Attic Tips

skp attic, backups, ssh Leave a comment

I’ve been saving space with my backups by putting them into an attic repository. I have a backup roughly every 6 months, but much of it is the same info. By using attic, I can simply store each one into a single repository without using a huge amount of space.

My latest issue was my backup session was interrupted in the middle. I had to figure out how to resume.

Spacing

Just to give you an idea of amounts of storage …

  • Current Home Directory: 378G (not backed up yet)
  • April Backup: 320G (backed up)
  • Attic Repository Size: 507G
  • Attic includes 4 backups

Adding a backup

So, here’s the command that I used to add my backup directory to the repo.

attic create --verbose \
     /backup-drive/backup-repo/repo.attic::2016-04-23-Pistachio \
     /home/skp/mnt/2016-04-23-Pistachio\ Backup

Resuming a Backup

I’m having to run my commands over SSH since my server’s kind of hard to get to without a screen. I had to take my laptop with me before the backup completed, and I had to stop the backup.

It creates a checkpoint every 5 minutes as I understand. I could see the checkpoint by running a list command:

attic list /backup-drive/backup-repo/repo.attic

Here’s the output (after I restarted it and it finished):

2012-11-10-pecan                     Sat Apr 23 00:21:13 2016
2014-10-19-pistachio.checkpoint      Sat Apr 23 21:06:24 2016
2014-10-19-pistachio                 Sun Apr 24 04:51:12 2016
2013-05-25-pecan.checkpoint          Sat Oct 29 08:42:25 2016
2013-05-25-pecan                     Tue Nov  1 10:54:33 2016
2016-04-23-Pistachio.checkpoint      Sun May 28 09:02:29 2017
2016-04-23-Pistachio                 Mon May 29 02:37:59 2017

I was looking for some special command to make it restart. I actually just used the same command that I had initially used.

attic create --verbose \
     /backup-drive/backup-repo/repo.attic::2016-04-23-Pistachio \
     /home/skp/mnt/2016-04-23-Pistachio\ Backup

Disconnectable Sessions

Next time, I thought I would look for a better solution. I like RDP in that I can disconnect and my session keeps running. I found this command would let me do the same thing with SSH sessions:

screen

To reconnect, I can just run:

screen -r

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Troubleshooting Windows Networking

skp Networking, Story, Troubleshooting, Windows Leave a comment

Ok, ok. What’s a Windows article doing on a Linux blog? Well, I wanted to help a friend with a networking issue, and I thought maybe someone else might find it helpful as well. Every Linux user will end out running into Windows at some point anyway either through a remote desktop or virtual machine, so maybe it’s not too far off topic.

If you see something that I missed or a different approach to the problem, please comment below.

Here’s the issue … a friend’s computer connects to the wireless at their house but doesn’t have Internet. Other devices in their house connect, so it leads me to believe that the router is working although it could be an issue with DHCP and the other devices don’t need to renew their IP address. But, the laptop doesn’t work at their friend’s house. That makes me think that the problem is mostly with the laptop itself.

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Pardon the Dust: Transition in Progress

skp Blogging Leave a comment

Things might look a little different on the blog if you haven’t been back in a while.  And, things might not be working quite up to par for a bit.  Please pardon the dust.  I’m trying to get things back in order as quickly as my schedule allows.

So, here’s what’s going on: I am moving my website to a VPS.  My term at Hostgator expired, and I decided that this next year, I want to include SSL on my site and take it to the next level.  Doing so at Hostgator was not cost effective in the least.

So, I am rebuilding everything on my own VPS.  It’s exciting but things may be a bit rough for a few weeks.  I hoping to pull together a new theme on the blog, SSL for securit/SEO, and tie it all together on a multi-site WordPress installation.

Please keep checking back and see how it goes!

Ubuntu 16.04 — Utilities and Configuration

digitaleagle 7zip, My Inspiron 17R, Ubuntu 16.04, Uncategorized Leave a comment

Continuing on with outfitting my new Ubuntu 16.04 install, this post contains my notes for installing the utilities that didn’t really fit into another post. I have some configuration changes that I like to make it my own.

Series Navigation:

MenuLibre

The MenuLibre tool makes it easy to add shortcuts that allow you to launch programs from the Unity menu. It is a must have if you install anything manually without using a deb pacakge.

Install:

sudo apt-get install menulibre

Note: If you have shortcuts from an old installation, those would be located in the ~/.local/share/applications directory. (That helped me with shortcuts for which I forgot all of the command line parameters)

Compression

I use the File Roller application usually. But, I wanted the 7zip and rar libraries available:

sudo apt-get install p7zip-full p7zip-rar

Monitor Settings

For my dual screen setup at my desk, I have a few tweaks that I like to make. I can open the “Displays” settings app to make these changes:

  • Sticky edges: off
  • Launcher placement: only 1 screen

Package Managing Tools

With as much trouble as I am having with the Ubuntu Software app, I want the power of Synaptic.

sudo apt-get install synaptic

Another tool is the Y PPA Manager from Web Upd8:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:webupd8team/y-ppa-manager
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install y-ppa-manager

Compiz Settings Manager

The Compiz Settings Manager is a handy tool to tweak the compiz settings. I installed the compizconfig-settings-manager package from the Software Center.

sudo apt-get install compizconfig-settings-manager
sudo apt-get install compiz-plugins

If you search for “compiz” in the Unity menu, you can easily open it.

I like the Wobbly Windows, so I enabled that. It requires disabling Snappy Windows, which it will do for you.

Unity Tweak Tool

I installed the Unity Tweak Tool for a few more changes:

sudo apt-get install unity-tweak-tool

Then, under “Panel”, I added the seconds, date, and weekday to the clock.  And, I checked “Display remaining battery life”.  Under scrolling, I changed the scrollbars to legacy.  I don’t like the Overlay ones that hide.

Settings

In the Appearance Settings app, I made 2 changes:

  • Show the menus for a window: In the window’s title bar
  • Menus visibility: Always displayed

Caffeine

There are times that I don’t want my computer to lock. I am finally installing the caffeine indicator to make that easy.

Previously, you had to add a repository.  I found in this bug report, that caffeine has been brought into the main Ubuntu repositories.

sudo apt-get install caffeine

After installing, I added the indicator to the startup applications. I opened “Startup Applications” from the dash. “Caffeine” was already in the list. The indicator was not. I added “caffeine-indicator” to the list.

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