Don’t just leave your backups alone, check them!

I use a Readynas+ to backup all my Linux using a homegrown incremental Rsync script and my Mac using SuperDuper.  For the last few weeks the space on the little Nas has been getting pretty low.  I just thought that I just had a lot of stuff…  But thinking further, 1.4Tb is a hell of a lot of stuff.  Where on earth was my space going?  A few uses of du -h showed that I had 200Gb of music and film.  My Mac took over 300Gb (3 x rotated SuperDuper sparse images).  My main Linux box took a lot, but suprisingly my Mythtv backup took 0.5Tb.  WTF? I only keep 3 incremental backups (plus an archived one every now and again) of that machines root partition. e.g. 15Gb max!  Then it dawned on me.  With Myth 0.21 new Disc Groups, I added a new 300Gb partition for storage, BUT I never added it to the exclude list for my Rsync backup. So I’d been backing up all my recordings for the last few months. Doh!!

That’s quite a lot to backup on a nightly basis!

SMBFS to CIFS

Note to self.  If you are ever going to migrate some Samba shares from using the deprecated SMBFS to using CIFS instead, then instead of just changing the filesystem in FSTAB, then wondering why the dammed thing refuses to mount. Try reading up a bit and realise that the actual mount utility is a different one and is likely not to be installed.

What a numpty.  Anyway 2 tips for anybody whos doing this:

  1. The following is a great way to increase the debug output:
    echo 1 >/proc/fs/cifs/cifsFYI
  2. install mount_cifs

Linux Raid Wiki

There’s a lot of outdated stuff concerning Linux software raid out there. Over the last 6 months there’s been a concerted effort by people on the Linux Raid mailing list to improve this situation. The continuing results can be seen on this Wiki:

http://linux-raid.osdl.org/

It’s a great resource already, and getting better. Go have a look if you want to know about the current status of just what cool stuff you can do.

Did you vote yesterday?

For more or less the first time in my life a candidate for whom I voted actually won! The Green party candidate for Cambridge Abbey came in by a fairly large margin.  Cool!

VOTE TODAY!

If you do not vote, you absolutely forfeit the right to complain about the goverment, council or anything about the adminstration of this country. If you don’t agree with any of the candidates, then go into the polling booth and mess up your card. That get’s counted, and reduces the mandate of the winner.

Listening to people who complain about the government, and then admit they have not voted really makes my blood boil. Generally accompanied by the comment that “..all politicians are as bad as each other”, “I don’t agree with any of the major parties” etc.. My view: Do something or shutup. Vote or go march on Whitehall. Vote Monster raving Loony party if you want, vote for the mad independent who wants to ban cars, but whatever you do today, go and vote.