Minutes of the meeting of MDLUG on Saturday, 11 August 2007

In attendance: Gib, Mat, Bill L., Pat, Bill D, Carl, Andrew, Ken, Gerry, Bruce and Brian.

Brian was looking for a way to reinstall grub. Carl will wend an email to the list.

Matt wanted to know if usb 2.0 was faster than Firewire.  For burning Cd.  Fireware 400 or 800.  800 would be faster.  USB has more devices and less expensive. DVD is the choke point.

Chinese company has an iphone clone. Does everything an iphone can do.

Ken  brought in muffins.

Karl is talking about rsync.  One directory back up to another directory. A program to designed to syncronise one irectory to another.  If you have 5 files that changed only the parts of the files that changed are sent. Traffic reduction.

rsych has many options.  Deletion handling for example. By default it will delete anything that is deleted. 

Backup PC is a better tool for backup, versioning.

rsync syncs files from 1 locations to another location. After sync.  only the parts that changed are moved to new directory.

rsync <path to source /home/staff/mast> <path to destinatiion /staffbak/matt>

People have been known to take the destination directory and make that read only access to other people.

rsync <hostname>::<sharename>

You can do remote to local or the reverse.

rsync egr.msu.edu::debian

Several different ways to choose your source and destination.

You may create a cronjob to run it.
As root:
crontab -e 0 20 * * * rsync <path to source> <path to destination>

0 20 * * * There are 5 fields: 
First field is minute o, 
hour 20 (8:00 PM), 
day of the  month * is every month, 
month * means every month, 
day of week * means every day of month. 

Better to use a script in the commmand: 
crontab -e 0 20 * * * <script>
Note: make sure you specify the shell in the script.
Script means you won't damage crontab file. 

BackupPC is good if you backupwhn you need different (multiple) versions.

Mondo rescue if you need a way to recover your machine.  Harddrive fails. 

This brings up the topic of what tools to use.  Mondo resuce is good for disaster recovery.  Non-technical people can run this.  Can restore computer easy. Can backup to CD or shared drive. Can use harddrive to harddrive.

Mondo rescue creates ISO files.  Is bootable CD.  Then it allows you to change the file type. 

Combine these tools together. Do a rsync to keep a copy of current files. Use mondo rescue to copy all of the files including the OS – do that whenever you change OS or upgrade. 

mondo rescue is a two step process.  1. run mondo rescue saving he files on same computer.  2. copy the files somewhere safe.

 
Garry 1 terabyte harddrive $600. They may actually be many drives in one. He prefers 1 drive instead of smaller drives.

Bill L. which directories should be separate.
Carl – server directory different.  Separate home and var.  One person could fill entire directory.  var can fill if you have bad arps.
Pat separate directories allows you to add more drives later.
Separate server: usr var tmp home 
Desktop separate only home.
Swap is always separate.

Carl: VMWare server is free better than dual boot.