other things.

Read the full article at boygeniusreport.com