Where the hell's the *nix thread?

[samorost]

No RAID? I hope you have another device to back up your backups.

If you have a spare PC chassis that will hold at least three drives and a motherboard with enough connections, you could do an LVM RAID (level 1, 2 mirrored and one boot disk) and run a headless linux install as a middleware backup platform. Mount the RAIDed volume as an NFS share and file backups become as easy as a shell script and a cron job (or more complicated if you want incremental backups with rsync or something similar). You could then offload the middleware backups to your new goflex disk for double (if not purely redundant) backups.

I'm just extra paranoid about data loss these days.

edit: I did not intend to have a smiley above my post. This is serious business.

[Hayduke]

Got the Goflex running with ArchLinuxArm. The forums and the IRC channel were great helps, but it was mostly getting up the nerve to try again and waiting until I was pretty sure the power wouldn't go out in the middle of it. Thanks to the help of some guy on IRC, I found out it was easy enough to skip the USB thumbdrive option and just format the hdd to ext3 and install there, so the USB port is still open and I have a nice big swapfile. Downside could be that I probably can't spin down the hdd much if any.

Windows:
Running Samba with netbios, it can be made to show up in network neighborhood on Windows machines. For linux clients, it's simple enough to create a user account on the machine and an ssh bookmark in Nautilus so it looks like a local drive.

Offsetting some of the obvious disadvantages of this compared to a PC supporting a RAID are the power consumption and the fact that it didn't cost significantly more than the drive. Plus I already bought it. I was looking for something I could leave on all the time with pretty low consumption. I'm trying not to have any data in just one place (definition of backup?), but not necessarily in three or more (so long as I realize when something goes wonky).

Right now it's backing up Eunice's machine and experimentally running Transmission. There's a really nice Web interface after you start it at the command line. Problem is that I can't seem to get it to run without being logged in as root, which seems like Very Bad Thing. I've told it which user account it should run under, but it doesn't like the authentication. After that fails, it won't even run from root until I reboot (or fix whatever unknown thing doing that actually accomplishes). Googling around for an answer, I tripped over the fact that I can also run transmission on my DD-WRT enabled Linksys router. Go figure.

[metulj]

Got the Goflex running with ArchLinuxArm. The forums and the IRC channel were great helps, but it was mostly getting up the nerve to try again and waiting until I was pretty sure the power wouldn't go out in the middle of it. Thanks to the help of some guy on IRC, I found out it was easy enough to skip the USB thumbdrive option and just format the hdd to ext3 and install there, so the USB port is still open and I have a nice big swapfile. Downside could be that I probably can't spin down the hdd much if any.

Windows:
Running Samba with netbios, it can be made to show up in network neighborhood on Windows machines. For linux clients, it's simple enough to create a user account on the machine and an ssh bookmark in Nautilus so it looks like a local drive.

Offsetting some of the obvious disadvantages of this compared to a PC supporting a RAID are the power consumption and the fact that it didn't cost significantly more than the drive. Plus I already bought it. I was looking for something I could leave on all the time with pretty low consumption. I'm trying not to have any data in just one place (definition of backup?), but not necessarily in three or more (so long as I realize when something goes wonky).

Right now it's backing up Eunice's machine and experimentally running Transmission. There's a really nice Web interface after you start it at the command line. Problem is that I can't seem to get it to run without being logged in as root, which seems like Very Bad Thing. I've told it which user account it should run under, but it doesn't like the authentication. After that fails, it won't even run from root until I reboot (or fix whatever unknown thing doing that actually accomplishes). Googling around for an answer, I tripped over the fact that I can also run transmission on my DD-WRT enabled Linksys router. Go figure.

You need to add it to a runtime script. What runtime level is it at? 3 or 5? Add it to one of those two be sure to redirect any STDOUT to /dev/null or your logger.

[Hayduke]

You need to add it to a runtime script. What runtime level is it at? 3 or 5? Add it to one of those two be sure to redirect any STDOUT to /dev/null or your logger.

There's no X, so it has to be 3.
ArchLinuxArm instructions here: http://archlinuxarm.org/support/guid...s/transmission

If you want to make something of the script, have at:

#!/bin/bash

. /etc/rc.conf
. /etc/rc.d/functions
. /etc/conf.d/transmissiond

PID=`pidof -o %PPID /usr/bin/transmission-daemon`
case "$1" in
  start)
    stat_busy "Starting Transmission Daemon"
    [ -z "$PID" ] && su -l -s /bin/sh -c "/usr/bin/transmission-daemon $TRANS_ARGS" $TRANS_USER
    if [ $? -gt 0 ]; then
      stat_fail
    else
      add_daemon transmissiond
      stat_done
    fi
    ;;
  stop)
    stat_busy "Stopping Transmission Daemon"
    [ ! -z "$PID" ] && kill $PID &> /dev/null
    if [ $? -gt 0 ]; then
      stat_fail
    else
      rm_daemon transmissiond
      stat_done
    fi
    ;;
  restart)
    $0 stop
    while [ ! -z "$PID" -a -d "/proc/$PID" ]; do sleep 1; done
    $0 start
    ;;
  reload)
      stat_busy "Reloading config"
      [ ! -z "$PID" ] && kill -HUP $PID &> /dev/null
      if [ $? -gt 0 ]; then
          stat_fail
      else
          stat_done
      fi
      ;;
  *)
    echo "usage: $0 {start|stop|restart|reload}"
esac
exit 0

[metulj]

There's no X, so it has to be 3.
ArchLinuxArm instructions here: http://archlinuxarm.org/support/guid...s/transmission

If you want to make something of the script, have at:

#!/bin/bash

. /etc/rc.conf
. /etc/rc.d/functions
. /etc/conf.d/transmissiond

PID=`pidof -o %PPID /usr/bin/transmission-daemon`
case "$1" in
  start)
    stat_busy "Starting Transmission Daemon"
    [ -z "$PID" ] && su -l -s /bin/sh -c "/usr/bin/transmission-daemon $TRANS_ARGS" $TRANS_USER
    if [ $? -gt 0 ]; then
      stat_fail
    else
      add_daemon transmissiond
      stat_done
    fi
    ;;
  stop)
    stat_busy "Stopping Transmission Daemon"
    [ ! -z "$PID" ] && kill $PID &> /dev/null
    if [ $? -gt 0 ]; then
      stat_fail
    else
      rm_daemon transmissiond
      stat_done
    fi
    ;;
  restart)
    $0 stop
    while [ ! -z "$PID" -a -d "/proc/$PID" ]; do sleep 1; done
    $0 start
    ;;
  reload)
      stat_busy "Reloading config"
      [ ! -z "$PID" ] && kill -HUP $PID &> /dev/null
      if [ $? -gt 0 ]; then
          stat_fail
      else
          stat_done
      fi
      ;;
  *)
    echo "usage: $0 {start|stop|restart|reload}"
esac
exit 0

That's pretty standard fare. You could just add it do the rc3.d directory as S99transmission as a symlink to that file and it should start up.

[Hayduke]

That's pretty standard fare. You could just add it do the rc3.d directory as S99transmission as a symlink to that file and it should start up.

This system puts all that stuff in /etc/rc.d/ (presumably because there isn't really another runtime level).

Running transmissiond as user, it asks me for a password. Neither the user or root pw makes it happy. I get "su: Incorrect Password". It will run from the root account or with sudo.

[metulj]

This system puts all that stuff in /etc/rc.d/ (presumably because there isn't really another runtime level).

Running transmissiond as user, it asks me for a password. Neither the user or root pw makes it happy. I get "su: Incorrect Password". It will run from the root account or with sudo.

That's because it tries to open a privileged port. You need to read up on your setuid kungfu. If you put the start up script in rc.d then it will start.

[Hayduke]

If you put the start up script in rc.d then it will start.

The script is in rc.d and I suppose it does "start," but that's not really the result I was hoping for. Trying to figure out why following the step-by-step instructions is failing me. Wrong finger?

You need to read up on your setuid kungfu.

I really need to bag this and finish my reading for a committee meeting tonight. Maybe tomorrow.

[Hayduke]

Android file transfer. I've been using FTPServer on my DroidX for file transfer instead of disrupting things to use the USB cable. I have a shortcut in Nautilus, so tap the icon on the Droid, click the connection and start transfering files. That's fine for the desktop except for the WiFi to WiFi connection isn't the fastest.

I've also been using the AndFTP android client for SSH transfers to online servers and to the little GoFlex file server. Fine for Web stuff, but the 50 kB/s speeds are not cutting it for media files that I'm usually trying to grab off the GoFlex. Turns out the encryption overhead is what's bogging down the Droid.

New clunky solution: I thought about putting an FTP server on the GoFlex, but I wouldn't want to leave it running so I'd be logging into the GoFlex regardless. AFAICT there isn't a straight FTP server in the ArchLinuxArm repository anyway, so hassle. Anyway, the ugly trick that occurred to me this evening on the way to the Brew Pub was to put an FTP client on the GoFlex (NcFTP). I fire up the FTPServer on the Droid, SSH into the GoFlex (either from the desktop or with ConnectBot on the Droid) and initiate the transfer from that end. Getting over 1MB/s transfers, so a 20-fold increase and actually usable.

Downside: no drag & drop, 2 logins
Upside: since the GoFlex has a wired ethernet connection to the router, the straight from the media server transfers are no faster than from the desktop.

[Hayduke]

There's no escape key on a Droid. Not even in the soft keyboards. Something you notice right after you finish inserting text with vi on a remote server.

Sollution A: Hacker's Keyboard has Esc and a layout for this kind of thing. Works, but changing keyboards is a hassle if that's the only reason you wanted it.

Solution B: ConnectBot (the Android SSH client) has a (non-default) option to make the camera shutter button double as Esc. Well damn. Wish I'd rooted around for that to start with.