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File/directory synchronization (or synchronisation)
by Chris Green 30 Oct '14

30 Oct '14

All the recent discussions on backups and the peer to peer question has suddenly become a bit more relevant to me as I'm playing with Calibre for keeping my E-Books. I installed Calibre on my desktop machine, it's improved quite a bit since I last played with it and it now fits my requirements rather better than before. So I've imported quite a few E-Books into it and have started sorting them out a bit. However I then realised that E-Books in particular need to be able to be carried around with me, so I want them on my laptop as well as on my desktop machine - synchronisation! Initially it feels as if there's a lot of choice but in reality there isn't if you filter with the following basic requirements:- Must work across the 'net in some way or other, just file synchronisation doesn't really do what one wants. It needs to work when not connected as well though so a remote FS is no good. Should update automatically, preferably in 'real time'. Would like it to synchronise existing directories, not require things to be synchronised to be put in a special place. Looking at the Wikipedia list there's only two or three satisfy the first two requirements and adding the third seems to mean nothing does what I want. I guess Conduit might do it but it seems to be dead which is a pity. Owncloud is possibly the least worst and has the advantage (for me) that I have a Owncloud server running already. It expects you to put files in a special place though. -- Chris Green

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How did I break this?
by William Hill 27 Oct '14

27 Oct '14

I've got a linux board that can't connect to anything. It just gives me "192.168.1.1 - no route to host". Won't even ping. Bill PS, I'm logged in using ssh through wifi via router 192.168.1.1

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Dead hard drive?
by Srdjan Todorovic 23 Oct '14

23 Oct '14

Hi fellow ALUGgers, Started getting fsck errors on a drive, ran smartctl -t long and smartctl -a. Full output: http://pastebin.com/tQX0TX4m Snipped output: === START OF INFORMATION SECTION === Model Family: Western Digital Caviar Green Device Model: WDC WD10EACS-11FBRB0 SMART support is: Available - device has SMART capability. SMART support is: Enabled === START OF READ SMART DATA SECTION === SMART overall-health self-assessment test result: PASSED General SMART Values: Offline data collection status: (0x82) Offline data collection activity was completed without error. Auto Offline Data Collection: Enabled. Self-test execution status: ( 0) The previous self-test routine completed without error or no self-test has ever been run. SMART Attributes Data Structure revision number: 16 Vendor Specific SMART Attributes with Thresholds: ID# ATTRIBUTE_NAME FLAG VALUE WORST THRESH TYPE UPDATED WHEN_FAILED RAW_VALUE 1 Raw_Read_Error_Rate 0x002f 198 198 051 Pre-fail Always - 101 3 Spin_Up_Time 0x0027 123 114 021 Pre-fail Always - 6850 4 Start_Stop_Count 0x0032 099 099 000 Old_age Always - 1022 5 Reallocated_Sector_Ct 0x0033 200 200 140 Pre-fail Always - 1 7 Seek_Error_Rate 0x002e 200 200 000 Old_age Always - 0 9 Power_On_Hours 0x0032 089 089 000 Old_age Always - 8569 10 Spin_Retry_Count 0x0032 100 100 000 Old_age Always - 0 11 Calibration_Retry_Count 0x0032 100 100 000 Old_age Always - 0 12 Power_Cycle_Count 0x0032 099 099 000 Old_age Always - 1000 192 Power-Off_Retract_Count 0x0032 200 200 000 Old_age Always - 53 193 Load_Cycle_Count 0x0032 180 180 000 Old_age Always - 60861 194 Temperature_Celsius 0x0022 130 102 000 Old_age Always - 17 196 Reallocated_Event_Count 0x0032 199 199 000 Old_age Always - 1 197 Current_Pending_Sector 0x0032 198 198 000 Old_age Always - 355 198 Offline_Uncorrectable 0x0030 199 199 000 Old_age Offline - 170 199 UDMA_CRC_Error_Count 0x0032 200 200 000 Old_age Always - 0 200 Multi_Zone_Error_Rate 0x0008 199 199 000 Old_age Offline - 260 SMART Error Log Version: 1 No Errors Logged SMART Self-test log structure revision number 1 Num Test_Description Status Remaining LifeTime(hours) LBA_of_first_error # 1 Extended offline Completed: read failure 90% 8563 323143936 # 2 Extended offline Completed: read failure 90% 8560 323143936 # 3 Extended offline Completed without error 00% 8303 - # 4 Extended offline Completed without error 00% 732 - Is the drive cooked? Why does the self test execution status report all is ok? Why does offline data collection status report without error? Why is the overall status PASSED? Thanks, Srdjan

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Re: [ALUG] Incremental/snapshot backups using rsync - is it really this simple?
by Chris Green 23 Oct '14

23 Oct '14

On Mon, Oct 20, 2014 at 09:38:58PM +0100, Adam Bower wrote: > On Mon, Oct 20, 2014 at 04:41:14PM +0100, Chris Green wrote: > > > Not to mention one more fundamental problem with obnam, it doesn't > > offer any obvious/easy way to automate daily/monthly/yearly backups. > > If only there was a way on unix systems to run a command on a regular > schedule without user intervention. > Strangely enough I do know about cron. HOWEVER a decent backup facility integrates with cron as part of its design, obnam's documentation doesn't show how one can do daily/weekly/monthly/yearly backups. -- Chris Green

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Re: [ALUG] device only (or caldav) calendar on android
by MJ Ray 22 Oct '14

22 Oct '14

mick wrote: > I am /not/ a huge fan of Google, but since I hate apple even more, > the android device offers me the best functionality for the least > inavsion of privacy (within limits). [...] I had to put a CyanogenMod fork on mine to stop it demanding a Google login before it would work properly. > [...] Previous devices (from HTC, Sony and Samsung) have allowed me > to set up a local, "device only" calendar. This new one won't and > insists that I link in a google account before I can add /any/ > data at all. So I'm looking for an alternative app. [...] I don't have that problem and I even have "Offline Calendar" (org.sufficientlysecure.localcalendar on fdroid) to give me a calendar which isn't synchronised anywhere. If you really want a whole new app, then I think aCal is one of the few. That will use caldav and its user email list was fairly helpful when I was using it. With Android 4, I moved to CaldavSyncAdapter (org.gege.caldavsyncadapter) and don't use it much any more. Android phones are basically a strange type of GNU/Linux device. Have fun! Hope that helps, -- MJ Ray (slef), member of www.software.coop, a for-more-than-profit co-op http://koha-community.org supporter, web and library systems developer. In My Opinion Only: see http://mjr.towers.org.uk/email.html Available for hire (including development) at http://www.software.coop/

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Re: [ALUG] Dropbox alternatives
by Chris Green 21 Oct '14

21 Oct '14

On Mon, Oct 20, 2014 at 02:27:24PM +0100, mick wrote: > On Mon, 20 Oct 2014 14:05:57 +0100 > Chris Green <cl(a)isbd.net> allegedly wrote: > > > > > > Surely, as they're not providing any computing power or resources, it > > can be 'free' in the same way as most Open Source software is. > > > > "TANSTAAFL" > > If you do not pay for a service, you are not the customer, you are > the product. Google, Facebook and others base their entire (hugely > profitable) businesses on that fact. > > I cannot understand how anyone would willingly synchronise any > personal data of any kind with a "free" cloud service. > Who is confused here?? As far as I can tell syncthing is *purely* software, you are not synchronising data with 'their' servers. All syncthing does it make it easy to synchronise data between two systems that are both your own. ... or have I totally lost the plot? -- Chris Green

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Dropbox alternatives
by Mark Rogers 21 Oct '14

21 Oct '14

I've had the luxury of 50GB free Dropbox space courtesy of an offer that came with my Android tablet, but that is now about to expire. I've been wanting to shift to something else anyway so now's the time. But what do I pick? There are several options... Objective: To be able to sync as much stuff as I like. I have no desire for a central repository (although I could set one up if needed); I prefer a peer to peer model. I'd really prefer a good sync mechanism (in particularly handling file deltas rather than having to upload a whole file if something changes). ARM compatibility is important. Android integration would be a big plus (eg I like that my phone automatically uploads photos to Dropbox, I'd like to move them to the new solution). BTSync: Free only as in beer but otherwise looks pretty good. Syncthing (now called Pulse): Properly free. I think it meets all my criteria. Any others I should consider? Any experiences to report? -- Mark Rogers // More Solutions Ltd (Peterborough Office) // 0844 251 1450 Registered in England (0456 0902) @ 13 Clarke Rd, Milton Keynes, MK1 1LG

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Incremental/snapshot backups using rsync - is it really this simple?
by Chris Green 20 Oct '14

20 Oct '14

I've been using rsnapshot to do backups for a year or two now but my backup NAS is just about full so I need to move to something with a bigger disk. Rsnapshot uses rsync's --link-dest to create the hard-linked snapshots along with a lot of arcane perl (as far as I'm concerned Perl is always arcane!) and a big, complex configuration file. So I'm considering a roll-your-own approach, it seems just too simple to be true. Does following pseudo-code look right:- Run every day in the small hours IF (day_of_month = 1) IF (month = 1) # i.e. January 1st rename month12 to this_year ELSE remove month12 FI rename month11 to month 12 .... month1 to month2 rename day31 to month1 ELSE remove day31 FI move day30 to day31 .... day1 to day2 rsync with the --link-dest=DIR pointing to day2 I can create all the directories empty to start with so they're all there to be moved even though with nothing in them. This will (hopefully!) create daily backups for 31 days, monthly backups for 12 months and yearly backups for ever (!?). -- Chris Green

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Re: [ALUG] Dropbox alternatives
by Mark Rogers 20 Oct '14

20 Oct '14

On 20 October 2014 14:27, mick <mbm(a)rlogin.net> wrote: > If you do not pay for a service, you are not the customer, you are > the product. Google, Facebook and others base their entire (hugely > profitable) businesses on that fact. > > I cannot understand how anyone would willingly synchronise any > personal data of any kind with a "free" cloud service. SyncThing/Pulse is a P2P sync service that runs entirely on your own hardware. They are "providing" software not a service, although I daresay they will provide a hosted option in future for those who want it. It's entirely open source. BTsync is similar without the benefits of being open source. It's plus, however, is that it's easier to set up (albeit with some loss of security). SyncThing would get my vote of the two, other than that at the moment I've not got it to work properly... (see other response to Steve) -- Mark Rogers // More Solutions Ltd (Peterborough Office) // 0844 251 1450 Registered in England (0456 0902) @ 13 Clarke Rd, Milton Keynes, MK1 1LG

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How to prevent a system from changing its ssh key every time it boots?
by Chris Green 20 Oct '14

20 Oct '14

My dlink NAS backup is working nicely now except for one fly in the ointment, it regenerates its ssh key every time it's rebooted. We had a (planned) power cut last week and thus the key was changed and my backups failed until I fixed things up again. So what's the best way around this problem? At the moment I can't see where ssh-keygen gets run though I'm still searching. Is there any specific way around this issue of a remote system's ssh key changing frequently (other than relaxing checks so it's just a warning rather than a failure)? -- Chris Green

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